By Staff
November 19th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
The practice at the close of each City Council meeting is for each member of Council to make comments that last no longer than three minutes on what they have been up to and what they have planned in their communities.
For the first time Chief Administrative Officer Hassaan Basit was given three minutes to report to the community.
Good morning everybody. Some updates across the city’s various departments. I’ll start with customer experience team. The city celebrated customer service week from October 7 to 11th, which is an international event recognizing the vital role of customer service and honoring those who support and serve customers daily across the city. We had 175 staff from 11 different city departments that took part in the CS activities. The 11 different departments is key. That’s how many departments we have in the customer service business, not just one.
Crash Response skills. Thirty two elite teams from 28 countries. The firefighters from Burlington finished a very impressive fifth that’s excellent.
The Burlington Fire Department, extrication team recently competed in the prestigious world rescue challenge 2024. This event gathers top rescue teams globally, providing a platform to hone critical post Crash Response skills. Thirty two elite teams from 28 countries. The firefighters from Burlington finished a very impressive fifth that’s excellent.
Moving over to RCC, the city now has five electric Zamboni supporting our commitment to cleaner, greener energy. That’s about 40% of our fleet. And by 2028 we will be transitioning to a fully electric fleet, which is great.
Tyandaga golf course closed November the 10th. Had a bumper year, 35,000 rounds of golf, the Learn, the play golf pilot sold out. $45,000 in increased revenues from 2023. We’re off to a great start in terms of fall bookings. We are 17% up just from last year. At this point, maybe you can guess what the biggest driver is, 120% increase in pickleball. We’re also seeing great uptake online.
If you recall, back in April, staff brought a report about trying to use more underutilized spaces in our community centers. That program is now active. There are 27 spots for free bookings at Tensley woods. That’s free, there are seven additional pay what you can booking opportunities. These can be for small events or whatever the room size accommodates. So bringing more capacity online, the program will expand in January, in a few short months, to Brant Hills and Haber as daytime and weekday options.
We also have Naloxone kits now. Staff have been trained, the tools have been provided, and so just like AED units, these kits are available at our rec and corporate facilities, which will enable staff to respond in emergencies. Should they be should that be needed on transit?
A couple of updates that maybe you know people don’t quite associate with transit in the early mornings of October 18, in response to the Plains Road fire, transit staff promptly mobilized a shelter bus to assist and displace, to assist displaced residents and demonstrating partnership, teamwork, support for the community. Unfortunately, on November 5, again at 1:53am a shelter bus was swiftly deployed to eight, deployed to aid families affected by fire at walkers line and upper middle road.
A few weeks ago, we received data from CMHC, the City of Burlington has had 706 new construction starts since the beginning of the year. This is the highest in 10 years for the City of Burlington.
You were, of course, you’re aware of the funding announcement with transit, regarding transit with three levels of government that took place last week. Very impressive, at least $17 million which would be going to a greener, newer, more accessible fleet for us.
On the planning side, you’re all familiar with the decision that came down from the OLT regarding 2020 Lakeshore. What I want to underscore is that the OLT relied on significant detailed evidence across the process brought forward by our planning and our legal team.
I want to acknowledge that in the beginning of November 2024 so just this month, a few weeks ago, we received data from CMHC, the City of Burlington has had 706 new construction starts since the beginning of the year. This is the highest in 10 years for the City of Burlington. So well done to everybody who plays a role in bringing more housing to the city.
The city’s flood grants, we received 678 applications. These were people who did not qualify for the region’s grant. And as you know, council stepped in and wanted to support that. 610 of those grants have been awarded. Those were the recipients that qualified.
In terms of transformation, we’ve completed the shift from service business plans to departmental priorities and objectives. We’ve launched a KPI review across all areas of the city. You will have those in front of you at some point next year, and certainly prior to getting into budgets next year. We’ve launched a city of Burlington strategy hub development, which is a strict Strategy Performance dashboard that will be coming online next year.
We’ve also launched the business area review teams. These are directors, managers, other frontline leaders that that are business owners, business line owners. And within the city, the acronym is BART. nobody likes it, except for me. But I did offer people to suggest improvements, and I didn’t find any to be improvements on this. So we’re going with Bart for now.
At that point the Chair had to advise the CAO that he had run out of time. “We can extend your time if someone would move. Councillor Sharman, Councillor Bentavegnia did just that – All those in favour raised their hands and the CAO proceeded – making the point that it is Council that makes the decisions.
This space will evolve, as I do a few of these, but there are just a lot of things going on across the city. The active transportation fund agreement between various parties. The Prospect Street bikeway project has been fully executed.
Quick update on a seasonal road infrastructure program; the season road micro surfacing took place across 80,000 square meters across the city.
Stormwater maintenance, 460 inlets and outlets inspected and cleaned in the last two months. Road crack sealing on 140 kilometers. Sidewalk removal, removal and repair at 425 different locations this maintenance season, beach way safety improvements are underway in partnership, in collaboration with HR, PS marine and fire and our fire department, which includes additional life safety stations and way finding signage to assist first responders at these locations
We have 161 employees that are reaching milestones. Five of those will be recognized for 35 years of service with the City of Burlington, which is amazing.
On the HR side we are celebrating service awards tomorrow. We celebrate those in five year increments. We have 161 employees that are reaching milestones. Five of those will be recognized for 35 years of service with the City of Burlington, which is amazing.
Last the city hosted take your kid to work day for grade nine students. I know the mayor and I had an opportunity to chat with them for a little bit. After a very long day, they spent learning about how the city works, what leadership at the city looks like, the different roles, the different challenges, and at the end of the day, they were still engaged and asking really good questions. I can only imagine they enjoyed, and maybe we have a few future leaders in that grade nine class.
And last but not least, on the Burlington digital services side, we went live with our new EAMS parking system software. This has been a long running project and service. Burlington is now processing payments using that system. Even more importantly this more responsive system opens the door for us to be able to support administrative penalties related to our by law.
A few months ago as part of the current events class I attend at the Burlington Seniors Centre we had the supervisor for the building come to provide instruction on how to use the defibrillators that are in the building.
The supervisor was great. He explained fully how to use the defibrillator and where they were located in the building ( there are 2). I asked about the signage for these and was told they would look into this. They did, and installed a larger version of the universal signage. Unfortunately, anyone I asked had no idea what these signs meant.
I suggested that on the white painted wall they could perhaps use a stencil and have the word “defibrillator with arrows”above the universal signage. I was told that this would have to go to the “safety etc.” department to see if this was possible.
I also asked about where the defribillators were placed in the hockey arenas. I was told that these were located in the lobby of the arenas. I questioned their locations as we had been told that it is imperative that these be used as soon as possible.
I was told that because of the cold temperature in the skating area that it was not possible to have defibrillators in that space. I CHECKED THIS OUT.
Yes, there are special defibrillators that could be placed directly in the arena where citizens skate and play hockey. I sent this information to the supervisor who indicated that the city would look into these.
That was months ago. No word, absolute silence. We had been told that in the past the defibrillator had been used
If our new CAO is touting all that has been accomplished in the city I would ask has the Recreation Department looked into these life-saving devices?
Attention Basit Hassaan:
As CAO at the City of Burlington, how about doing what you are actually being pad very well to do, and represent and protect the Burlington Property Tax Payers against the outrageous Property Tax Increases that Burlington Residents have endured since 2022?? Wasn’t this part of your Mandate and a reason you in particular were hired????
Under the Strong Mayor program, the key role of a CAO has become doing things so as to not get fired.
Right Joe.
Hassaan Basit has done nothing to reduce Property Taxes in Burlington. He was touted by our Mayor for his accomplishments in saving lots of money on the Budget(s) for “Conservation Halton”.
So far, he has done absolutely nothing to reduce the 2025 Budget for Burlington Taxpayers!! (But he got a free trip to Japan).
Instead of renaming and organizing the City of Burlington titles and adding Commissioner etc. to their Titles, he could actually get down to doing what he was actually hired to do and represent Burlington Taxpayers and oversee the Budget in Burlington that affects all of us!!
This is what Burlington Residents are paying him to do.