CAO given a rough ride by Council over bringing Economic Development and Tourism in house Part 2

By Pepper Parr

November 14^th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

 

City Chief Administrative Officer Curt Benson had explained his position on the recommendation from Rubicon Strategy, a consulting firm hired by the city to review the service that Burlington Economic Development and Tourism (BEDT) was providing.

BEDT is a not for profit corporation owned by the city and operating at arms length.

Now it was time for members of Council to ask questions.  This article has been edited for length and clarity.  It is lengthy.  And it is the toughest grilling I have ever seen a City Manager get from a City Council

Councillor Sharman was chair of the meeting and he was asking who had questions.  It took a moment or two for someone to put their hand up.

Councillor Bentivegna:  Thanks for the comments that you made. My concern is the items that you spoke about.  For example, city staff believes that they will be successful in transitioning to strengthen relationships with the business community. It’s a great statement, and we all want that. How are we going to do it? Are we making a decision here today, one way or the other?   I don’t have the information I need. So, so where do we go from? I need to know, what those next steps?

Curt Benson CAO: As outlined in the report councilor, we’re looking to work in collaboration with the independent organization and establish a transition plan. So you’re right. A lot of the details around the specifics of the makeup of the service agreement are actually going to be coming through the transition plan. So we don’t have that information for you. I think in principle, we feel strongly that we can land on an integrated model that costs less than what’s being cost today to deliver those services. We believe that there are some services that are actually already being provided by the city that perhaps can be integrated, aligned or optimized with the work going forward. That’s what we have here today.

Bentivegna: My second question has to do with efficiencies. You mentioned that you wanted efficiencies and a clear line of sight to the business community.  We all want that’s not an easy task in any business that we get into, or anything that we want to do to follow up on. Is there a plan somewhere that we could see in making these serious decisions moving forward. From my standpoint, I feel comfortable in saying, okay, I get it. I’m prepared to make that move.

Benson: I think the value is in actually having the conversation and the collaboration with the board and staff, and I want to kind of address this.  There are comments made in the report that don’t properly reflect the significant value that many of the initiatives have driven over time. And so I think that what we need to do is really understand where some of the pain points are,  where some of the duplication exists, where some of the clumsiness of the handoffs that should be there, that aren’t there. There’s a lot of room for improvement. And I think the value is in taking stock and the values in having that conversation and coming back to council with the results of that conversation to identify where we can better integrate, where can we improve. That is going to take time and discussion.

Galbraith:  The report talks about a lot of the comparisons to other municipalities, listing some of the internal and external: almost 90% of all municipalities have this as an internal function. What doesn’t compare is, their budgets? Do we have any idea what a similar municipality to Burlington would have in the way a budget for any other internal economic development functions compared to the $2 million we spend?

Benson: Maybe I could ask  Andrew Scott, our Chief Transformation Officer, can come to the lectern to give Council some information on that.

Andrew Scott:  There’s a variety of different approaches that municipalities take. Setting that in context, there are different approaches and different programs and services that are offered, but in terms of a municipality of the size that you’re talking about in Burlington, around 180,000 to 200,000 people is getting close to fully maturing. From a built-out perspective, you’re typically looking at a range of about a million to $1.2 million in terms of the impact on the operating budget. That doesn’t include any capital considerations, capital projects. But in terms of operating you’re typically looking at that sort of range.  Ours isn’t probably identical to others, because we added the tourism function. So you know, what’s a tourism internal operating cost? I don’t know if you’d know the answer.

Scott: I can only speak for the municipality that I worked at previously, there was no tourism function that was in house.  That was something that was left entirely to independent organizations. There was no municipal accommodation tax that was applied by the local municipality either.

Gailbraith: Okay, thanks for that second question. Maybe while you’re up there.  I understand there’s funding available for economic development tourism through the Green Municipal Fund, If we move the operation internally, are we eligible for that?  I understand we’re probably not. Now with an external operation, is that is that correct?

Scott: So there are a number of grant opportunities that are available through the provincial and the federal government, that are available to municipalities.  They are not available to nonprofit or independent corporations or organizations. So by bringing them in, by bringing economic development tourism in house, that would allow the municipality to apply for those funds and allocate those funds to that, you know, to that internal organization, but they can apply now as an external as an independent Corporation, they are not eligible for application directly to those funds. That’s correct. The three that comes to mind, you’re correct, the Green Municipal Fund. There’s also the Housing Accelerator Fund and the Building Faster Fund as well, depending on if we were successful in our in our growth topics.

Councillor Stolte: Back over to you. Curt, so all things be being equal.  I fundamentally and theoretically believe in economic development being internal to the city. But historically, over the last couple of years, , the corporation has had significant struggles with staff morale and staff feeling different levels of support, which has resulted in a lot of turnover and lack of consistency. So as our newer CAO, I’m wondering, how do you believe staff morale is doing, and do you believe that there’s any risk that we would be looking at of bringing active in house, and could there be a negative effect due to some of the challenges that internal staff groups have had?

Benson: Staff, culture, staff, morale are big issues. There are important issues, and they’re issues that are very difficult to resolve quickly or and they require a great deal of deliberate kind of action and care to resolve them. Since getting into this role, you know, I think it’s fundamental for me to really drive change in this organization. I do think we have many opportunities to get our culture there. I don’t anticipate any negative consequences with an integrated model. I actually see opportunities when I think of an integrated model, empowering staff, having that line of sight to helping a broader segment of those in the community, our business community, I think those are really empowering so but I do think it’s it absolutely is something that would be top of mind in defining what the model looks like. Specifically, I think it’s really important.

Stolte:   Would you be willing to make that commitment? Should the decision go in the way of bringing it internal that you would do? Well, you know what? I think I probably know the answer to that question. You do everything you could to ensure that that staff morale and that positive engagement is top of mind.  I just wanted to build on a question of clarity from councillor Galbraith, because the finance section of this report is pretty much absent, and it could be very compelling to hear that bringing EcoDev and tourism in house would open up new opportunities for funding grants and the two that I heard, which was the Green Fund And the housing accelerator fund. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but did the municipality already receive funding from both of those programs? And would more funding not be a double dip? So I’m just wondering, what’s our Upswing on bringing act dev in house that could potentially equal more upper level federal government funding

Benson: Those funding the intake programs, the way that the federal and municipal government have been permitting applications is that, typically they’re on an annual basis. And so especially with things like the housing accelerator fund or the building faster fund, you have to put forward a suite of projects that are eligible for funding to then be able to determine that so in terms of if Economic Development and Tourism was brought in house, then we would then be able to work with our new division or department in terms of how can we enable leverage that type of funding, put forward project for proposals, for future In for future rounds of intake and future rounds of our evaluation.

Stolte: Do you don’t have a estimate of what we would have been able to get in addition to what we already received?

Benson:  No, I do not as of right now.

Stolte: It makes it hard for me to decide based on that. Okay, thanks.

Councillor Bentivegna: There’s a lot of questions, concerns about what to expect moving forward. It woild seem that everyone has the same concerns? Would it not be prudent to just pause this scenario because of some of the unknowns?

We’re going into 2026 budget. And my it’s my understanding that we’re going to work through the same budget for for 2026 if we’re going to make some changes and we’re going to evolve into something that’s going to be within our organization, there’s a lot of planning involved, because when we see it each and every day, would it not be a good idea to wait? Let 2026, roll as is, work with B, A, D, T, and continue that dialog, work on whether it be agreements on one end, or whether it be operational, internal, and then we can have all the responses answers, and budget, For that matter, for 2027 and then make those decisions that I would feel personally uncomfortable with. What do you think about that?

Benson: What we are suggesting in the report is coming back here with a transition plan. Now the transition plan would be developed with a particular outcome in mind. But that’s not to say Council can direct staff to look at what are those kind of areas of alignment that we want to achieve from from a responsibility perspective or an efficiency perspective, and have because I think that’s that’s where staff are saying there is a little bit of urgency. We do not have a service agreement in place with economic development. We do think there’s value in getting to an executed service agreement quickly if Council chooses to retain that model. So regardless, we’re going to need to work with the agency and arrive at what do the next steps look like. And I think those next steps are different. I think if you know, if you consider where staff’s recommendation is on an integrated model, versus, okay, maybe it’s an enhanced service agreement model. That’s something that I would say regardless, I would recommend against kind of putting things on ice for now, because I do think that there is some urgency to address some of those things with some haste.

Bentivegna: My second question has to do, we’re going to get a report in April on this? Wouldn’t aren’t we putting it, aren’t we delaying this information and whatnot between now and April?

Benson: maybe I misinterpreted the question, Councilor, I thought you were suggesting that we pause completely doing any work over 2026 and revisit it perhaps in 2027 I think in that case, staff feel that it’s more important to continue to do the work, to have the dialog, to come back to council with some direction, as count as we’re recommending it, to transition plan to an integrated model. But regardless if Council is looking at a different model, we still need to fix the fact that we we have deficiencies in the service arrangement,

Bentivegna: I’ll get back in line. Thanks.

Councillor Nisan:  Councillor Gailbrath asked a question that’s been on my mind a lot, which the report didn’t speak to, which is:  can we save money? Is there money to be saved by bringing economic development in house? So there’s no response to that would

Benson: Based on my experience and on the experience of other senior leaders in the organization  have had carriage over economic development functions in municipalities, I do believe that there is an opportunity for savings.  And just to follow up, is there opportunity for savings that wouldn’t be opportunities otherwise? Because, frankly, it does run against the the overall perception, which is that you can run things cheaper outside of government than inside the tent. And what, any evidence at all, like, you know, anything you can provide in that regard?

I think Andy Scott alluded to this in one of his responses, is that the service that council wants to procure needs to be tailored to address the needs of our community. And I think we need to really get into having that dialog with the agency on, perhaps what offerings are being provided now that are little or no value or are duplicative. You know, those are the types of of conversations that get you to an outcome of, you know, driving cost savings or cost avoidance, and that’s what we really would like to focus on as part of next steps.

Nisan:  I would agree. I agree with that for sure. I got to sort of pick on this comment about these different funds, and availability for those funds. So building faster fund, we are nowhere near getting that funding because of the way that the criteria housing accelerator fund, we’ve got a ton of funding for Thank you very much. That’s great money over 20 million, as I recall FCM. I was very curious about that, because I’m on the FCM board. So I just want to better understand what green municipal funding is. There a particular example here where a municipality got it for economic development that maybe I’m not aware of. The Green Municipal Fund has multiple portfolios. So if there’s any information about what portfolio would be prime for this, I’d be very interested to know.

Benson: I appreciate the opportunity to clarify. I think all of those funds are derived from senior levels of government wanting to make a difference when it comes to driving economic growth in communities and and we know where we are in the current state of our economy. We know with the recent release of the federal budget and the provincial fall economic statement there there are potential funding envelopes that municipalities may qualify for, and we want to make sure that we’re as best positioned as possible to take advantage of that so so I think generally, you know, we feel that there are opportunities that we that we Want to capitalize on, with respect to the specific sectoral Green Municipal Fund and examples of municipalities in taking advantage of those funds for economic development purposes, we’d be happy to follow up with additional information to council on that.

Nisan:  I would really welcome that, because I, in my role on the FCM executive committee, I actually approve projects for the Green Municipal Fund, and I’ve never seen an economic development project approved. I’ve never approved one.

Sharman:  I’m  going to jump in here for the first time. I want to just pick up on something you said, Curt and that was that there was no service agreement currently with BEDC.  In fact, there has been only one in the last 11 to 12 years. Was that because BEDC  chose not to have one

Benson: no, no, I don’t. I don’t know that that’s the case at all. I think, I think there was the service agreement that expired at the end of 24 I think was kind of a mutual decision of the Act dev board and the city to enter into to ensure that some of the issues were addressed, I would say that that agreement doesn’t address the full suite of things that I would recommend to council to bake into an agreement for certainty and for clarity in terms of how the service is provided. But again, that’s something that you know, we’d be happy to have that conversation.

Sharman: I’m on the board. The directive did not have any part in that decision, so it was a city decision. Thank you. With respect to some comments made by the chair of Economic Development and Tourism, he’s been through many mergers, and I noted from our own Chief Human Resources Officer has been through a number also, and my own experiences. Any any such merger would be done very quietly, initially, with masses of research and thoughtful analytics concerned about the people involved. But firstly, you’d want to look at the goals, and then you’d look at the strategy, and then you go through a complete analysis of the processes and all the functions that would be affected, and the anticipated improvement of KPIs and and I think you’ve been saying that we haven’t done any of that, and so we haven’t been able to estimate the Financial, actual financial implication of this?

Why was that work not done before coming to this conclusion?

Benson:  I think there’s, there are probably a few different reasons why this route was was taken, you know, and I think it was more on the basis of identifying areas of concern, areas of duplication, areas of prospective risk. You know, I think what city staff saw and on the basis of the results of the review that was being provided, this represented, you know, an effective means to address each one of those, those areas. So, you know, I, I agree with your statement that as a part of Council’s deliberation on deciding what an active function should do, what it should look like, what the objectives are, what the performance measures are, those are all parts of an important conversation.

Councillor Galbraith: With regards to the rent that BEDT pays. What? What happens to that like tech place and their head office if they move internally, how does that change the sort of financial picture of the organization?

Benson: Those are all kind of issues that we’d want to work through as a part of a transition plan. Approaching a transition plan with the principle of cost avoidance would be an important piece. The fact that there’s some rent being paid again, we, we, I would say that what staff is recommending as part of an integrated model, I think we’d have flexibility in terms of addressing accommodation needs, for example.

Galbraith: Thanks for that.  Regarding the regional downloading of economic development services, but that happened some time ago, in the last year. I think where did those services go? Who’s Who’s doing them now,

Benson: When those services were downloaded from the region, I can say that the decision was to engage local municipalities, but for the region to just cease doing those services, so providing notice to the local municipalities that the region would no longer be providing any support. With respect to business attraction, Business Retention type activities, the only space, or the only function that the region actually maintains a role in is they do still operate the Halton Small Business Center, and that’s purely primarily because the provincial it’s largely funded by provincial dollars. And I think the funder expressed that it would be challenging for them to break apart that money. There is a critical mass so, so, yeah, no, it’s the decision was made at the region with enough lead time to say, you know, the region would no longer provide those, those economic development services. But each local municipality was left to choose how they would occupy or deliver those should they choose? Thank you.

Councillor Kearns:  I was really interested in hearing the commentary around finding efficiency. I took the pportunity to do some scribing in the meantime, and I took these numbers from our budget blueprint, which identifies a $1.3 million savings identified out of a $491.9 million budget, which equals 0.264% savings using the $1.9 million That’s budgeted for ACT Dev and tourism, that would equate to about a $5,000 savings over the year. Is that the magnitude of what we’re looking at in terms of savings and efficiencies by bringing these organizations in house?

Benson:  We would be looking at achieving the greatest possible efficiencies, so I can’t necessarily quantify it based on not having the numbers in front of us. I think what’s important is having that conversation with the agency to make a determination as to what areas represent good opportunities for efficiency and avoiding duplication.

Kearns: A higher lower would have been a good answer too. I’m just going to go on to my second question. We have identified here that there’s a service deficiency, and that this is a service that council wants to procure that is reflective to the community. One of the things that I found absent in the report was any examples of goals or directives that had been failed to meet by act Dev and tourism. Obviously, I’ve mentioned that earlier in my comments related to vision to focus.  Can any examples be identified at all? I heard about the fumble handoff in both the report and in the verbal portion of today, but I’ve never seen a root cause corrective action or a quantification of missing that hand off. So is there anything concrete that can be provided today?

Benson: We have lived experience with respect to the model.  The model has, in staff’s opinion, not, allowed us to have the greatest line of sight to the business needs and how the city is addressing business needs in the community. We think that there’s a better way. That’s why we put the recommendation for it. We stand by the recommendation.

Kearns: If I could follow up, is that, is that a personality issue, or is that a process issue?

Benson:  It’s governance, its structure, its process.

Mayor Meed Ward:  Chair, always like to start with what we can all agree on collectively. So in your comment, you said that your perception, or that  your conversations were that there was general agreement from all stakeholders that there is room for improvement. And can you? Can you share a little bit more about where we collectively, community, active board, city and your report align?

Benson:  In hearing the delegations, I think that was a common element that represents a common position. I think there is alignment with respect to wanting to realize the opportunity for addressing some of the deficiencies that we’ve seen. And I think what we’re trying to get at is we’re trying to optimize the resources that exist that are dedicated to this function. We’re trying to minimize duplication, we’re trying to enhance operational effectiveness. We’re trying to mitigate risk and really aligning economic development, aligning and embedding economic development objectives in the city business. And I think those are points I think that represent common ground or common interest, based on what I’ve heard from the delegations,

We agree that there’s room for improvement, and so I guess the conversation is how best to achieve that? You’ve heard from the delegations, you’ve heard the questions. There was fairly extensive consultation that was done. It’s outlined in the third party review, including a survey with residents. Over 800 people took that. Is there anything that you’ve received through this process, which has really been underway for the better part of a year now, almost a year, that that causes you pause or to change the recommendation that that you have that the best path to address the concerns that we all recognize and share is the in-house model,

Staff stand behind the recommendation that we have before you, and we recognize that there may be some concerns with that pathway, and you know, happy to engage with council to ensure, again, the best possible outcome here.

Sharman: Thank you,  I’m going to ask a question: You just said there was evidence of duplication and operational efficiency, but you haven’t done that very detailed analysis that I suggested, in my last question, would normally have been done befor any merger, but you did mention alignment. So is there more agreement around the lack of alignment, or is this something I’m missing?

Benson: Council has elected to procure economic development services from an independent not for profit board. I think staff are suggesting that there are other ways that we can affect a greater degree of alignment with the balance of services that city staff provide xxx that actually where there actually is an interplay with economic development. So so I think that’s where city staff’s recommendations are coming from, where they’re coming from an area where we think that there are advantages in having an integrated in house model.

Sharman: Thank you for that. Had staff in the past 12 to 14, years, delivered on its ABC commitments and done all the service agreements and perhaps not blocked from speaking to council that we might have been in a better place.

Benson:  Again, I can’t, I can’t speak for choices the organization made prior to me being here, but I do think that there is a way to address that. And I think what I had suggested in my earlier comment was a greater line of sight, greater oversight, and accountability. I think those are all things that working in collaboration, I’m sure we can get a better outcome, a better model.

Sharman:  I’m seeing no further questions. Does anybody else have any further questions?  Go ahead Councillor Kearns:

Kearns: Thank you very much. I’m just concerned about the employee morale piece, because, as you know, our investment in human capital is our biggest asset across the city.  I think it’s been since 2022 2023 that we did an employee engagement survey. And I’m just wondering if we have any updated data, or when that’s coming through, because we would want to be sure that we’re bringing this level of an organization and house to a really positive organization. But when will we see that? And I can just remind you, I can’t remember if this is an open or closed so I won’t say the scores from the past.

Sue Evfremidis:  We are planning to do another employee survey in 2026 that being said with regards to culture and turnover. In other words, some other comments related to culture that were made is that we have a very good turnover rate. We certainly were at. We’re sitting at similar to to last turn. I think there are two pieces that are relevant to this at 4.81 and then you take out the retirements in relation to turnover, it’s 2.53 and the reasons why people are leaving are not related to are not related to culture. They are primarily rated. We’re still gathering this information through our exit surveys and so forth, but primarily it’s for opportunities, promotion pieces. It’s due to, I’ll say again, the size of our organization. We don’t necessarily have those those opportunities, and we’re also we’ve also lost a couple of folks with regards to the return to Office. So we are getting those pieces of data to find out more about what why people may be leaving voluntarily. That being said, that’s a very small snapshot of our employee of our employee population, and we are certainly going to be running an employee survey in 2026 so that we’ll be able to come back and also analyze that data.

Kearns: So just to follow up with the last time it was done, this was 2022 we’re intending to do it again in 2026 when was it supposed to be done?

Sue Evfremidis:  We were looking at possibly doing it at the end of this year, Councilor Kearns, but due to a lot of the changes that have taken place, we’ve had to push it into 2026

Kearns: Okay, but the foundation for this report is governance structure and process. So are we following our own governance structure and process if we’re moving really critical surveys about our employee engagement?

Sue Evfremidis: Absolutely, because we have to ensure that we have the resources that are that are in place to be able to launch an employee survey due to some of the changes that have happened at the senior level as well. We want to make sure that they are they have been orientated and on boarded to the organization. So we’re not talking about pushing it out extremely like far out into 2027 it’s 2026 and it is absolutely a priority that you also see identified in the budget presentation this week.

Councillor Gailbraith: I was just prepared to move the report if there’s no other questions.

Sharman: Okay, the report has been moved.

In the event that this fails, there is another proposal being brought forward, another motion, which I guess we’ll just wait to see how this one does first.

__________________________

Sharman was a little too quick in trying to have the Motion moved.  Councillors still had some questions.

We will pick this up in part 3 of the debate on whether Economic Development and Tourism should be moved in-house and operate as part of the city administration or should it remain as an arms-length not-for-profit corporation.

Related News Story:

CAO Benson explains his position on bringing Economic Development under city hall control.