RBA, SBB, BPM – alphabet soup or a more efficient way to run a city? Will it keep our taxes down?

By Pepper Parr

February 4, 2014

BURLINGTON, ON.

Where would you go if you wanted to figure out what RBA and BPM and SBB meant?  You could do worse than talking to someone who has CIA, CCSA, CFE, CGAP, CRMA behind her name, which is what Sheila Jones, the city’s auditor has behind her name. 

And she can explain what RBA, BPM and SBB mean and why they are both very relevant and important to the financial management of the city.

Burlington has,  up until the 2014 budget year, based its spending on what each department does.  City manager Jeff Fielding has changed that approach to a focus on the service that is delivered to the citizens of the city.

The objective is to first identify the services the city is in and decide if these are businesses we want to be in.  There are a total of 54 services, of those 13 are internal to city hall – think legal and HR; leaving 41 services delivered to the public.  Of that 41 – 31 are delivered by the city.  Others are delivered by other levels of government.  Region is an example – they handle water and waste removal. 

If the residents of the city, and let us hope that it is the residents who make the decision along with their council members, and not just the administrators at city hall, decide a particular service is something they want and are prepared to pay for the city manager will assign responsibility and accountability for the effective and efficient delivery of that service to a specific person.

As a broad approach to the delivery of services it would appear sensible – now how do you define the metrics that will be used to measure the value of the services and determine  if it is being delivered in an effective and efficient manner?.

Sheila Jones, CIA, CCSA, CFE, CGAP, CRMA, Burlington’s first auditor

Back in December, at a Committee of the Whole meeting Auditor Jones took Council through a detailed overview that left them with more questions than answers.  Jones used about 45 minutes to lay out the changes that were in the works and asked for feedback.

She started by explaining what was going to be fundamentally different.

The city is moving from a traditional approach to budgeting where all the expenses were attached to a department. They are moving to an approach where the expenses are attached to a service the city delivers.

The city administration does see this as an effective way to manage the city.  The approach is going to be for staff to provide Business Plans and Cases, Performance Tracking and Monitoring, Performance Reporting and Continuous Improvements.

At the end of this process the city manager expects to be able to ask, and answer two critical questions.  There is a third question that you the voter will get to ask and answer.

Fielding is requiring his staff to tell him:

How much did we do?

How well did we do it?

He then wants you, the public, to tell him if you are any better off?

The process he is putting in place certainly has merit.  Fielding is the kind of guy who thinks things through but isn’t afraid to change his mind if he didn’t get it right the first time.  He has a lot of experience with “unintended consequences”.

The time line for all this:

First, if you ever wondered what they do at city hall – charts like this are an example. This was not an easy task. It sets out the time frame to get to the new approach.  This will be a very significant shift for staff and will be the making of careers for some and maybe early retirement for those who can’t make the transformation.

Public input and education are a critical part of this process.  What the city wants to do is promote dialogue about: Service management, Council and Service Owner roles and  responsibilities, and the portfolio of services delivered to the public.

The city wants input on the level of service performance accountability reporting people want to see, along with the Importance and value of services delivered.

Auditor Jones wanted to know where Council felt they fit into the process.  Were they OK with maintaining a strategic view of services by making decisions regarding commissioning and/or decommissioning of services; increasing and/or decreasing service levels and their appetite and/or tolerance for risk and a review of service portfolio?

Examples of de-commissioning a service can be seen in the 2014 budget.  Do you want leaf collection in the fall as frequently; how often do you want sidewalks plowed. 

Jones asked: Do you accept Council’s role and responsibilities? 100% they said BUT, …there was still some work to be done to show the link from strategic goals to performance management.

The report that was being discussed set out Senior Management, Service Owner and Staff Role and Responsibilities.  Each was to:

Maintain an operational and tactical view of services by: making decisions regarding how services are delivered within the limits of Council approved service levels and budgets; determining, tracking/monitoring and reporting on performance and identifying risks; determining and implementing opportunities for continuous improvement; reviewing services and maintaining the service portfolio based on the decisions of Council.

Jones went on to give a detailed example as to how this would work using Burlington Transit as an example.  Those details will be part of a different article.

Everything the city does under the 2015 budget will be somewhere within the Service Portfolio that is currently being revised and refined.  That data is expected sometime in the spring when it can ideally become part of the election debate.

At this point in time the service portfolio consists of:

A Service Portfolio is a list of all the services the city delivers. With the new Service Based Budget there will be a business plan for each service that will be approved by each Council at the beginning of its term of office. This basically sets out what the city is going to deliver.
Full details of that portfolio have yet to be released – there could be some surprises in that document.

The core, the foundation of this new approach is the service that the city delivers.  What services does the city want to be in and which services does the city want to get out of.  This is a Council decision – what staff want to know is: What is the most suitable cycle time for a Council to review the service portfolio?  60%  said at the beginning of new council term; 60%  said some other time and 20% said at the beginning of each year.  That comes to 140% – is this a harbinger of the kind of number stuff we can expect?

Every service will have a Business Plan that sets out the rational, purpose and the expectation the service will deliver.  Whenever there is a change to the Business Plan a Business Case has to be provided.

One assumes these business plans and business cases will be on-line, which, if the Strategic Plan is any example, the public will pick up on very quickly and begin to demand that what is published is delivered.  Which is exactly what city manager Jeff Fielding wants them to do – he wants the public to hold his staff accountable for his staff to learn to be accountable to the public they serve.

What is going to be in a business plan: Service Banner, Current State, Sub-services, Recent Continuous Improvements Initiatives, Financial Investment, Human Resource Investment, Emerging Opportunities & Anticipated Risks, Measuring Success and Service Objectives.

The presentation was extensive.  Each of the parts of the Business Plan had forms that staff had to complete.

It all starts with what city people call the Service banner which a high level view of what the service is, why it is being delivered, what it will cost and how it will be reviewed by city council.

The document that sets out the high level view of the service being delivered.

This type of document sets out the working plan for a service. The focus is always on improving the quality of the service and keeping the cost in line.

How much money has to be put into the service and what are the HR needs.  Burlington has managed to keep the number of people on staff down – and without the use of all that much in the way of contract work.

City manager Fielding wants to see improvements and realizes that means taking some risks – and some of those risks will not work out.  Staff can advise Council, Council has to make the decision.  The public has to learn that changes need to be made and that much of the territory we are moving into is uncharted waters. Mistakes will be made and the public is going to have to learn to accept the mistakes.  The Pier was not a mistake – but it was a classic example of terrible oversight and shockingly poor  management.

 

These are the documents that performance evaluations are going to be based on: Did city hall deliver – and if they didn’t, why not and if the why not isn’t satisfactory maybe HR will suggest another line of work – outside city hall.

For city manager Jeff Fielding it is all about improvement in the way services are delivered along with a hard look at what the city wants to actually deliver. Fielding isn’t a hard-nosed, cut everything to the bare bones. He thinks the flowers along main roads is a plus and are a part of what makes Burlington the top city it is – BUT he wants to make sure the public fully understands the costs – and is prepared to pay them. Fielding says the ear he has to the ground tells him the public is prepared to pay the cost for the extras – Council of course has to make that decision.

With Council having had an overview of the process Auditor Jones wanted to know how they, Council, wanted to track what was being done.

She proposed that Council review the service portfolio at the beginning of each new council term. The Service Portfolio is that list of all the things the city does – the different businesses they are in.

All the Business Plans for all the services in place would be before Council and be made part of the orientation process for a new council and reviewed again annually during the budget process.

Council would look only at those services that have had a change made to them which would be shown in business cases that would be before Council.  Waiting for a staff member to decide a change was needed and that a business case should be written up works only if you have a civil service that is responsive and genuinely feels they are accountable to the public.  Many are, quite a few are not – it’s a culture change that is still being created.

Auditor Jones then wanted to know: What is the appropriate frequency of reporting performance

Measures; 40% said quarterly; 40% said semi-annually and 20% said annually

Jones took the middle road and proposed that management report to Council semi-annually to coordinate with financial reporting starting in 2015.

Management proposed to assess quarterly as the methods and data for calculating performance measures become stable, predictable and easy to access.  This is a work in process that will need quite a bit of fine tuning.

Jones then poses the critical question: What does the public needs to know? Key messaging would include: what is the service portfolio?; why is it important to them? why should they care?; what is the service management framework?; what is a business plan?; what is service based budgeting?

The intention is to do this work in Q2 2014 using various communications channels along with Council involvement to actively engage the public in a process of education and awareness promotion.

Jones is close to emphatic when she says the city needs this valuable information from the public to assist Council in making decisions about services and service levels and to help administrate and prioritize initiative and activities.  The city will begin gathering this kind of information in Q3 of 2014 for the 2015 budget and every year after that to inform the budget process.

What is the most suitable cycle for review of a service?

When a service review is defined as a formal undertaking by the service owner to ensure what is delivered is of the highest value to the community; that it applies best modern practices for cost-effective delivery, and directs valuable, limited resources to the delivery of community valued programs and services, a business case is prepared.  The limitation here is that it is the service owner making the decision to review.  The city might want to look for a way to pull the public into the process.

Council split on that approach as well: 40% said let’s do it bi-annually; 40% by priority sequence and 20% based on some other criteria.

Management came back with having management determine a service owner and Council requirements and develop a Service Review Framework and Methodology for implementation in 2016.

The public will participate – if you give them the opportunity.  More than 70 people turned out for a budget review that was held at the Art Centre.  The city didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to hold an event at Tansley Woods, where space is admittedly limited nor did they look at all the space in the Alton Campus.

And that was it – Auditor Jones had set it out for them:

Develop performance measures and complete business plans

Undertake continuous improvement efforts

Develop and implement: service based budget views; service performance accountability reporting and service review framework and methodology.  Then educate the public on service management

With just under an hour for the presentation Jones asked: What do you think?  And there wasn’t a word, not a peep from one of the council members.   All seven members of Council were totally mute.  Not a word, not a question. There was no interaction, no debate – nothing, which did not bode well for where this vital initiative for the city is going to go.

What was it that Jones said that stunned the seven?  If the elected types don’t respond – what likelihood for a robust public response?

Before this new approach gets taken out to the public a lot more work needs to be done on the current council – because they didn’t appear to get it.

Jones has been the city auditor since January of 2009.  A 20 year Royal Bank Financial Group veteran where she ended her career with the ban as  senior manager of enterprise operational risk assessments. She also holds business degrees from Dalhousie and Queen’s universities.

 

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A single citizen, a single voice: a major change with perhaps lives saved.

By Pepper Parr

February 1, 2014

BURLINGTON, ON.

In April 2013 Burlington resident Denise Davy spoke as a delegation at the city’s Community Services Committee, urging the city to take responsibility for the safety of pedestrians at railway crossings. City Council directed staff to consult with community stakeholders to research rail safety.

This was the situation in Burlington before Denise Davey delegated to city council for a change.

A rail line safety and awareness stakeholder committee was formed to bring the various groups together to review the issue and develop strategies to prevent rail line deaths. The committee included representatives fromGO Transit, CN, VIA Rail, CPCOAST, ROCK, Canadian Mental Health Association, theNorth Halton Mental Health Clinic, Halton Police, Region of Halton Public Works, Transport Canada and theTransportation Safety Board.  The review resulted in a number of short-term strategies and long-term opportunities.

Today there is appropriate fencing and protocols in place to ensure that the city tells the GO people and other authorities that the fence has been breached.

It was not quite this easy when Denise Davey first took on the task of making the railway tracks safer by blocking crossing that were not properly secured.  Davey’s son, Ryan, was 18 when he was killed by a train in March of 1998.  Here is how she tells her story:

“Many more people have been killed by trains going through Halton since then and the numbers over the last year have increased at an alarming rate. In a six-month period, from August 2012 to February 2013, six people were killed, including a 23-year-old Hamilton man.

“That’s a huge increase from previous years and it speaks to the need for better safety measures to prevent further deaths. The area of major concern is along Fairview and Cumberland where many people have been killed by trains.

“It’s wide open and also extremely close to one of the busiest shopping plazas in Burlington. Although there are “Danger” signs posted, the well-worn footpath is a testament to how few people heed them. The same problem exists with the tracks that run between Appleby Line and Burloak, by Sherwood Forest Park.

“Not only are there openings in the fence by the park, but in many areas the bottom part of the fence has been pulled up where people have obviously crawled under. Finding out who is responsible for safety along the tracks was so difficult, however, that even after several calls to rail officials, I’m not completely clear on it.

“Indeed, it seemed even rail officials weren’t clear on it. Transport Canada and the Transportation Safety Board were quick to deflect all blame for any deaths or injuries and talk about the public’s responsibility.

“And there is truth in that. The public needs to be responsible around the tracks. But at some point, the people who run the trains also need to take some responsibility. I can think of several stories I’ve covered as a reporter in which a person was killed crossing the street illegally but a stoplight was later put in place to prevent further deaths or injuries.

“Not only are rail officials quick to deflect blame, they’re tight-lipped when it comes to statistics on train-related fatalities and injuries. After several calls to the GO media folks I was told they don’t have statistics on the number of people who have been killed by GO trains along the Halton tracks.

“How can it be?” I asked the GO spokesperson, “You’re telling me that you don’t know how many people have been killed by the service you run?” I was quickly put on hold then told I needed to talk to someone else. I never got the number from GO.

“I was eventually told by Halton police (who told me earlier they didn’t have the numbers) that five of the six recent deaths in Halton were a result of GO trains.

“I will be talking to members of Burlington city council about changes I think need to be made to areas along the tracks. They include fencing, surveillance cameras, motion sensitive lighting and noise barriers, the same type you see along the QEW in Grimsby.

“I figure if they’re deemed important enough to buffer noise for residents who live close to the highway, they should be considered important enough to save a life.”

Will the sign make a difference? If it doesn’t – well we tried. But if it does – that is a victory. Denise Davey deserves great credit for her efforts. Keep her in mind when it comes to selecting Burlington`s Best.

It was an uphill fight for a long period of time but at a city council meeting in January Bruce Zvaniga, director of transportation services said: “The various stakeholders came to the table prepared to discuss and make changes,” said Zvaniga, and  “I would like to thank them for their responsiveness, action and commitment to safety.”

The committee has already put in place a number of short-term strategies, including:

A communication protocol where city staff share information with rail operators regarding fence damage and footpaths near the rail line. Rail operators are also to share information with roads and parks maintenance staff regarding fence damage on city-owned properties

Rail operator “high rail” reviews that exchange information about identified outcomes

City fencing improvements in five different locations where chain fences will be installed

Rail line safety and awareness in 11 public schools and seven catholic schools as part of the schools’  safety awareness programs and under the leadership of Operation Lifesaver

Site specific strategies have been implemented by GO Transit and the Canadian Mental Health Association

“I am very proud of the work done by the stakeholder committee,” said Mayor Rick Goldring. “ The committee has created a set of best practices for the entire country. If what we have set in motion can save one life, than it has well be worth it.”

An annual stakeholder review process is now in place. The stakeholder group will meet each year to look at the outcomes of previous strategies, identify possible new strategies and discuss long-term opportunities. In 2014, the committee will invite the Catholic and public school boards to participate.

Somewhere along the way the woman who had lost a child to a rail line accident got forgotten as all the bureaucrats who should have been on top of this issue from the beginning did nothing until Denise Davey delegated.

The power of one person with a voice and the courage of their convictions is immense and magnificent.

Background links:

City staff directed to start asking questions.

Three deaths in seven months.

Parent wants better rail line safety – death level intolerable.

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An open letter to the LaSalle Park Marina Association – stick to the agenda.

By Vanessa Warren

January 30, 2014

BURLINGTON, ON

An open letter to the LaSalle Park Marina Association (LPMA),

Last night I attended a public Consultation Meeting and Workshop for the City of Burlingtons 2014 budget.

Vanessa Warren on the right reading through the city budget workbook at a public consultation last night took exception the way the LaSalle Park Marina association tried to hijack the meeting.  Ken Woodruff, former Burlington Green president,  is on the left.

Full disclosure: I am a farmer in Burlingtons rural north, sit on the board of Burlington Green, and Chair the Rural Burlington Greenbelt Coalition.  I had never attended a workshop like this before and to be sure, what got me off the couch and to the meeting was a desire to see that public transit, environmental sustainability and rural issues were being represented within the context of the Citys financial plan; but I also attended because I feel we all have a civic duty to ensure our municipalitys house is in order. 

I prescribe to the belief that I cannot ask my government to be accountable to me, if I do not engage with them.

Upon arrival, an encouragingly large group of attendees were put into working groups around large tables, and instructed as to the evenings feedbackprocess.  We were then given an opportunity to ask questions, and the first two or three queries from the group were salient, intelligent and budget-related; but when John Birch, president of the LaSalle Park Marina Association stood up, it quickly became clear that the meeting had been hijacked.

Some background.  The wealthy boat owners at the LPMA, led by rhetorician John Birch, would like to expand their private harbor, currently occupying the waterfront of a public park and further, want the city to provide more funds beyond the $150,000 already given to them to start detailed designs before the environmental assessment challenge is resolved.  The crux of the issue, as I and many others see it, is that the desired construction will almost certainly destroy the wintering grounds of 1/4 of Ontarios Trumpeter Swan population; a population that has been crawling back from the brink of extinction.  I would, and have, also publicly argued that there is no demonstrated need for this redundancy particularly in the face of the Citys fiscal concerns, and with a great deal more environmental assessment to come.

However, regardless of your position on the project IT WAS NOT AN AGENDA ITEM at this budget meeting.  The LaSalle Park Marina Expansion is not even being considered in the 2014 budget, and yet, the LPMA thought it appropriate to use the workshop as an illegitimate soapbox for its cause.

Many, many people, citizens, City staff, and almost the entire City Council (with the exception of Councillor Blair Lancaster), devoted their time last night to be engaged in the messy process that is democracy.  The workshop was well-attended, well-organized, and should have been much more fruitful; instead, we spent a devastating amount of utterly useless time being commandeered by a special interest group railroading a non-budgetary issue.

John Birch of the LaSalle Park Marina Association, on the left, going through his workbook.

John Birch and the LPMA: I find your case for public funding of a private marina totally without merit.  However, if you believe it to have merit, and as a joint ventureof the City of Burlington, then you must follow the public process as it has been laid out.  Your project already hangs by a thread of legitimacy, and if you truly believe your cause is just, then you should promote it justly.   Engage with the community and your council where appropriate, and where people who have a counterpoint may enter the dialogue as well.   The guerilla tactics that you used so disrespectfully last night were disruptive and unprofessional, and from my perspective, only further eroded your projects credibility.

 

 

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Quilt retrospective featuring work of John Willard to be shown at BAC starting February 15th.

By Staff

January 27, 2014

BURLINGTON, ON

We have a fascination about quilts.  Long a household staple in the rural community – it gets cold out there they eventually became an art form with some very traditional patterns.

Quilt sales and exhibitions draw consistently strong audiences. In southwestern Ontario quilt designs were once painted in the sides of barns.

Over time many of those traditional patterns were challenged by new artists .  John Willard was one of those who challenged the traditional; a 40 Year Retrospective of his work will take place at the Burlington Art Centre from February 15, 2014 – March 30, 2014.  The quilts will be hung in the  Lee Chin Family Gallery

Denis Longchamps is curating this exhibit and will lead the Reception & Artist Talk on February : 23, 2-4pm at the BAC

Armed with scissors, needles, threads and fabrics John Willard has been making quilts for 40 years. Not one to follow the rules of tradition, he creates his own designs. Sometimes inspired by traditional patterns he has deconstructed, others by historical events, Willard creates quilts that are beautiful and turn the craft of quilting into an art form.

Willard working on a quilt. A 40 year retrospective of his work will be shown at the BAC in February.

John Willard is a basically self-taught quilt maker. He came to quilt making via set and costume design, photography, display and collecting, and created his first quilt in 1975 after amassing a sizeable collection of antique ones. Although his first quilts were very traditional he soon branched out into his own designs, which have evolved into bravura works of intense colour and complex patterns. He is especially noted for his daring combinations of varying and disparate fabric prints. John’s quilts have been exhibited internationally in Britain, Denmark, Japan, France, Taiwan and the West Indies as well as Canada and the US. His works are in numerous private, corporate and public collections.

There is a level of precision seen in Willard’s quilts that is not seen in some traditional patterns. This Clair de Lune, done in 2002 was well received.

John teaches the art of quilt making, specializing in contemporary design for those who wish to break away from the traditional. He and his works have been featured in many books such as A Fine Line: Studio Crafts in Ontario; Design Through Discovery: An Introduction to Art and Design and magazines including City and Country Home Magazine, Select Homes Magazine, Quilters’ Newsletter Magazine, American Quilter, Embroidery Magazine, Ontario Craft and West of the City Magazine. As a photographer he published a very successful book on Victorian houses, The Gaiety of Gables in 1974.

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What they want to take from you and how they want to spend it. Budget time in Burlington. Your Budget, Your Say

 By Staff

BURLINGTON, ON.

January 23, 2014

You write them a cheque for times a year.  It’s not exactly chump change. It’s just one of those things one does in a civilized society.  You pay taxes and expect value for money.

Joan Ford, the city’s Director of Finance knows where every dollar comes from and where every dollar gets spent.

The city will be putting most of its Finance department people on the front line next Wednesday at the Burlington Art Centre.  No open bar but there will be coffee and cookies while you participate in a public consultation meeting and interactive workshop on the budget.

The city wants you to tell them what is important to you.  They do this each year and the turnout is not bad.   They do an overall presentation and then run small, staff-led work groups focusing on such topics as service choices, infrastructure and planning for the future.

In a nut shell this is what the 2014 budget is about:

The City of Burlington’s proposed 2014 current budget recommends a 4.13 per cent tax rate increase to the city’s portion of the property tax bill. When this is combined with the Region of Halton’s increase of zero per cent and an education increase of zero per cent, the overall result is a proposed property tax rate increase of 1.68 per cent or $15.08 for each $100,000 of residential urban value assessment. 

There are a couple of things that could be done to make this more effective.  Putting a document on-line that can be downloaded and printed that sets out the basics of the budget so that people can do some homework if they wish.  The budget is there if you want to download all 254 pages and print them out.  How about something that is say 10 pages with lots of graphs?

And why this event is always held at just the Burlington Art Centre is inexcusable.  While space is limited at Tansley Wood a public meeting could be held there and with the Alton Campus now open a public meeting could be held there as well.

The Burlington Gazette has been following the development of the budget for 2014 closely.  Links to what we’ve written appear below.

Most of the council members hold meetings in their wards to get local input. A couple of Ward 4 residents discuss a previous budget.

Members of your city council continually say that half the population of the city is north of the QEW.  City hall needs to do much more to serve the needs and interests of these people as well. This is a great opportunity for members of the public to share their insights, to learn more about the city’s proposed 2014 current and capital budgets and to discuss the impact the budget will have on property taxes.

The small workshop sessions can be quite useful, particularly if there is something you want more detail on. Every Council member is on hand and anybody that knows anything from the Finance department is in the room.

Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2014; 7 to 9:30 p.m.; Burlington Art Centre.  Plenty of parking at the rear of the building.  They should make the parking free on budget review nights.

This is an election year – so expect members of Council to listen with bigger ears this time around.  Make your views known and let them know you will be watching.

If you can’t attend the meeting, watch the webcast on the city’s website and complete the online workbook   If you’ve really got a burr under your saddle and have to talk to someone – a real voice can be reached at: 905-335-7600, ext. 7896.

Background links:

City manager tries to get some ground rules in place.

City administration begins to negotiate with Council on 2014 tax levy.

Will the 10% over four years hold; doesn’t look that way.

 

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Are you a voter or a consumer? Noted author suggests you are a consumer being manipulated and not served by your government.

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON.

January 21, 2014

Good authors, good books and a good interviewer can make for a pleasant evening.  Burlingtonians got some of each last night at the Central Library where Susan Delacourt talked with former Liberal MP Paddy Torsney about her book – Shopping for Votes.

Torsney, who has shopped for the odd vote herself, sat with Delacourt and tossed questions to the author of four books who has been covering the federal political scene for more than 25 years. 

The keeners – those that take notes like crazy and often ask a lot of questions.

She stunned this listener when she said Question Period in the House of Commons wasn’t worth listening to – this at a time when the public is seeing some of the very best opposition questioning of the Prime Minister day after day in a relentless onslaught that has kept the hottest political topic in front of the public for more than six months.  No mean feat in this world of 24 hour news cycles.

Delacourt’s fourth title appears to have struck a chord in those who question the way politics is done in Canada.

Delacourt is however on to something significant when she talks of the way politics has changed from a discussion about vision and direction to one where the political parties treat voters the way a toothpaste company treats its customers and merchandises product to them.

Delacourt believes Canadians’ relationship with their politicians changed with the consumer boom of the 1950s.  The explosion in consumerism resulted in advertising becoming the leading source of information — even in politics.

Frank McKeown, former Chief of Staff to Mayor Rick Goldring asked about how politicians can handle complex issues when voters tend not to be informed and don’t have the background needed to arrive at decisions.

But as she argues in her new book, Shopping for Votes, consumers have wants, while citizens have needs — and that creates a clash between short-term and long-term policies in the bid for votes.

Delacourt told her audience that she has found when she speaks to people about politics and elections she is asked: “Is this all there is to politics?”  It’s not much different than going to the mall she said and then added that her very first visit to a mall was here in Burlington.

The Milton native said she found that “government is done to you instead of being you” and that governing today has followed a consumer approach.  We started with Henry Ford telling us we could have any colour of car we liked as long as it was black.  He made the cars and we went to him to buy them.

That shifted Delacourt pointed out when corporation used advertising to tell people what they had and hoped that you bought it.  We are now at the point said Delacourt where political parties research and poll the public to find out what they want and then make it for them.

A healthy, just under 100 audience, took in the event on one of the colder evenings the city has experienced. An older crowd – the kind that tend to vote. Was there a future first lady for the city in the audience?

Delacourt won a  Canadian Journalism Fellowship at Massey College where she happened upon a course in “material culture”. It was essentially about our relationship to stuff, and it raised a lot of good questions about consumerism.   “I was taking the course” she said “at the same time as the 2008 election was under way, and I suddenly realized that the politics friendliest to consumers (Conservatives) was the winning formula.

Delacourt explained to her audience that the Conservative government doesn’t like data in government but they love it in politics and are relentless in digging out small pockets of support and exploiting each to the fullest.  She gave the example of the snow mobile community for which the party bought a magazine mailing list and began targeting individual households, first with research polling and then  with literature supporting ideas that had come out from the research.  Delacourt explained that the Conservatives were miles ahead of the Liberals on this type of engagement with the public.  She added that the New Democrats are pretty good at target polling as well –  they focus on consumer interest matters.

Book signings are a part of the game for authors. Delacourt, surprisingly tended to write fairly long notes in each book – not just a signature dashed off.

Delacourt brings 25 years of political reporting to her explanation that the public does no always understand that politics and government is not the same thing.

Many people want the government to operate as a business, to bring market discipline to the operation of government services – which is an interesting approach except that the public are not consumers or employees when it comes to government – and you can’t lay off voters when times are tough and revenue targets are not being met.

What the just short of 100 people at the event heard was a journalist who has been at the game for more than 25 years and has followed the current Prime Minister from the day he began to serve as an elected politician.  As an experienced observer she brings a critical eye to what she sees and is quite direct with her observations.

Book sales are what it is really all about. The event, a joint effort by the Public Library and A Different Drummer Books, was part of a series of events.

You can almost feel her ire rise when she talks of the “robo-calling” that took place in Guelph where it was a clear case of voter suppression. “We don’t know who the master mind in that situation was” she said, “ but we certainly know who the players were” and then added that that situation is not done with yet.  Elections Canada have been all over what was done.

According to Delacourt people do not get their information from news anymore – they get their information from advertising where the message is totally controlled.  Andy Frame, a Tory since the beginning of time told the audience that he had listened to Justin Trudeau at an event in Oakville and he was convinced the young man was going to be the “next Prime Minister of the country”.  That perked up Torsney’s ear and brought some comment from Delacourt who said it is too early to tell whether or not Justin is more than a flash in the pan but there is little doubt that there is something going on there.

As people were leaving the library the membership secretary of the Burlington Provincial Liberal Association approached Mr. Frame and asked if he would be interested in purchasing a membership.  Money did not exchange hands.

Is there hope asked one member of the audience?  There is according to Delacourt.  The British are finding that they don’t like being manipulated and the changes that we have seen in the United States where Barak Obama tapped into a deep yearning on the part of the black population to be at the table.

Delacourt explained that in Canada about 60% of the people vote and that 10% of that vote is really the swing vote – people who are not locked into a political party.  Every stripe and flavour of politics works at tying down their core vote and then doing whatever they feel they have to do to get more of than 10% than the other guys.

Paddy Torsney, Delacourt’s “interrogator” during the evening certainly understood what the author was saying when she declared that attack advertising certainly works.  Jacket at Joelle’s if you wanted to know.

What about those attack ads? Delacourt was asked.  “Well the certainly work” she replied.  Dionne and Ignatieff will attest to that.  And they will continue to work as long as the public gets its information from advertising.

The irony of all this for Delacourt is that at a time when there is more information available than ever before, people have less time to read and there is no one giving the public the analysis and background needed to make sense of all the noise and the clutter.

“Is it depressing” asked an audience member?  “No” replied Delacourt, but there didn’t appear to be a lot of confidence or certainty in the response.  Many feel Justin may turn out to be a “celebrity” rather than a sound political leader.

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The police want to engage you – which is probably better than having them arrest you.

December 14, 2013

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON. The Halton Regional Police Services board has released the Draft of the 2014-2020.  The Police Service, in cooperation with the Police Services Board is in the process of undertaking a review of its goals and objectives for the next three years. These goals are important as they guide the service in the delivery of services that are vital in maintaining the safety of the residents of Halton.

The the public are encouraged to have a say on what they feel is important by contacting Keith Moore, Senior Planner at 905-825-4747 ext. 4830 or by email at Keith.Moore@haltonpolice.ca

The material is organized into four themes with a series of points listed under each theme.  Unfortunately, there is no comment on any of the points.  The draft consists of a list of things the police plan to do during the next four years.

Community safety, Outreach and collaboration, Organizational capacity and Organizational excellence

Under Community Safety the Board lists:

Identity theft and bank scams are a continuing public threat.  HAlton Regional Police have led a number of successful multi-jurisdictional investigations. 

Ensure that Halton maintains the lowest overall crime rate and Crime Severity Index of any comparable-sized community in Canada.

Deter criminal activity— strengthen crime prevention, community policing and safety initiatives – and relentlessly pursue criminals.

Improve crime clearance rates.

Focus on key areas of concern to the community;  traffic safety and enforcement, growth in illegal drug activity, gangs and organized crime,assaults and sexual assaults, domestic violence,  youth and young adult crime, victimization of seniors/youth/children, technology-based crimes (e.g. Cyber-bullying; internet financial crimes and fraud). , monitoring and tracking of offenders, hate crimes and human trafficking.

Engage and mobilize the community to collaboratively share responsibility for keeping our region safe.

Establish and practice leading-edge emergency preparedness measures, including ongoing business continuity during emergencies and special events.

Under Outreach and Collaboration the board lists:

The  police are out at hundreds of community events.

Build public awareness of and trust/confidence in the Halton Regional Police Service and policing in general.

Educate the public about safety and security issues through an inclusive approach that respects the diverse composition of our community.

Reduce the fear of crime — help those who live, work and play in Halton to feel even safer.

Define and clearly communicate the areas for which the Halton Regional Police Service is responsible.

Strengthen communication and community dialogue (e.g. using social and other media).

Collaborate with our communities in the prevention and solving of crime – and contribute to overall safety and wellbeing.

Strengthen relationships with youth and diverse communities to establish a solid foundation leading to improved understanding of policing, recruitment opportunities and other policing initiatives.

Continue to strengthen working relationships and information exchange with other law enforcement agencies.

Under Organizational Capacity the Board lists:

There are community police stations throughout the Region.  Police appear to want a new headquarters building as well.

Ensure that police resources and funding responsibly address operational requirements and changing demographics.

Enhance the use of police analytics to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization.

Be the leaders in the application of new technologies and maximize innovation, responsiveness, outreach and service delivery.

Ensure that all employees are well-trained and well equipped in accordance with provincial requirements and in areas of emerging concern — and that support of the front line remains paramount.

Strengthen police ability to effectively address situations of elevated risk (e.g. mental health-related incidents).

Embrace human resource best practices and customize them in support of: employee recruitment/retention, diversity, career development, succession planning, performance management, and positive labour relations.

Strengthen employee understanding of the Halton Regional Police Service and its initiatives, and secure support for future strategic directions.

 Ensure that police facilities adequately meet current and future needs.

Under Organizational Excellence the Board lists:

Do the police deliver the service the public needs?  The RIDE program is a proven service.

Ensure that the Halton Regional Police Service demonstrates the highest levels of ethical and professional standards.

Strengthen service delivery and positive interactions with the community.

Ensure that our Police Service is an employer of choice for both uniform and civilian positions.

Strengthen employee motivation and engagement — foster a sense of employee pride and high job satisfaction, and a belief in the value of individual contribution.

Ensure that our police service culture emphasizes respect, responsibility, accountability,relationships and results.

Meet or exceed all current and future provincially mandated police service requirements.

Be the leader in identifying and implementing innovative policing practice

What is the Police Services Board telling us?  Is this list a collection of clichés and self-serving statements?  Is the Board, which oversees policing in the Region, calling the people who police the community to account?

Government services employ people to communicate with the public.  Major corporations have public relations departments that are in place to tell their story to the public.  These are companies that are in business – they are there for the most part to make a profit for their shareholders which are often large pension groups.

Public services are considerably different.  They are in place to SERVE the public and to seek the advice of the public they serve.

This DRAFT plan for the next three years is the first step in the process of making their plans public.

Let us see how the public reacts to the document.

The following data for the fiscal year 2011 puts who the police serve and what the public pays for that service into perspective.

There are 178,232 households in the Region

The police budget for 2011 amounted to $116.4 million.

There were 629 men and women in uniform .

There were 282 civilian people working  for the police service.

Calls to the police for service amounted to: (2009): 124,503; (2010): 129,971; (2011): 128,202.

The annual cost to each person in the Region for the police service we get amounted to: (2009): $224.66;(2010): $225.83 and (2011): $236.08

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Local “People’s Inquiry” supports a mock trial for Premier Wynne and members of her government.

December 4, 2013

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON.  She was somewhere between 35 – maybe touching 40.  Kleenex in her hands to manage the tears as she gave “testimony” before a mock trial that was held at St. Christopher’s Anglican Church on Guelph Line.

Appearing before three “citizen judges” this witness told of how she had to understand why she was marginalized.

“I once had a comfortable life, I had a car, the trappings, I had a good job, I had friends but then the downsizing took place and I was the one with a new child that was not well and needed a lot of time and attention.

“I has RRSP’s and I knew how to manage.  All that can and did change for me more rapidly than I ever imagined possible.

“I have had to move five times in the last three years.  As a last desperate attempt to find accommodation I could afford I tried sharing accommodation with another single mother – but it didn’t work out and I had to call my case worked when my son was threatened by a child with scissors.  In a flash I was homeless – marginalized.

“I was poor, I was unworthy and made to feel like a low life.

“I was food insecure.  I was housing insecure.

“I felt un-liked, wasted, humiliated – embarrassed.  I began to feel invisible.  People that were part of your life change when you are poor.  I was seen as someone with a disease, as someone with an affliction.

“I couldn’t get a job – no one would take a chance on me.

“People in my situation are looked upon as lazy, as people who chose the life they are living.

“There is no poverty in Burlington because we don’t see poor people on the streets.  For those of us who are very low income people paying $1000 a month for a one bedroom apartment just isn’t possible.

“The politicians don’t understand what it means to be marginalized.”

They sat as ‘citizen judges’ hearing testimony from the marginalized and delivered a verdict that the Premier of the province should be brought before a mock trial in Toronto and charged with failing to live up to her promise to run a social justice government.

This witness was one of several who gave “testimony” in Burlington on Wednesday at a “People’s Inquiry”.  It is one of 20 being held across the province and will culminate in a mock trial in Toronto where the Premier Kathleen Wynne, her Finance Minister and Minister of Community and Social Services will be served with a summons charging them with failing to deliver on the promise to be a social justice government.

The marginalized believe that the Premier has described herself as a social justice advocate and tells the public that is who she is – but those who are on the receiving end of social support see little justice in what they are receiving.

Mike Balkwill, part of a group of community activists working under the Put Food in the Budget umbrella,  asked the 20 or so people at the Burlington inquiry what they felt they could do to have the Premier act on her social justice promise.  The local People’s Inquiries” and the mock trail planned for some time in February are designed to draw attention to where the Premier is failing.

Premier Wynne told the media that social justice is her top priority. A tough statement to take at face value when there are 400,000 people using food banks every month in Ontario.  Wynne’s claim “is believable only if she significantly increases social assistance rates and puts food in the budget of people who are poor in Ontario.”  It is her failure to make even a meaningful increase in assistance that has her being brought before a mock trial.

Wynne runs a minority government and at some point she is going to have to go to the people and ask for their support.  We will support her – will she support us? Was the question most of the people at the Burlington Inquiry were asking.

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BurlingtonGreen hears how other communities do what has to be done to save prime farmland – sound familiar?

November 28, 2013

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON.  It has been a banner week for BurlingtonGreen.  They held their annual meeting, installed a very strong board and heard a stirring story about how a quarry proposal in Dufferin County was defeated.  Later in the week after a very bumpy ride through several Standing Committees they got a sole sourced agreement with the city to continue developing the community garden concept that has done so exceptionally well.

Gloria Reid, on the right with her husband – a welcome addition to the BurlingtonGreen board.

Let’s take this one step at a time: The new board is made up of: Todd Mooney, Gloria Reid, Neil Sentanie, Vanessa Warren, Ken Woodruff, Chuck Bennet, Colin Brock, Susan Fraser and Paul Haskins who will serve as president.

Vanessa Warren will add to the already impressive delegation skills BurlingtonGreen takes before various levels of government.

BurlingtonGreen has become the go to community organization you want to be part of in this city.  This year two of the impressively active community leaders joined the board: Vanessa Warren who formed the Rural Burlington Greenbelt Coalition that brought the landfill dumping in north Burlington to a grinding halt when she delegated to Burlington and Regional Council and Gloria Reid who brought some impressive thinking  to the creation of a Community Engagement Charter.  We wish Ms Reid had stayed with that project and gotten it out of the clutches of the upper reaches of city hall where is will suffocate from the dust on the shelves it sits on.

The BG AGM brought in Donna Tranquada to talk to them about the successful effort to stop the application for a quarry permit in Melacanhom Township which is north of Caledon and south of Collingwood.

Monte Dennis in conversation with BurlingtonGreen guest speaker Donna Tranquada. Dennis was part of the Pickering airport battle more than 25 years ago. He could tell Tranquada some real horror stories.

What was really interesting and odd was that Ms Tranquada made no reference to the PERL success with the Nelson Aggregate fight – that win paved the way for the change in the way the public reacted to any expansion of  quarries and their development .  The Nelson win was the first time a quarry looking to expand was turned down.  The Food and Water First people knew a good thing when they saw it though: they had Sarah Harmer out to their events as well

Donna Tranquada had a great story to tell.  A year to the day of the BG AGM, a group that was formed to protect thousands of acres of farmland from a planned massive quarry operation learned that the company had withdrawn its application to develop a quarry.  It took more than a year to beat back the proposal put together by an American, Boston-based hedge fund, that was buying up property in the township.

When that company began buying up farm land they said they wanted to create a large, world-class potato farming operation. Property by property they told farmers what they were doing and got to the point where they had purchased more than 30 farms.  “It didn`t take long” Tranquada explained “for word to get out in that rural community that something was going on.”  The company, called Highland had been incorporated in Nova Scotia, and had begun using pressure tactics on some of the holdouts – meeting with farmers and putting a cheque for more than $1 million on the table and saying the offer was good for just 24 hours.  The community began to get uneasy.

Then came the announcement:  Highland had filed an application with the province for the largest quarry in Canadian history on some of the best farmland in Ontario and at the headwaters of five river systems. The mega Quarry would have sprawled across 2,316 acres and would have plunged 200 feet below the water table on a 15,000 acre plateau of Class 1 farmland. The massive open-pit limestone quarry would have put rare agricultural soil and precious water resources at risk in Melancthon Township.

One of the studies showed that the quarry would have to pump out 600 million litres of water a day forever.  You had to be in the room when Tranquada used the word forever.  She is a bit over 5ft 5 inches and she literally spit out the word.

You start with a great location for a public gathering.

Donna Tranquada`s  talk was “meat and potatoes” for the protest movement crowd – it was a crowd like this that stopped the Spadina Expressway in Toronto;  that stopped the extension of the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto  through the Beach community and parts of Scarborough.  The same demographic stopped the first attempt to put in an international airport in Pickering.

When Burlington was threatened with a highway being rammed through the Niagara Escarpment close to 400 people showed up at the Mainway Arena on Walkers Line – and the province eventually backed off.  The province will have another go at an Escarpment highway and it will take a different generation to fight that battle.

The  Melancthon Township battle used ideas that pulled together the interests of the rural communities with the needs of the urban dwellers – then used food as the bridge between the two.

Chefs from Toronto and other urban centers made soup, thousands of bowls of soup that was both a fund-raiser and the way to connect  farmland where food is grown and the stomachs of the people in cities who have to eat.  The event became known as SoupStock and it drew crowds in the tens of thousands.

It was a magnificent collection of ideas and dedicated people who showed once again that the public can prevail.  Highland had employed one of the biggest public relations companies in North America who knew they were up against a public that was driven and focused – rarely can that kind of energy be beaten.

That draws great crowds.

Tranquada said that on one Saturday there were 40,000 people who dropped into a large park in the east end of Toronto to hear the story about the quarry application.  If you believe in an idea and you can get your troops out – you can prevail.

Burlington has a fight on its hands that is critical for the city and relevant to every municipality that has a small airport and problems with landfill sites.  While many expect the city of Burlington to prevail through the several levels of appeal that can be expected of the decision that decided the city had the right to have its site bylaw adhered to, the bigger question is – what des the city do with that property once the Court issue is resolved.  There are hundreds of tonnes of landfill in the more than 100 + acres of property and a runway that is in the process of being paved.

Tranquada, surprised some people who asked where they could get one of the signs that she had with her. “I  just have the three “she explained – “that was all I was able to carry on the subway and the GO train.  A high-profile media personality trudging from Toronto to Burlington on the GO train is what they call “waking the talk”.

Tranquada is now part of a group that goes from community to community with the message: “There aren’t a lot of victories these days, but the mood-altering blocking of the monster quarry in Melancthon Township in potato country a year ago was a brilliant model of how to get stuff done. The alliance of urban ecos, farmers, foodies and chefs showed the power of partnering, bridged the messy city-country divide and ulti­mately triumphed over a Boston-based hedge fund… Plus, it made the point with the mass soup-athons, that protests can be jubilant and very digestible – and that determination and positivity are our best weapons.”

And those crowds sign a petition – and with public reaction like that – the company wanting to quarry prime farmland withdraws their application.

With the farmland in Dufferin County saved, the group, known as Food and Water First,  decided to get to the real core issue which was the Aggregate Resource Act – it sets the rules for the extraction of aggregates.  Turns out Ontario has the weakest regulatory environment governing resource extraction in Canada, enabling anyone to pillage the very resources Ontario needs to drive parts of its own economy.

The Food and Water First people have taken the position that the aggregate producers require a “social license”, that is the permission of the wider community, to do what they do.  That concept will be hard for some of the old-timers in the industry to digest but it is a changing world – Global Warming is real and both food and water will become the most critical elements of our society continue to exist.

There is legislation and policy that govern the activities around resource extraction in Ontario.  The Ontario Sand, Stone and Gravel Association (OSSGA) chose to push for keeping things as they are instead of helping to create a document that would lessen rural strife and have them become a responsible corporate partner.  OSSGA members will continue to be challenged by communities in which they want to do business and will have to defend their businesses. Instead of doing better and voluntarily recognizing that prime farmland and source water regions should be off-limits, OSSGA has clearly belittled the efforts of thousands of Ontarians who have so reasonably engaged in this policy development process. The public at large will continue to withhold that social license until there is modernized legislation.

Nothing in the Aggregate Resources Act (ARA) review document would prevent another Mega Quarry application tomorrow, destroying forever thousands of acres of our most productive farmland and putting the control of unbelievably vast amounts of Ontario’s fresh water in danger.

Food and Water First wants to see new legislation that recognizes  prime farmland as a strategic provincial resource and  protect source water regions by eliminating industrial extraction in those regions.

These social activists believe that as an engaged public, both urban and rural, we have had all kinds of assurances from MPPs that the thousands of people had been heard. Now is the time for those MPPs to act, not just speak.

A productive board meeting; the story of a community action that saved precious farmland – and the week wasn’t over. BurlingtonGreen went on to get the city behind their community garden project – but that’s another story.

 

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Understanding the school board: an agenda would have helped. Intern leaves feeling she really wasn’t there.

Milla Pickfield is a Nelson High School graduate who decided to spend a year working in the community, helping her Mother with her business and doing volunteer work before she headed to university.  She volunteered to try writing and did two piece for us; one with the Chief of Police and an interview with the new Hayden High school principal.

Milla’s most recent piece for us is on the school board, that organization that directed much of what she has done for the past ten years.  Her attendance at a Board of Education meeting was a bit of an eye opener for Ms Pickfield.

November 26, 2013

By Milla Pickfield.

BURLINGTON, ON.  I got to my meeting of the Board of Education an hour early; when you have to use public transit or rely on your parents for transportation – your time is not your own

I wasn’t at all sure where I was supposed to go and asked the woman at the reception desk where the meeting was being held – school board meetings are open to the public.

Milla Pickfield is a Nelson High graduate – understanding the proceedings of the school board was not something high school prepared her for.

I was half hoping she could point me in the right direction and expected someone would supply me with an agenda. I was pointed in the right direction – without an agenda.   And I had not brought anything else to read.

Half an hour after I arrived, Dr. Frank J. Hayden and his wife also showed up with Jacqueline Newton from the new high school.  I had already interviewed Ms Newton and was delighted to meet Dr. Hayden and his wife.

When I was doing some research on what school boards do, I came across a quote that put everything in perspective for me. Sir Ken Robinson once said: “Everybody has an interest in Education.”

Those words resonated with me. I know that I am very interested in education which is why I was very excited to go to a Board of Education meeting. I didn’t know what it would be like, I didn’t know what the people would be like, and I didn’t know what they would talk about.  After the meeting, I was left with more questions than answers.

Dr Frank Hayden – spoke to Board of Trustees who had named the new Alton Community High school after him.

It wasn’t a very satisfying experience for me.  I don’t usually need help nor do I willingly accept it most of the time, however I did expect someone to greet me upon arrival at the large room in which the meeting took place. That was not the case. No one greeted me or any of the other three students in attendance.  Everyone was crowded around Dr. Hayden, which was certainly understandable.

No one approached me and asked if they could help and without an agenda I found myself spending most of my time hurriedly trying to write down all I could and hoping to understand a little later from the notes I was taking.   Working without an understanding of what was going on I was forced to pay extra attention to everything they were saying which still did not help. Most of the language used was part of my vocabulary however the fashion in which they used it was not.

I believe myself to be an educated person. I have done everything expected of me; I went to elementary school and high school and graduated from both with relatively high grades, what I lacked in book smarts I made up in common sense, and I can follow many conversations with adults and form and deliver an opinion.   I could not follow the meeting of the Board of Education.

I wondered: if I could not follow the meeting how would other people in Burlington understand the proceedings.  What about someone who just moved here from a different country; someone who just decided (like me) to drop into one of those meetings; someone with very little knowledge of the education system but with a hunger to learn; ever keep up with the meeting?  

The impression I left with was that the meeting was separated into four parts:

First were the speeches which were delivered by Dr. Hayden and a student attending Hayden High.

Second part was passing a whole lot of bills and not talking about any of them.

The third part was mainly focused on speaking about some bills that were to pass and problems they’ve encountered.

Finally there was the freelance period of time, or at least that’s how I understood it. In this time anyone was allowed to bring forward an issue they though important and speak about it to the council.

Milla Pickfield started an internship as a journalist interviewing the Chief of Police. She ‘aced’  it – wasn’t able to do as well at understanding what gets done at Board of Education meetings.

I found the second and third parts of the meeting the most confusing. Perhaps it was the fact that I didn’t have an agenda, so the bills were hard to follow, or maybe it was just the extremely fast pace of the meeting but I have to wonder how someone from the public, like me, would ever follow a similar meeting to that one.

The Board of Education controls a large chunk of our lives, along with a lot of our tax dollars, and we should be able to be a part of the process and understand what’s going on. What I experienced was personally disappointing. I went in with a desire to learn all I could, perhaps understand how our education system works, and see important decisions being made.

I left the meeting feeling as if there was something wrong with me; I should have been able to understand what was going on.  I read, I am informed and I understand the English language.  When I think about the several hours I spent in the Board of Education meeting, I feel like I wasn’t really there. 

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Electric car charging stations being set up at GO stops – Burlington will see theirs in 2014.

November 27, 2013

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON.  The province is doing everything it can to get you into an electric car. Announced this morning at the Oakville GO station –  electric vehicle charging stations are up and running at five GO stations in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area to make it easier for drivers to use environmentally friendly transportation.

Starting today, Aurora, Centennial, Lincolnville, Oakville and Whitby GO stations will offer charging stations for electric vehicles.

Ajax, Burlington, Pickering, Erindale and Clarkson GO stations will open electric vehicle charging facilities in early 2014.

ChargePoint cards are available now.  why not put everything on the existing PRESTO card

Charging a car will be free for the first month; after that, each charging session will cost $2.50. Electric vehicle users can wave a credit card or a Chargepoint smart card over a card reader to pay for their electric vehicle charging access.

$2.50 a charge?  It cost me $68.74 to fill my tank.

The ultimate electric car charging station: Solar panels shaped like trees with plug-ins for cars – why not fill GO station parking lots with these things?

The provincial government says the new stations are part of a three-year pilot program, which may be expanded depending on demand.

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A wellcome that will not be forgotten – how quickly will the error be corrected? Has it been noticed yet?

November 25, 2013

By Staff

BURLINGTON, ON.  Oh dear, that was embarrassing. Brand new sign, new buildings, one of which is a high school and the wording on the sign has a mistake.  Ouch!

The sign installation wasn’t completed until just after 3:00 am the day of the public opening. How long will it take for someone to spot the error? We missed it – a reader brought the mistake to our attention.

That will get fixed; perhaps someone will be told to sit in the corner and write out the word welcome 1000 times.

The credit for this “expose” belongs to Allan Harrington, who by the way. Has on more than one occasion pointed out some of our spelling mistakes.  Don’t you just hate people like that?

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Two dozen greeters welcome more than 1000 people to the Alton community complex on a cold Saturday morning.

November 25, 2013

By Staff

BURLINGTON, ON.  This Saturday the place was wide open.  The complex of buildings in the Alton community: a high school, recreation centre and library that are stitched together into one long structure, held their public opening and even though we saw the first bit of snow in the afternoon the crowds were more than decent in size and the kids were all over the place – along with their parents, some of whom looked lost at times.

Two dozen people donned custom T-shorts to greet the more than 1000 people who walked into the complex on opening day for the community.

The politicians were out in full force. Chris Haber, the man who paid big bucks to have his name put on the building had settled into a table and looked like he was going to set up shop.

New signage makes the complex official.

Kids of all ages were in the gyms, the library was filled with people and there were a couple of dozen people on hand to show you around and ask questions.

These three were prepared to give volley ball lessons to anyone who walked into their gym.

Three young girls wanted to teach me how to play volley ball – they were pretty good players themselves – it was that kind of day – everyone just had the run of the place.

Snappy signage was in place – we were told that some of it got the finishing touches at 3:00 am in the morning – but there were in place with flags snapping away in the brisk breeze.

People were setting in nicely and in time the complex could and should become more of a community centre.  It badly needs a coffee shop and having a small Post Office in the building would be a real convenience for the community.

The complex is the responsibility of the three organizations: Board of Education, Library Board and the city’s parks and recreation department – which means there has to be an oversight committee in there somewhere.

Alton has a very rich diversity that results in a cultural mix some schools don’t have.

It would be interesting to see how much that group is prepared to stretch the envelope and make the location a place where all kinds of services are available.  Could some of the Regional Services be available in the complex.  The police currently have a presence in the building and there are a few commercial services in the building.

There are computers sprinkled throughout the library with units equipped for young users.

One would expect the ward Councillor to begin holding community meetings in the space.  Could the theatre be made available to drama groups that need a place to practice and perform?  Great place for a film club!  The objective should be to use the complex as a safe place for students to grow and play as well as a place for their parents to be at in the evenings.

On Saturday a coffee shop would have been a welcome addition.

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18-30 and looking for work? Wallace sponsors a panel to guide job seekers. New Street Library on the 14th

November 11, 2013

By Staff

BURLINGTON, ON.  MP Mike Wallace will be hosting a seminar for young adults aged 18-30 on Thursday, Nov. 14 from 7-9 p.m. at the Burlington Central Library, 2331 New St.

Employment Options for Young Adults will feature four guest panelists representing the financial, health care, manufacturing and food sectors  will talk about accessing the job market in specific industries and learn about current hiring trends and what they can do to get the competitive edge and stand out from other applicants.

Burlington MP Mike Wallace – flipping burgers at a Chamber of Commerce event.

The Region recently held a Job Fair that attracted  800 skilled and motivated job seekers who met  with 43 employers from across Halton.  Halton Region’s Economic Development Strategy has been successful in attracting new business to Halton but those companies don’t seem to be choosing Burlington as their home base.

The  unemployment rate for the Region in the second quarter of 2013 remained historically low at 4 per cent, markedly lower that the region’s five year average unemployment rate of 5.6 per cent and significantly lower than the provincial rate of 7.5 per cent.

There seems to be a data gap in there somewhere – unemployment at 4% with 800 people showing up at a job fair?

Several of the courses given at the Centre for Skills Development & Training are fully booked months in advance – the students usually know where they are going to be working before they graduate.

Wallace get is right when he says:  “Employment is integral to a healthy economy.”  While job creation has traditionally been seen as a local and provincial responsibility the federal government has come up with a plan that would cost share the training of new people in new jobs.  The provinces are suggesting the federal government turn those funds over to the provinces and let them design programs that meet the specific needs of each province.

At least they are talking about training people.  With technology surrounding everything we do – and that technology changes almost every 90 days – keeping people fully trained and productive as opposed to just employed is a prime concern.

Co-host for the seminar is the Centre for Skills Development & Training.

For information or to register, call 905-639-5757 or email mike.wallace.c1@parl.gc.ca.

Background:

Training classes:

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The Alton Village community complex gets taken through a dry run – community Open House on the 23rd – not to be missed.

November 10, 2013

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON.  Hayden High was opened to media for a tour – what a collection of facilities: a library, a high school and a recreation centre all set on 15 acres of land.

The partners in this venture will hold an open house Saturday November 23rd.  The city runs the Recreation Centre, the library is operated as part of the Public Library system and the school is run by the Halton Board of Education.

It’s not the kind of high school you were used to – There is a fully equipped kitchen which students learn the fundamentals of food, nutrition and preparation.   It wasn’t clear who did up the pots and pans when the class was over.

Burlington managed to bring in a cool $1.3 million spread out over 20 years from Haber and Associates – which is not exactly chump change, for the right to put their name on the building. It may prove to be the bargain of the decade for the Haber family.

Maureen Berry, CAO of the Burlington Library system talks with Andrew  Haber who turns out to be a relative. Berry didn’t ask if he had a library card.

The library is there for both the public and the high school students at Hayden High where grades nine and ten are now conducted.  Grade 11 will follow in 2014 and grade 1`2 the year after that.

Rather than list all the features one might ask – what don’t they have.  The place is filled with light and uses 20 different types of glass in various colours.

There is a kitchen – that is miles from the home economics classes some of us used.  There is a cosmetics room, a garage that had two cars inside and half a dozen engines for students to work on. 

There is a fully equipped wood working shop with more drills on the walls than you see in an average Home Depot.

Hallways are wide with students plopped down on the flow working over their laptops.  The building has WiFi throughout and all kinds of nooks and crannies where students can talk, work on their laptops or read a text-book.

Thirty six washrooms with 90 toilet stalls – so that problem is well taken care of.  The media tour took place on a Friday which we assume is a “casual dress” day for the school.  Principal Jacqueline Newton wore flame red jeans and had a habit of high fiving a number of her students as she passed them in the some of the widest hallways I’ve seen in a school.

Part of the massive gym set up in the Haber Recreation Centre

The gymnasiums are set up in both the high school and the Recreation Centre with a combined 34,000 sqft of sprung maple gym floors.  The recreation facilities were designed to handle provincial competitions with 38 to 40 foot ceilings and loads of natural light.

Each of the 208 rooms in the building has names, not numbers.  In the high school the names were chosen by the students that opened the place.

The students decided to call it The Forum – it could have been called The Roost – a place where anyone can gather and just sit and watch or talk and kid around. Someone in the media tour suggested it looked like one big detention room.

There is a section set up in one of the hallways – sort of like bleachers at a ball park, where students can just roost like birds.  A lot of use is made of concrete and wood and yet the place doesn’t feel cold or bleak.

The desks in the classrooms are not what most of us are used to.  They are designed to give the word “collaboration” real meaning.  Modular in design they can be grouped as two- three – as many as eight in a configuration that lets students work side by side.

No more desks set out in neat rows. The classroom furniture is now such that students can sit by themselves or in groups of two or three – up to eight. The objective was to create situations where the students learn to work as groups and to collaborate on a problem – question or assignment.

Blackboards went the way of separate entrances for boys and girls.  The rooms now have white boards and make extensive use of visual projections.  The media spent a few minutes in an art history class where students were looking at the works of Salvador Dali, Picasso and MC Esher and learning about the surrealist movement.

The instructor in this class didn’t seem to have a problem with a student using her cell phone during the class. The place is fully wired.

Embedded in the hallway floors are different types of tile and markings that tell a student they are at a decision point and have to decide which way they are going to go.  There is 200,000 square feet of space in the place.

There is parking for just over 400 vehicles, racks for 130 bikes on the property with room for another 100 across the street at Norton Park.

Does the place work as a building?  A little too early to tell but it has all the makings of a different approach to high school that suggest it should work very well.  The building is not yet fully used – there are two more grades to be added – so there is space for different community groups.  The Regional Police have some space, the Regional government has space and a driving school has some space.

The 200 seat theatre is part of the high school with walls that are built to control sound. The place has everything any parent could ever want in a place for their children to get the education they are going to need.

There are two rooms for community groups; a 200 seat theatre, cafeteria and a server operated by a company owned by the school board.  That should cut down on the quality of the food complaints.  Add to the food operation is a collection of vendor machines which Principal Jacqueline Norton said she would certainly like a cut of that revenue.

The library has some of the books on the shelves -but just a  portion of what will eventually be available. Maureen Berry CAO for the Burlington Public Library system explains that furniture is still arriving but that the community has taken to the library very well.

Great sports facilities, a library led by one of the better librarians in the province who, during the tour learned that she is related to the Haber family which bought the naming rights to the recreational centre.  Maureen Beet and the Haber’s are first cousins twice removed or something like that.  For a while it felt like old home week down on the farm.

Jennifer Johnson, city project manager on the site, admits to shooting some hoops in the gymnasium  when no one was round.

Guiding the tour was the city’s project manager Jennifer Johnson, who kept trying to hurry people along – there, was just so much to see.  The Board of Education was the lead on this project with each partner having their own hands on person. Jennifer Johnson was the lead for the city and admits to shooting a couple of hoops in the gym while the place was under construction.

Open House November 23rd – the place will be packed.  Expect to see students from the other high schools prowling the halls of Hayden High drooling with envy.


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Lest we forget

 

 

 

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

 

 

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Environmentalists look to possible city council candidate to argue their case: No to the marina breakwater and save those swans.

November 5, 2013

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON.  BurlingtonGreen seems to be upping their game.  They have an Annual General Meeting later this month – November 21st – starts at 6:15.   Central Library.  One word to describe these things – BORING.

But they have upped the game and are bringing in a highly rated speaker: broadcast journalist Donna Tranquada of CBC fame. Tranquada will share the inspiring story of a successful grassroots campaign that stopped a proposed mega quarry northwest of Toronto. The Food and Water First organization sprung from this citizens’ movement and is dedicated to protecting Class 1 farmland and source water regions across the province.

BurlingtonGreen represents a community that has no reason to be shy about its successes in stopping developments that they believe are harmful to the community.  The win at a Tribunal level hearing that stopped the addition to the existing Nelson Quarry in North Burlington was a major environmental win.  Tranquada should know that she is partying with champions.

Burlington Green delegated at a city council meeting Monday evening arguing that the city should not, at this point at least, put any money into any steps that will advance the construction of a barrier that will make LaSalle Park Marina a Safe Harbour.

LaSalle Park Marine Association (LPMA) Executive Director John Birch has been beavering away to have the marina upgraded with a wave barrier that is needed to prevent damage to boats during rough weather.

Trumpeter swan – magnificent creatures that many think need the marina space at LaSalle Park to survive the winters. Nonsense according the Marina Association.

The marina maintains they are close to being un-insurable given the number of claims their members have had to make.  Upgrading the harbour to give it the wave barrier it maintains it needs was coming along just fine – until Beverly Kingdon took on the fight to save what she believes is the only place the Trumpeter Swans can winter.  The swans were very close to extinction at one point.

Without going into all the details – and there are pages of them, Kingdon believes that the creation of a wave barrier will do serious harm to the trumpeter swan habitat.  Not so maintains the LPMA.

BurlingtonGreen has jumped into the fray and Michael Jones, past president of the Save our Waterfront Committee that Councillor Meed Ward used to propel herself into office has involved himself.  Jones, who is also a sailor – he sails out of the Royal Hamilton Club, delegated at a Standing Committee and asked that the city not put any money into the wave barrier until a Part Two Environmental Assessment that has been asked for is completed.

The marina types argue that the Minister of the Environment hasn`t agreed to calling for a Part Two Environmental Assessment and delays in having the design work done will delay the project.

What we have is a difference of opinion between a significant environmental organization and a marine association – these things happen all the time.

What was different and very significant was the person who spoke for Burlington Green at the city council meeting.

Vanessa Warren

Vanessa Warren, who politically came out of nowhere, when she took the leadership of the Rural Burlington Greenbelt Coalition that brought he city into the Burlington Executive Airpark dispute that has the city fighting a significant course case to determine just who determines where landfill can be dumped.

Warren has proven to be a very able communicator.  She brings energy and a focus to the work she did for the Coalition. The politicians loved listening to her – she has had them close to eating out of her hands at both the Regional and municipal level.

So there she was Monday evening delegating to city council to save the habitat for the trumpeter swan and explained that she was asked to bring “fresh eyes”  to the issue.

Warren brings far more than “fresh eyes”.  BG has two very able spokespeople in Jones and their Executive Director Amy Schnurr.  Would it be unreasonable to suggest that Warren is not so much “fresh eyes”  but a bigger calibre of gun that the swan people feel they need to win this battle?

Or are we seeing the first step into the political arena for Warren who has been asked by a number of people to take on Councillor Lancaster in Ward 6?  Was Lancaster watching the person she might be running against and asking herself – can I beat this woman?

Our political leaders come out of the community – we just may have seen a potential leader poke her head out just a little and tip her toe into the water.

Council didn’t buy the argument Warren put forward – they went for the Staff recommendation which was to Direct the Director of Parks and Recreation to report back to Budget and Corporate Services Committee during the 2014 Capital Budget regarding 50% co-share funding for the construction level engineered design for the permanent wave break at the LaSalle Park Marina; and

Direct the Director of Parks and Recreation to continue to support the LaSalle Park Marina Association in their efforts to pursue federal and provincial funding

Those two directions were approved without a word of debate or discussion and no one asked for a recorded vote on the item.

The next opportunity for the environmentalists to de-rail the plans to build the wave break will be during budget deliberations.

If we see Ms Warren actively involved in that process assume you will see her name on a ballot come the October 2014 municipal election.  She would be a welcome addition the council we have in place now.

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The New Battle in the Online Payment Sphere: Amazon vs PayPal

October 26, 2013

By James Burchill

BURLINGTON, ON.  Amazon has launched a service called Login and Pay with Amazon which allows partner sites to enable a Pay with Amazon payment button that can process purchases through the Amazon system. This competes directly with PayPal and merchant services and could become a serious competitor for eBay’s payment processing giant. It’s also something that could give Amazon a third income arm to augment the warehousing sales and cloud services it has built its business on.

Amazon moves into yet another sphere of the online commerce world: payment services.

The new Login and Pay with Amazon combines the current Amazon payments services with a new login service similar to Google or Twitter login systems for websites. Together, the combined services offer a one-stop integration for Web payments in a way similar to how PayPal’s payments button works.

This will allow Amazon’s business partners to tap into the 215 million active customer accounts that the company has on tap. According to Tom Taylor, Vice President, Amazon Payments, ‘Login and Pay with Amazon enables companies to make millions of our customers their customers by inviting online shoppers with Amazon credentials to access their account information safely and securely with a single login.’

Until now, Amazon payments services have directed users to Amazon’s website to authorize the purchase – if you’ve invested in Kickstarter projects, you’ve no doubt seen this in action. This new setup works the same way, but doesn’t require the site redirect and can work in a window or directly on the merchant’s site.

On top of the payments option, this new login service also means that websites can accept Amazon credentials as a login, in the same way they use Facebook, Twitter or Google login authentication. This opens up possibilities for a whole cottage industry of services working in and around Amazon’s consumer offerings like streaming video, audio, etc. Since it works through a simple oAuth implementation, developers will have no difficulty adding it to a site. Amazon’s inclusion of their A to Z Guarantee for this authentication service will only bolster consumer confidence.

For those who travel, you’ll see the new Login and Pay with Amazon in action when you use Gogo WiFi in flight on an air flight later this year – the company plans to have it implemented before the big holiday season of flying begins next month.

For its part, PayPal is not sitting on its laurels waiting to be ousted from the market. The company recently acquired BrainTree, a cross-site payments solution, and has unveiled a physical payment option that can be used in brick-and-mortar retail establishments to pay for goods and services. This would allow small businesses to accept payments via PayPal by having their phone or register bill the client or the client can pay and their phone will produce a QR code that the clerk at the register can scan to complete the transaction. A random four-number code can also be produced which can then be entered into the keypad of the credit card reader at the register to complete the sale.

Still, with Amazon now horning in on their core business, PayPal must be worried. Amazon, meanwhile, is poised to take yet another big chunk of the web’s profit potential and add it to their portfolio.

James Burchill creates communities and helps businesses convert conversations into cash.  He’s also an author, speaker, trainer and creator of the Social Fusion Network™ an evolutionary free b2b networking group with chapters across southern Ontario.  He blogs at JamesBurchill.com and can be found at the SocialFusionNetwork.com or behind the wheel of his recently acquired SMART car.

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The city wants your insights – they are going to go electronic and online to get them and spend $100,000 to make this happen.

October 26, 2013

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON.  Governing is all about information.  Power is also all about information.

How does one get that information?  And just what is the information?

Those were questions and concerns that got raised at a meeting last Thursday at the Performing Arts Centre where Burlingtonians got to listen to one of the greatest public polling practitioners this country has ever had.  Angus Reid was in town to talk about Insight Burlington

Surrey, BC resident responding to an online poll. Burlington will be using the same service to learn what 5,000 Burlingtonians think about issues the city faces.

Mayor Goldring explained Insight Burlington as the city’s new online public consultation and citizen engagement community.  It is an online consultation community where participants will weigh in on important city issues by participating in online surveys and discussions via their smart phones, computers and tablets.  Insight Burlington is powered by Vision Critical’s online community platform, connecting busy people with their city via ongoing consultations and engagement, on their time and on their terms. It is expected to launch early next year.

This “engagement community” will be made up of a panel of 5,000 people – perhaps more.  If you want to be on the panel use the link at the bottom of the page to  add your name to the list – when the panel is being put together you will be advised and given a chance to be part of the process.

Well – just what is that process – how will it work and who controls the process.  While Burlingtonians are decent,  polite people they ask questions and want to be sure their interests are being put first.

The city wants to engage its citizens and they know that there has to be something better than the current council delegation process.  Angus Reid told the audience what they already knew:  “We’re increasingly turning to digital and mobile technology, it’s time for public institutions and local governments to engage people where they are spending time: online.

The Mayor gets emails constantly and told of an occasion when he was in bed, reading a book on his e reader when a “tweet” suddenly showed up on the screen.  He had forgotten to turn that feature off.

If 5,000 Burlingtonians had been asked what they wanted the city to do with the Water Street property they recently agreed to sell to private interests – would we have seen a different decision? Is electronic opinion gathering going to make a difference to the way city council decides?

We live in a society where everything is “on” all the time.  People want information – now.  The city would like to know what people think – now, while a decision is being made.

So Burlington is buying into a service that lets the city create a panel of 5,000 people who will get messages asking them what they think about specific issues.  People will be able to respond instantly through their cell phone, their tablet, their lap top or their computer at home.

The city will tabulate the results instantly and know what the prevailing views of these 5000 people are on the questions being asked.

Who is going to choose those 5000 people several in the audience wanted to know.  They won’t be chosen explained Angus Reid – they will self-select.  If you want to be on the panel then you put yourself on the panel.  What if some organization has all its members rush to be on the panel and thereby dominate the responses?

The technology built into the system will catch things like this the audience was told.  So if there I technology involved then someone does have control?

Gets complex and at some point one has to trust the people running the operation.

OK – who will be running the operation at city hall?  Well it won’t be the council members.  OK – who will be running the operation at city hall?  Well it won’t be the council members.  The Insight Burlington process will be run out of the office of the city manager.  Good – we happen to have a first-rate city manager – but he will retire at some point – if we don’t burn him out before he retires.

The city has an Engagement Charter and some thought this information gathering service could be tied into that.  Good idea – one that needs some additional thinking.

Mayor Goldring explained some of the ways the Insight Burlington service would work.  People just don’t have the time to get out to meetings where they listen to a presentation and then stand in line to get to a microphone to make a comment.  We see this all the time with development applications.

Insight Burlington could be used to put up visuals that show what is proposed as a particular development application.  The facts would be laid out and people would get a chance to answer questions. 

The city holds budget review meetings that draw 50 people sometimes – seldom more. Putting questions about the budget on-line and letting a panel of 5,000 people respond would give city hall a much bigger picture. They may not like the response they get – then what do they do?

Typically a city meeting might get as many as 10 delegations from the immediate area – city hall would like to wider response and going electronic gives them that opportunity.

This kind of technology is not however without its downside.  Who decides what the questions are going to be?  City Manger’s office? What if city council wants a question asked and the city manager doesn’t think it’s appropriate?  City managers serve at the pleasure of a city council; could get a little sticky down the road.

Burlington has a public affairs department that isn’t exactly stellar. It looks as if they will be kept to putting out press releases ad getting City Talk into your hands.

Angus Reid pointed out, as most people who have anything to say about the public thinks already know: Local is what matters most to people.  That might be true but that isn’t reflected in the way people vote at municipal elections.  The voter turnout is low – at times abysmally low.  In some situations Board of Education trustees are acclaimed.  If there is anything that should matter to parents it is how we educate their children.

Burlington is the first city in eastern Canada to climb aboard this service and will be signing a three-year contract that will come in at about $100,000 a year – more if the city takes up some of the analytical service offered.

Data in itself doesn’t provide answers – it is the analyzing of the data and what it really means that is important.  On that level what the city learns from the tea leaves is only as good as the people doing the tea leaf reading.

Part of what this process is about is pulling the public into the public square.  That public, according the Angus Reid falls into one of four segmentations.

16% of us fall into the “angry activist” segment

23% fall into a “young and ambivalent” segment.  This group tends not to like the old way of communicating.

35% of us are defined as retiring skeptics

26% are called happy campers and tend to be families that are busy and happy with the way things are going.

Just over 50 people took in the presentation given by a speaker who did not give short answers.  The city has made the decision to use the service and on the surface it looks like a good idea – it will certainly allow more people to have a say in what gets done.

Julien Marquis  enters his name on the list of people who would like to be part of the city’s panel.

What wasn’t clear was just how transparent the flow of information is going to be.  No one will ever know who responded – all the city will know is that that they live in Burlington and there will be just one response possible from each person.  The city will know what percentage of the panel responded and one has to assume they will know which ward and perhaps first three letters of their postal code.

Close to the end of the evening someone asked who would be accountable for what was being done.  There was a long pregnant pause, the Mayor didn’t say a word, Angus Reid didn’t say a word.  The question sort of hung in the air.

“Citizens”, explained the Mayor, “want the ability to choose how and when they engage and provide feedback to us, More than that, they want to know how their input is being used by the city as we make decisions.”  That is what the Mayor expects Insight Burlington to provide.

 The City of Burlington is the first Ontario community to join Surrey and Vancouver in British Columbia, where residents are using the technology to have their say through the service.    

We will let you know how this works out for Burlington.

Getting you name on the list: CLICK HERE

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Burlington artists now know where the cookie jar is – can they get their hands into the thing?

October 24, 2013

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON.  You know that culture has some traction in Burlington when city council members ask what a Poetry Slam is and when Councillor Jack Dennison suggests the he might even drop by the Black Bull on Guelph Line and hear how Tomy Bewick, a construction worker delivers his message.

Bewick runs the Burlington Poetry Slam, an event most Councillors knew absolutely nothing about; yet it is an organization that has been given a Canada Council grant to bring together Slam poetry artists from across the country.  In Burlington, whoda thunk?

After a close to brutal session at the Regional offices in Oakville where council members took part in a vote that marked the beginning of the end of the Beachway Park community, council met in Burlington to discuss the basics of a Cultural Action Plan and then decide what they wanted to do.

Teresa Seaton, center, organizer of the Art in Action Tour, thinks through a response at one of the Cultural Action Plan sessions. She is one of 250 people organized as an Arts and Culture Collective in Burlington.

They didn’t make any decisions – it was far too late and everyone was far too tired to be able to make sensible decisions, but Burlington did get to see the outline of a community that few really knew existed.  The Arts and Culture Collective, a group of more than 250 people organized on-line,  didn’t really know each other but they have become a voice and they want a seat at the table where the decisions are made.  Nine of their members delegated and laid out their aspirations for a Cultural Action Plan.  They have certainly “informed” the plan the city wants t create but there is still some distance between the bureaucrats and the artists.

The Collective had done their homework – they knew what they wanted – now to actually get it – that’s their challenge.

The delegations were listened to, heard and engaged.  This is not something that happens for many delegations at our city hall.  All too often Council members sit there close to mute as people take their case, their concerns and their hopes the city’s leaders.  That wasn’t the case Wednesday night.

Organized as the Arts and Culture collective in July the thing grew from some 20 people who took part in the first meeting to the 250 people who exchange thoughts and ideas on-line and have learned how to deal with city hall and bring about changes.

The process began a couple of years ago when the city hired Jeremy Freiburg to prepare a report on just what Burlington had and didn’t have going for it in terms of culture.  Everyone knew about the newly minted Performing Arts Centre and everyone knew about the Burlington Art Centre but few of the many ever went to the place to look and see and feel the art over there.

Freiburger’ s  report dug up all kinds of data on where Burlingtonians spent their cultural dollars – far too much of it gets spent outside the city.  He mapped where people go and how much they spend.  He told us what people wanted in terms of culture.

What he revealed was a city that really didn’t have a solid cultural tradition.  We saw a city that chooses to go elsewhere for its culture and entertainment, partly because, they feel, there isn’t anything they like here.

Some thought Freiburger was going to deliver a set of recommendations on what the city should do next – but he chose not to do that.  Instead he gave them the data they needed to begin to figure out what they want to do.

And that is when the Collective began to form.  The people who met, first wanted to be able to do their art here in this city and not have to go to Hamilton or Toronto – but there was no place, no space, nor any expectation, that there was indeed a local arts community.  The city didn’t know they were there and they didn’t know each other.

The group – the Collective – had surfaced and is telling the city that they are here and they want to be involved.

The artists came from every possible discipline. They met to talk through what the city should include in its Cultural Action Plan – then they had to figure out how to actually control that plan once it’s established.

Artists don’t march to the same drummer that the rest of us do – schedules and rules aren’t their strength and it was difficult for the collective to pull together a large number of people.

Because many of the artists were working by themselves they didn’t know many of the people who were doing the same thing.  Trevor Copp, who ended up being the leader/spokesperson for the group came up with the idea of holding a Speed Dating event at a local pub.  The idea was that people would gather and sit with others for a couple of minutes and then move on to another table and meet someone else. Such is the state of relationship building in this world.   It was a good idea, novel and it had the potential to work.  But very few people showed up.  Copp didn’t miss a step – he chose to see the upside, the bright side and pulled together a meeting that saw less than a dozen people talk about what they wanted in the way of an arts community.

That conversation will get reported on at greater length at another time – what we saw was a group that is thinking this through and while the plan is still in the formative stage city hall now has to work with people who are the arts community – we just didn’t know they were there.

Bureaucrats being bureaucrats they decided to have Copp become part of the Steering  Committee that was to fashion a plan out of the data the Freiburger report provided and once a plan is in place,  put together a schedule and time frames to implement it.

One of the major beefs the artists had, was that there were no artists on the steering committee.  The addition of Trevor Copp and Rosanna Dewey to the Steering Committee that had people who administer funds but didn’t “do” art was a significant step.  The challenge now is to ensure that Copp and Dewey don’t get co-opted and turned into bureaucrats.  Power can be very seductive.

Dewy is an artist in her own right and part of the Burlington Fine Arts Association, which has a temperament quite a bit different from that of many of the members of the “collective”.

That there is a change taking place in the cultural temperature of the city is evident.  Freiburger maintains that the change began with the unveiling of the Spiral Stella outside the Performing Arts Centre – debatable. One of the occasions that signaled the change was the “No Vacancy” event that took place at the Waterfront Hotel.

This was “avante garde” for Burlington and while the event lasted less than four hours and experienced a small loss it brought out people who hunger for depth and maturity in their cultural menu – the No Vacancy – which will take place again next year, showed that it can happen in Burlington and is happening in Burlington.

Performing Arts Centre Brian McCurdy makes a point with the Mayor. He is making points all over the city as he brings about a different working relationship with the Centre and the city.

City Hall and the Tourist people see the arts as something that could perhaps attract people to the city.  The Executive Director of the Performing Arts Centre has been in town long enough to have figured out what we have and don’t have and has already shown that his institution is able to be flexible with the performance community.

All good signs – but like a great recipe, there is something to the way you flick the rest to get that meal on the table and make an occasion to be remembered.

Council will meet early in November to get down to the nitty-gritty of spending money – and at the rate this council is spending the artists had better move quickly or there won’t be any left.

With a little luck the artists will be at the table helping people whose experience is in parks and recreation learn how to move beyond swimming schedules and volleyball games to events that stir the soul.  Mind you, watching Maurice “The Rocket” Richard put another one past a Toronto goal tender is certainly something to stir the soul.

 

 

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