By Pepper Parr

April 9, 2015

BURLINGTON, ON

Remember that piece of land at the edge of the lake between Market and St. Paul that the city decided it would sell to the Michael Swartz and Janice Connell?

The sale of the city portion of the land has apparently gone through – the sale of the piece the province owns now gets processed.

Once both pieces are sold the public will be told how much the land was sold for – why the wait is not clear.

This is the view three property owners will have once their purchase of lake front land owned by the city and the provincial government closes. Sweet!

What is clear however is what will happen to the money the city gets for its portion of the land? It was to be used to create the Windows on the Lake that were to be at the end of Market and St. Paul Street, as well in other locations across the city.

Those “windows” now appear to be at risk.

The Market street and the St. Paul Street windows to the lake are thought to be ay serious risk by the Burlington Waterfront Committee.

There was a community meeting at which the two windows projects were being discussed – and it sort of got out of order. City staff were given a very rough time by one of the property owners – so much so that complaints have worked themselves up to the desk of the city manager.

Members of Council seemed to take the position that creating a window to the lake at the end of St. Paul and Market Streets was enough and that everyone would be happy when this file was finally closed.

Doesn’t look like this file is going to close anytime soon.

The owners of property in the streets that lead to the windows are wondering just how much pedestrian traffic there will be and will people be sitting close to the edge of the lake at all hours of the day and how much noise will there be?

Discussions amongst the people who live on Market and St. Paul have taken place and they apparently now want to know just how minimalist are these windows on the lake going to be.

Will it be just a bench and a waste container? Apparently there are not going to be any lights.

No city signage on this piece of city owned property.  The obstructions in place were put in to suggest this is private property – it isn’t.  Plans are in place to make a proper Window on the Lake at this location.  Some feel these plans are at risk

Some people are getting the sense that there is a push to get rid of the windows all together or to make them so inaccessible that no one will want to go near the things.

Nelson Park, a block to the east of the Market/St. Paul street situation had a part of its lake frontage cleared giving a much bigger look at the lake. The St. Paul/Market street residents think this is enough for the public – no real need for any additional park space, which was part of the argument city council used then they decided to sell the waterfront land it owned.

This is the land at the end of St. Paul Street,  owned by the city, public but there are no signs to indicate it is public. Few people walk past that bright sign. The city said that it would turn this into a full window on the Lake.  Local residents are trying to get the city to change its mind

“It seems”, said one informed observer, “that the three property owners now feel they have title to the land behind their homes and now want to ensure that the public doesn’t get to wander around their houses.” Those houses are on public streets and Lake Ontario is a public right for all to appreciate.

What bothers people is that Council is aware of the problem but does not appear to be taking any steps to suggest to the people who managed to convince them to sell public land to be satisfied with what they have.

By Pepper Parr

April 7, 2015

BURLINGTON, ON

Our interview with Dave McPhail took a little longer than we expected – McPhail was hunched over his keyboard “developing his relationship” with Cisco in a conference call.

Dave McPhail walking past some of his commercial peers as he prepares to show off the technology his firm markets.

Throughout the conversation phrases like “tribal knowledge” and “the “embedded data dictionary” were tossed around. McPhail talked about “product aggregation” and how he was taking data and information from the shop floor and putting it in front of senior management in real time – when there was a problem, management knew about the problem when it was happening.

Instead of the engineering department in a large manufacturing operation having to wait until reports that got to them the following day or at the end of the shift – they were now able to head out to the shop floor and fix the problem immediately.

Memex, a company that McPhail bought out of receivership and brought in John Rattray as an operating partner along with two silent partners who have since been bought out. They set out to first create a product that didn’t exist before and then market it by establishing partnerships with corporations that had clout and brand recognition which would give Memex a lead that would be hard to catch up to.

Memex isn’t disrupting an existing market – they are creating something that didn’t exist before
McPhail isn’t giving his clients all that much in the way product – what he is doing is giving them tools that allow them to capture data in real time and put it to use immediately.

This says McPhail is a significant cultural shift in manufacturing. McPhail claims to be able to give his clients a return on capital in three to four months – a time frame that astounds many and they don’t take the time to listen to us. The hope for McPhail and the rest of the Memex team is that there are enough early adopters to keep them alive. At some point we will become the standard.

McPhail doesn’t have an MBA, isn’t a university graduate. He earned a diploma from Humber College and set out to do what every entrepreneur does – create wealth.

Memmex president Dave McPhail explains what Merlin, an electronic device can do for manufacturing operations.

The Gazette first met McPhail when he was playing host to MP Mike Wallace who was announcing an $800,000 loan to the company as part of the federal government program.

Memex is a public company traded on the Venture side of the Toronto stock Exchange. Senior management recently issued 1.25 million options to its five member senior management team.

The company refers to the M2M (machine to machine) productivity software they provide as Merlin; it is used by a number of leading manufacturers. The market we are creating is worldwide said McPhail

One of the pleasures for McPhail is the McMaster University DeGroote campus on the south Service Road – a five minute drive from McPhail’s operation on Harvester Road. The plans to create a technological hub on campus where products can be shown to clients is a real plus for McPhail.

We have all kinds of case studies but when someone can see in real time what we do – that’s a big plus and if McMaster can make this idea of theirs work – we are with them.

Memmex announced half a million in sales during the first quarter of 2015 – they have a stock price that ranges between five to twenty cents a share – always well above a dime a share.

Dave McPhail with a version of Merlin in his hands – the device that captures data real time and delivers it to senior management who can make instant decisions.

Memex was founded in 1992 with a vision to improve the way automated machine tools work and connect on the factory floor. McPhail bought it out of receivership and has brought it to the point where they are at least contenders in the market they are working.

The company started manufacturing electronic circuit boards for memory and connectivity and evolved into Memex Automation. The vision has expanded to include the networking of all machine tools so that they can communicate with the computers in the administration office. At some point the network may be extended to the Internet, allowing productivity and other statistics to be emailed to a device, or computer anywhere in the world.

Getting to the point where they can issues stock options to the senior management team was not easy. McPhail gives the Niagara One Angel Investors group a huge thanks for their early support and tells you what every entrepreneur says: Canadians don’t take out their cheque books as easily as Americans – we are a risk adverse country and McPhail thinks we are paying a price for our complacency.

Meanwhile McPhail plugs away at what he loves doing – improving the way manufacturing operations can access and use the data that is sitting out there on the shop floor and put in the hands of people who know what to do with that information.

Machine learning: taking the data that is collected from a machine and running it through an algorithm is the next step in the manufacturing learning curve that McPhail sees as part of the Memex product service offering.

The federal loan is going to allow Memex to hire an additional 16 people. We have very good working relationships with Mohawk College and the University of Waterloo – we bring in students from their co-op program said McPhail – most of them work out very well.

85% of the market Memex is outside Canadian borders – and not just south of the border –  this is a worldwide manufacturing opportunity. We intend to own the market before others realize just what we are doing” said McPhail. The words of a committed serial entrepreneur.

By Pepper Parr

April 4, 2015

BURLINGTON, ON

The report before the Development and Infrastructure Standing Committee was a summary of the issues that have been addressed or are in the process of being addressed since the last Airpark Update Report to Council on November 20, 2014.

There hadn’t been much progress – but lawyer Ian Blue was in the Council Chamber and there was a notation on the agenda that Council would be going into a CLOSED session – so you knew something was up.

Properly and collaboratively developed the \Air Park could become an economic jewel – it is currently mired in disputes that are taking up time and chewing up tax dollars for legal fees.

With Blue now back in harness a number of things were going to happen. The legal departments spending was going to increase – we don’t know yet how much the city has spent on this file – but we do know how much the city has recovered from the Burlington Air Park Inc., in legal costs. The cit was awarded $40,000 in costs after the Superior court case and an additional $22,000 after the Air Park lost its appeal.

And we know that the city is working through what its next step is going to be. About time too, according to the Rural Burlington Greenbelt Coalition (RBGC) which in a note it sent to Council set out what they felt was not being done.
It would seem, said the RBGC that based on the report released on Friday very little has changed since our last delegation on February 23rd; except that it has now been nine months since your legal victory with still no remediation on site or to neighbouring properties.

The Coalition went on to point out that:

These people are not drilling for oil – they have sunk a drill to test the make up of the landfill dumped on the property.

1) A highly controversial, and in our opinion woefully inadequate testing program has been approved and carried out. Terrapex has stated that the small number of samples is adequate because the fill is ‘contaminated’. However, all public indications from the Airpark, including a message from the owner on the Airpark website, continue to state that the fill is ‘clean’.

2) Three Burlington citizens continue to spend countless hours and dollars on a defamation suit based on the fact that we’ve quoted the Terrapex reports and called the fill contaminated.

The Air Park corporation dumped more than 30 feet of landfill without a Site Plan. Owner of the adjacent property stands on her property line and wonders why anyone can build a “small mountain” next to her property without getting approval. She is also terrified about what the hill is doing to the value of her property and what the leaching out of the landfill is going to do to her well water.

3) There is still no adequate storm water management in place to control spring runoff onto already damaged neighbouring properties.

4) There is still no resolution regarding the Conservation Halton regulated lands.

5) There has been no staff or Council response to our email regarding the new Aeronautics Regulations surrounding a public consultation process for expansion plans (comments due April 8th), nor was this important development mentioned in the current update.

6) The current Airpark report still lists Ward 6 as the only Affected Ward. The Burlington Airpark and its proposed expansion on contaminated fill is a City-wide concern.

When a council committee comes out of a CLOSED session they seldom say anything other than they are no longer CLOSED but now in a public session.

In the Staff report to city council they did advise that:

On November 14, 2014. A submission package was received that included:
A completed Site Alteration Permit Application form; a Proposed Development Concept Plan and grading plans.

A Risk Assessment was also requested by the city and this was not included. As a result, the submission was deemed incomplete.  It was understood that the Airpark’s environmental consultant was reviewing the existing site data and preparing a Scope of Work for the additional site investigation work required for the preparation of a Risk Assessment.

Vince Rossi, president of Burlington  Air park Inc., at a meeting with members of the Rural Burlington Greenbelt Coalition that took place in a barn a couple of hundred yards from the end of his largest runway.

A letter was sent to Mr. Rossi on December 17, 2014 requesting the submission of the Scope of Work required for a Risk Assessment by January 9, 2015. The submission was not made by this date.

Subsequently, the Airpark submitted a report entitled “Proposal for Limited Phase II Environmental Site Assessment”, dated January 22, 2015. This report provided Pinchin Environmental’s proposed recommendations for additional site investigation work.

In summary, the recommendations include the proposal for 20 additional boreholes to be spread evenly across the area where fill has been placed on the Airpark property. Two soil samples are to be taken at each borehole location. Of these 20 boreholes, 2 will be utilized as additional ground water monitoring (GWM) wells. These 2 GWM wells are proposed to be located on the west perimeter of the property.
Terrapex Environmental has completed their review of the proposal. The following comments were provided:

Pinchin has proposed 20 additional borehole locations with two samples from each location (various depths) submitted for analysis of a wide range of Contaminants of Concern (COC). This equates to essentially 40 sampling locations which should provide a good data-set for this purpose. It is important to understand that the focus of the “Environmental Site Assessment” (ESA) is NOT to fully characterize the vast amount of material in order to prove that the site is impacted or not. We already know that it is. It is important for stakeholders to understand that the focus of the ESA is to provide a statistically valid data-set on which the modelling for the Risk Assessment can be based.

With respect to the proposed placement of two new monitoring wells for groundwater sampling, Pinchin has proposed two well locations that appear to supplement the western perimeter well network that already exists. While we have no objection to this, we suggest that additional monitoring wells be installed and groundwater analyses be conducted in the interior of the fill areas in order to assess risks of impacts in groundwater which may migrate from the interior of the site to the perimeter (and off-site) in the future.

The city forwarded these comments to the Airpark and requested a response by February 6, 2015. Updated status will be provided at committee on February 9.

The city expects the work schedule to proceed as follows:

Finalized scope of work for additional site investigation work – Feb 2015; Additional site investigation work – March 2015; Phase II ESA and submission of Risk Assessment – April/May 2015.

Given that few if any of the target dates have ever been met – it isn’t difficult to arrive at the conclusion that someone is giving someone a royal run around here.

Getting the Site Alteration Plan from the Air Park (Justice Murphy in his Superior Court decision said the city had the right to demand a site Plan – that decision was upheld on appeal) is not the only Air Park related issues the city is stick handling.

There is the matter of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MOECC) and the Freedom of Information Request (FOI) Request; there is the Groundwater Monitoring Program and City’s Peer Review; there is the Runway Construction, then there is the Drainage and Siltation Control Measures. Add to that the Region of Halton and the Conservation Halton issues and one is looking at a very full and complex agenda.

The municipal world runs at a pace only it understands but reading that at this point there are “no options being presented for consideration” is both disappointing and frustrating.

The issue for most people is the damage that can be done to the water table if the fill that has been dumped on the Air Park property is “toxic”, as one north Burlington resident has stated: for which she, along with the Gazette are being sued for making public.

The weather is getting warmer, those heavy winter snows are melting; that melting is working its way down through the tonnes of fill and into the water table – if it is toxic – we may get to drink that water at some point. And that is a concern for every citizen in the city.

Were it not for the strong delegations Vanessa Warren made to both city and Regional Council there would probably be trucks running along Appleby Line with loads of landfill from who knows where with who knows what in the fill.

That libel case is working its way through the judicial system. It is at that point where lawyers are haggling over what is going to be permitted at the Discovery stage. The defendants; Vanessa Warren, Monte Dennis and Pepper Parr along with the Burlington Gazette want to know the following

1. Financial statements for plaintiff from 2008 to time of trial,
2. All records relating to any testing, or other evidence of quality, of material used for landfill on Burlington Airpark site (the “Landfill”),
3. All records relating to quantities, sources and/or quality of material used for the Landfill,
4. All records relating to charges and revenue for the Landfill,
5. Any records relating to the management and record-keeping of the Landfill operations,
6. All records relating to the Landfill operations from or to Conservation Halton, Region of Halton or other governmental authorities,
7. All records relating to any inspections, studies or tests conducted on Burlington Airpark site relating to the Landfill operations or their related effects,
8. All test reports and results regarding the effects, if any, of the Landfill on the groundwater, streams, fish, amphibians, reptiles and soil in or near the Burlington Airpark site,

Monte Dennis – delegating at city council on an Air Park matter.

9. All correspondence from and to members of the community, including political representatives, concerning the Landfill operations, and
10. All communications to the public made by Vince Rossi or anyone else on behalf of Burlington Airpark concerning the Landfill operations.

There are some interesting times ahead – the questions the defendants in the libel case are asking are questions the city is interested in having answered as well.

Former city manager Jeff Fielding, on the left, giving a lawyer who tried to convince city council that they had no jurisdiction on air park matters gets a bit of a lecture from Fielding while city legal staff on the left look on.

Just under two months ago the Air Park file was on a committee agenda – staff asked that it be moved back to the next cycle of Standing Committee reports so the incoming city manager James Ridge could be fully briefed and take part in the next step planning.  Ridge didn’t say very much during the delivery of the report – we hope he is now fully briefed and turns out to be as aggressive as former city manager Jeff Fielding was when he suggested to the Mayor that a delegation explaining the law to Council be dismissed and sent on his way.  Council is going to have to be tough on this file – the water table and the citizens of the city are depending on them.