By Pepper Parr
November 27th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
It was formed a couple of months after the 2024 budget was passed
Some people were livid when they experienced a 15.9% tax increase in 2023 and then 10.24% in 2024. They are now looking at close to 8% for 2025.
The public protest morphed into a small group that gave themselves the name BRAG – Burlington Residents’ Action Group. It took a bit of time for the group to figure out how they would organize themselves. Some people left early in the game but after a few months, there was a structure and an understanding on how they would organize themselves.
The first decision was to decide they would operate as a collective – decisions made would have a consensus – no one would be making statements on behalf of the group until there was agreement.
Every person involved had one focus – the city needed to cut back on the spending and justify what they were spending.
BRAG has four Directors: Eric Stern, Lynn Crosby, Stephen White, and Caren Burcher.
Eric Stern serves as the spokesperson for Brag.
Stern serves as the public face of BRAG, which is an incorporated not-for-profit organization. He said recently that: ”When the budget dropped we wanted to get started right away so we divided the budget into sections and assigned each section to one person.
“Each person read their assigned portions which was about 80 pages in length. The group made two passes through the 615 page document.
“The first pass involved each person looking at a set number of pages. I purposely took the last set of pages because, in the 2024 budget, all the meaningful information was at the end of the budget.
“As it turns out, in the 2025 budget, all the meaningful information was at the start of the document. Suddenly I was learning an awful lot about creeks. I have lots of memories of riding my banana bike around Rambo Creek and quickly questioned the need for $2,000,000 for erosion control on a 245-metre section of Rambo Creek.
“We then did a second pass on the budget based on areas of professional expertise and interest. In the second pass, individuals looked at broad topic areas: Transit, Digital Services and Human Resources spending.
“The people with expertise dug into the issues identified by others in the first pass and found new items to look at.
“Our results from the first pass were:
1 – an open letter to the council on errors in the budget
2 – publishing the results of the BRAG heat pump survey, interest-free loans for heat pumps were mentioned in the mayor’s summary budget but dropped from the detailed budget.
The average income information is likely based on data from the 2021 Census and Manifold Data Mining.
3 – “The chart comparing property taxes and average income concerned me” said Stern. “I found the concept of using average income as a basis for taxation to be profoundly unfair and did a deep dive into how the city may have come up with the numbers in the chart. Oddly the city provides percentages and a graph but does not quote where the information came from.”
Looking back, Stern admits that “We were rushed and unable to research all the issues thoroughly. The city released a document that had some data but not nearly enough to be useful. When we got the Budget binder we were able to get at raw data and begin some analysis. The experience gained this year will serve us well next year.”
“The one theme that emerged within the group was that Burlington had orchestrated the budget engagement in a manner that prevented real engagement. Jim Barnett, Stephen White, Lynn Crosby and I all delegated on this subject. We want to see changes during the 2026 budget.”
“We had virtual meetings but we also circulated ideas and information over email so that issues did not have to wait for a meeting to be discussed.”
BRAG has volunteer members who live in every ward in Burlington.
Better than that BRAG has attracted people who have expertise that the group doesn’t have. A number of people have come forward and asked if they could help. They didn’t want to be “members” but they did want a place where their views could be heard and absorbed.
These are people who have sent notes to the Mayor or Council members and been ignored.
At this point in time, the city is not able to say just what the tax rate is going to be. The numbers from the Region have yet to be determined and will not be known until December 4th when the Regional Council meets next.
Regional Council may need to spend more time on their budget and that could take until December 11th for the Region to be able to say how much the city is going to have to collect on their behalf.
Burlington sends out tax bills that include taxes being collected for the city, for the Regio, for the Police Services, and the Boards of Education.
BRAG argues, correctly, that the city is responsible for what it spends
There are four lines on the tax bill
City spending
Regional Spending
Police Services spending
Boards of Education spending.
BRAG is focused on that first line – city spending. It has done a superb job – Burlington is a better place as a result of what BRAG has done.
First I’d like to thank the members of the BRAG budget team for all their hard work and insight. I’d also like to thank those who have financially supported BRAG by donating through our website. Thanks also to the many people who have signed up for our newsletter, participated in our surveys, and contacted their council members directly. It has been three months since we launched BRAG and a lot has been accomplished, we’re off to a great start.
We are a growing group of Burlington residents, with members from every ward, volunteering our time to promote open and honest dialogue between our council members and residents. Our website is http://www.gobrag.ca
Thanks also need to go to the Burlington Gazette for being the only local news outlet willing to challenge and investigate the canned media content coming out of city hall.
Thank you BRAG,
My concern is the cost of leaf pickup. This system is the messiest , we have huge trucks taking away leaves. I’m in zone 3 , the last week of November time. Money is wasted on the leaflets sent out by the city. The neighbours started piling leaves up in October, as stated end of November is our time. The system is dangerous for bikers as many put them on the road. I asked did you read the flyer that the city sends out, no was the answer.
Spruce Ave from Burloak has many trees that now are far too big for the area. If they were trimmed down we wouldn’t have so many problems with drains being covered, where water just sits not draining away.
Even people out of town have never seen such a mess that this system causes.
Being over 80 , have no problem bagging them ,much neater ,and those who don’t or can’t help from the community is possible.
Trucks go up and down with front end loader scooping up. Then the street sweeper comes along to clean what the truckers can’t get.
A pet peeve of mine, even contacted Paul Sharmon our councillor of ward 5. nothing from him to help the situation.
Thanks to the group.
Living downtown I have an overabundance of leaves to take care of in the fall; when I was working I had contractors look after the property, the mountains of leaves that were blown onto the Blvd and into the curb/road were quite impressive in size; After becoming the new yard maintenance guy I have been searching for better solutions for leaf maintenance and for the last couple of seasons I’ve been using a Worx leaf shredder, ($250 I believe), and after some alterations in string size, and trying different ways of creating the piles on the lawn, the whole process is becoming easier and faster; bottom line; No more mountains of gross soggy or frozen leaves, no more repairs to the Blvd grass in the spring, no more blocked storm drain and I am still amazed how all those leaves now fit into very few bags due to the mulching process of the shredder; as for cost, I believe the region uses leaves in their mulching process to mix in with the garbage at the regional dump.
The request from BRAG to the city in terms of leaf collection was for the city to define the savings to be gained by cancelling the leaf collection program.
An article in a large Hamilton paper stated the cost of the program as $820,000. During the council meeting where this was discussed (November 18) we heard the cost was $240,000. Our mayor, on CHCH, said Halton would increase garbage collection charges reducing any savings. The potential exists that the contractor who picks up the trash will want more than $240,000 to manually pick up the bagged leaves resulting in a cost increase. Garbage collection is regional, Oakville and Milton have collection programs. I have not researched the specifics of those programs but I will bet the vendors who bid on the trash collection contract will factor in leaf collection in their bids.
There is no point in discussing the merits of cancelling or continuing a program without some honesty and clarity on the actual costs of this program.
So, are we saying that bagging the leaves costs the city more than bulk pickup? I just did a quick dive into Reddit, and commenters are saying it costs the city $820,000 for the bulk program, and someone has reckoned that to be $11.00 each, the upshot of the conversation was people were willing to pay a bulk fee rather than purchase leaf bags. I would be willing to take care of the costs associated with my leaf bag pickup, but that opens the door to user fees, which wouldn’t bother me as I need very little organized entertainment.
We cannot thank you enough…..you being the Brave and Bold BRAG TEAM…for your time and expertise. You’ve been able to unravel so much of the gobbledegook in these Budgets, and all the while enduring rigid time constraints.
Bravo!!!!!
Thank Heavens we have BRAG to spread the news!!!!
We’re getting there!
Cheers Cecilia