Gallery « Burlington Gazette - Local News, Politics, Community

Update on hospital case load status

By Staff

June 26th, 2021

BURLINGTON, ON

Eric Vandewall

Joseph Brant Hospital President and CEO Eric Vanderwall updates the community saying:

“Since my last update on May 28, we have seen continued positive signs of progress in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In recent weeks, Ontario has been reporting the lowest daily COVID-19 case counts in nine months. The seven-day rolling average is now trending at around 330 cases a day, whereas just over a month ago, we were seeing on average 2,500 cases a day. Additionally, last week we celebrated having no acute COVID-19 patients in our hospital for the first time since March. This is truly a significant milestone and I would like to thank our community for doing their part to help us push through the third wave.

“You have continued to follow public health measures as the province entered the first phase of a three-stage reopening plan and have protected yourself and your loved ones through vaccination. I am very proud to report that as of today, our vaccination clinic has administered over 40,000 doses. Across Halton, nearly 480,000 people have now received either a first or second dose. Thank you all for your efforts and action in helping our community stay safe.

“I know that the last year has been challenging; however, there have also been many exceptional moments and milestones. Our Annual Report for 2020-2021 was released last week sharing stories of Innovation and Compassion, Together with our Community. You may access a copy here. This report reflects the resilience and dedication of our staff and physicians and the support we received from the community over the last year. Our Board of Directors and Senior Leadership Team are proud of the work and achievements by the Hospital and Foundation throughout an exceptionally challenging year.

It is a rule that has served us all very well – maintain it please for a while longer.

“As we look towards our post-pandemic future and the needs of our hospital and community, we are actively recruiting RNs and RPNs to fill open positions in many areas of the hospital.

“As we continue into these bright and warm summer months, I encourage you all to take some time to rest, relax, recharge and reconnect. I also encourage you to do your part to get fully vaccinated to help us get one step closer to the end of this pandemic. Thank you, stay safe and take care.”

Eastern parts of the city see Santa in a Fire Truck

By Staff

December 13, 2020

BURLINGTON, ON

Those that got the message and were aware – came out in small groups.

Families gathered on the streets with the older ones running alongside to keep up.

The traffic on Twitter was heavy – so the word was being passed around.

Santa was in town – making visits to different parts of the city.

Kudos to the Parka and Recreation people for making this happen.

Use of face masks was spotty.

But people did have fun.

If a picture is worth a thousand words – here is several thousand.

A little warmer and it could have been a picnic.

That child had the best view on the street.

Santa had quite a welcoming crew on this street.

The old Ho Ho man himself

The snow man waves to Santa as he passes by.

The message that was there for everyone to read – Stay Safe – Follow the rules.

Photography was done by Denis Gibbons who recently wrote a piece on how he thought the Canadian teams in the National Hockey League should be organized for the next season

Worth reading.

Gibbons on bringing the game back home.

Dating site is the scene of a crime: 62 year old male charged with Romance Scam

By Pepper Parr

July 20th, 2020

BURLINGTON, ON

The Halton Regional Police Service laid criminal charges this week after an investigation into a suspected Romance Scam.

In the fall of 2019, a female resident of Burlington met a male who identified himself as “Enrico Oliveto” on the online dating site “Plenty of Fish”.

The two met in person and on multiple occasions over the next couple months he convinced her to loan him money.

Throughout the relationship, the male portrayed himself to be wealthy.

Once the victim learned the true identity of the male she contacted the Halton Regional Police Service.

Enrico Ricardo Cagnotti (62) of Toronto has been charged with Fraud over $5000, Personation – Identity Fraud and Fail to Comply Probation.

It is believed that Cagnotti may have engaged other victims through various online dating sites and police would like to speak with anyone who had similar dealings with him.

Cagnotti has been released from custody pending a court appearance in Milton.

Anyone with information with regards to this incident is asked to contact Detective Constable Hans of the Regional Fraud Bureau (905) 465-8742.

Tips can also be submitted to Crime Stoppers “See Something? Hear Something? Know Something?” Contact “Crime Stoppers” at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS) or through the web at www.haltoncrimestoppers.ca

If you don't have a credible argument - baffle the public with BS

By Pepper Parr

October 6th, 2018

BURLINGTON, ON

There was a time in the province of Quebec during their provincial elections when one political party would find a candidate with the same family name as a member some other political party. Both names would appear on the ballot – voters were confused – which was the objective.

The rules were tightened up and that practice came to an end.

There is a group in Burlington that is doing the same thing.

ECoB – Engaged Citizens of Burlington came to life in December of 2017. I was in the room when the 20 some odd people decided they wanted a city wide grass roots organization.

The representation for all six wards was a little thin – this was just a formative meeting. What impressed me at the time was that there were people from different parts of the city with cheques in their pocket – all they needed to know was who the cheques should be made out to.

These were small local citizens groups that believed there was a need for a larger organization.

ECoB did stumble in their opposition to the development the city had approved opposite city hall. They filed an appeal then at the last minute withdrew the appeal.

What they have achieved is something that has never been seen in this city before. Churches filled to the rafters with people listening to all candidate meetings.

Resident packed the Baptist Church on New Street. The city had never seen anything like it before.

The staff at Bateman high school kept having to put out another row of chairs as residents continued to walk into the cafeteria where the debate was held.

Since then, a reactionary group that is interested in getting behind special interests, has done everything they could to dismiss and diminish what ECoB has managed to do.

The seat at the candidate table reserved for Councillor Sharman wasn’t used. He didn’t show up for the debate in his ward.

The member of city council most opposed to ECoB has been Paul Sharman, followed by Blair Lancaster and then Jack Dennison.

It isn’t clear yet just who the players are behind this other group who call themselves Informed Citizens of Burlington

They claim to be a not for profit group searching for and sharing information during the 2018 local municipal election. The only thing the Gazette has been able to find s a twitter account.

Transparency doesn’t appear to be something they understand; it certainly doesn’t appear in their mission statement.

Jim Young: When was the last time you heard a Citizens Advisory Committee delegate in opposition to a Staff recommendation?

By Jim Young

April 4th, 2018

BURLINGTON, ON

At this meeting the Committee of the Whole will receive a staff report on Citizen Engagement.

As a group who work to improve engagement with citizens, Engaged Citizens of Burlington welcome that effort and would like nothing more than to be involved on behalf of citizens in the development of that engagement effort.

Jim Young: “city does not engage them in ways they would like to be engaged”

We are very aware that our city works hard to communicate. It devotes resources, people, time and money on that effort. Yet, our interactions with citizens suggest a widespread feeling that our city does not engage them in ways they would like to be engaged. Like ships that pass in the night we never seem to see each other and when we do, too often it is when we collide.

When that happens Council and Staff always seem disappointed, and bewildered, that this communication/engagement, despite your best intentions, fails and the city/citizen engagement gap is brought to your attention.

But the very fact that ECoB exists suggests that there is a gap between yours and our perception of communication and engagement, and that there is a wide range and significant number of citizens who feel their voices are not heard, that their fears and concerns for their city go unheeded, and this in a city which believes it is communicating so well.

Even by the standards of your own policy on “Public Participation and Engagement”, which strives to meet International Association for Public Participation standards of engagement. Those standards range from Inform, Consult, Involve, Collaborate and Empower. On most issues you inform very well; consult or involve all too rarely and usually too late in the process to have any meaningful impact, and, at the risk of offending, we never feel that level of collaboration which might make empowerment of citizens an achievable reality.

So how can it be that a city that boasts 8 Citizen Advisory Committees, with more to come, so often gives its citizens the impression that no-one is paying attention to them?

There is a widespread feeling that much of the city’s engagement effort is geared towards ticking the “Engagement Boxes” where needed to speed regulatory processes through Staff to Council rather than real engagement and dialog with citizens. ECoB think this is reflected above in the suggestion that your efforts to inform are much more successful than any serious attempt to consult, involve, collaborate or empower.

Jim Young: telling city council of a “a well-meaning attempt to improve Citizen Engagement”

As an example, here we are four years into the creation of an Engagement Charter process that was started in 2013 and adopted by council in April 2014 and ECoB is lobbying for Citizen Engagement in this process. Do Council and Staff begin to see why ECoB has issues with the engagement process when a well-meaning attempt to improve Citizen Engagement is already four years in the making with little or no Citizen Engagement in that process?

The report suggests that future engagement in the process will come from Citizen Advisory Committees which in ECoB’s opinion may be part of a tired engagement model that has never really worked as well as the city might have hoped.

While well intended and filled by well-meaning citizens, the way Citizen Advisory Committees are constituted and their operating guidelines leave them too readily influenced by Council Members and Committee Staff assigned to them. With a few exceptions they have not been the engagement vehicle we would like them to be.
Among various advocacy groups in the city and even within your own Citizens Advisory Committees there is a widespread feeling that Advisory Committees have become a simple extension of the city departments rather than independent advisors to council. That when a staff recommendation is supported by its appropriate Citizens advisory committee, Council are really just receiving a well manipulated repetition of the staff recommendation echoed by The Citizen Advisory.

If Councillors are not aware of this, just ask yourselves: When was the last time you heard a Citizens Advisory Committee delegate in opposition to a Staff recommendation?

It is no coincidence that most of the Citizens Advisory Committees have parallel, non-city sponsored advocacy groups. ITAC has BfAST, BSAC has BSCInc. And the work of the various Downtown Heritage, Parking and Sustainable Development Committees is paralleled by independent citizen groups from Alton Village to Brant Hills to Tyandaga. From Appleby Village to Roselandto Downtown to Aldershot,

These advocacy groups are often made up of former members of Citizen Advisory Committees who found those citizens advisories ineffective and who now advocate for their various city wide interests where they feel they are more likely to be heard and with greater impact.

ECoB currently works with at least 11 area and ward specific groups and at least another 5 City wide advocacy groups. These 16 groups are Engaged Citizens whose voices will not be heard in the New Engagement Charter.

If Council and staff are happy with the present communication and engagement model, if you really feel you are reaching citizens and that their voices are being heard, then probably nothing can be done. Local and city wide groups will continue to be frustrated and angered and will tie up your time and effort in the kind of oppositional engagement that model creates.

Jim Young, addressing city council. Manager of Communications Donna Kell sits in the audience.

If however, you feel, as we do, that communication and engagement can be improved for the benefit of Council, Staff and Citizens, and the fact that you are receiving reports from staff on Improving engagement suggests you may actually feel that way, Engaged Citizens of Burlington has already reached out to Communication Managers with the City Manager’s Office to explore how we might close that Engagement /Communication Gap which exists more often than either of us might like.

I am here tonight on behalf of Engaged citizens of Burlington to seek Council and Staff support for the inclusion of ECoB in that engagement process. The E in ECoB is for Engagement, it is not for Enraged and certainly not for Enemy.

The readership survey closes April 6th.

Thank you council and staff for your time and your work on behalf of our city. Thank you citizens for your support and for allowing us to be you voice, Engaged Citizens of Burlington look forward to continuing, meaningful engagement with all of you.

Jim Young is one of the Engaged Citizens of Burlington.

Seniors push for free transit on Monday's - chances of this making it to the final budget look good. Oakville has had such a service since 2012.

By Pepper Parr

January 19th, 2016

BURLINGTON, ON

It was delegation time, the occasion when different community groups get their ten minutes to wrangle with council to advance their different causes.

This time it was transit for seniors, transit and the lack of a master plan and two positions the Performing Arts wanted to fill and have added to their ongoing budget.

The Performing arts matter will get covered in a separate story.

Two very effective speakers wanted to see the idea of free Monday transit for seniors make it into the 2016 budget.

Which seniors need the free transit was the question that occupied the minds of many of the council members.

Imagine a bus service that is free to senior’s on Monday’s – it just might happen.

Every senior responded both Robert Lovell representing the Burlington Seniors’ Advisory committee and James Young, a word 1 resident who spoke to the plans for transit fares for seniors.

In Burlington delegations are usually a one way street – the delegations speaks but for the most part doesn’t often engage the members of council.
There are many occasions when a delegation doesn’t get asked questions.

When Councillor Craven is chairing the meeting – delegations are kept to very few words. Not that way when Councillor Lancaster is the chair.

Robert Lovell was asked questions and council got much more in the way of an answer than they expected when Lovell pushed right back. Lovell wanted to see Burlington adopt the free Monday transit for seniors that Oakville uses and he kept chiding Burlington’s council members for not doing what Oakville has been doing since 2012.

The two delegations were both seniors – they were there to see that the senior’s in the city got what they felt was needed. Lovell talked of people who were not able to get out of their homes because they couldn’t afford the cost of transit.

“These people get isolated and there mental health deteriorates”, he said.

Mayor Goldring and Councillor Dennison wanted to know what percentage of the senior population lived on the $12,000 a year Lovell had referred to; he wasn’t able to say but he had a petition with more than 500 signatures.

The short delegation session Tuesday afternoon was all that was needed to handle the delegations that were made. It isn’t clear if no one asked to delegate in the evening or if the city decided it was not going to hold an evening session. So much for an engaged city.

Councillor Lancaster said in her opening remarks there was lot of consultation. There was just the one public meeting held at Tansley Woods last week.

In contrast the Strategic Plan has been put before five different public meetings as well as a very detailed on line questionnaire.

For some reason people in Burlington just accept how much their council decides to tax them.

Budget public parent on stairs at ice rink

Parents at a hockey game while three people next door were listening to a budget presentation. It’s just who we are.

In 2015 there was a public meeting that focused on the budget held at Mainway Recreation Centre; it was a winter night – less than three people showed up – next door at one of the skating rinks less than 20 yards away there were several hundred parents watching a hockey game.

Did they know there was a public meeting to review and comment on the budget? The city does advertise the events – and the Gazette certainly spread the word.

In 2014 – an election year people showed up for the budget review. In 2015 it snowed and there were just three people in the room plus two people who had run in the last election and were keeping tabs on the council they were not part of – this time.

There have been other public budget meetings that were very well attended – however the more active citizens complained that the budget decisions had already been made – all the city was doing was explaining what they had decided to do.

There are those who think the public should be at the table helping to decide what and where their tax dollars are to be spent. And that was certainly what Robert Lovell and James Young were suggesting council do – take a much different look at transit. Make it free for seniors every day of the week suggested Young. “That’s what they do in Europe” he said. “You are looking at transit as a cost when you should be looking at transit as a service that is paid for with money the taxpayers give you”, he added.

Several members of council wanted to know how many really poor seniors there were in the city that needed financial support to be able to use the transit system. The figure was said to be 6%.

Mayor Goldring pointed out that 17% of the population is made up of seniors – he seemed to be worried that they all might want to get on a bus on the Monday’s when service would be free – which is exactly the point Lovell and Young were making.

There comes a time pointed our Lovell when you lose your license – what do you do then? The frequency of the bus service really limits how much you are going to be able to get around. If the service were free and frequent you would have people out of their homes spending money, going places and being active in the community, said Lovell

The Mayor, who said he was a senior, one of the younger set – but he does hold a membership at the Seniors’ Centre, told the delegation that he was once carded and asked to prove he was a senior.

The Mayor’s concern was with how many seniors the city will have in 25 years and how a city would manage to deliver the services they will need. The challenge is to develop plans today that will provide the services needed.

One thing became very clear Tuesday afternoon at city hall – if Robert Lovell is representative of the baby boomers who are entering retirement city councils of the future had better be ready for some very local people who expect much more in the way of services And they are not going to be quiet or docile.

Joan Gallagher Bell spoke of a new vision for an age friendly city – for her the minimum was the free transit on Monday.

And that was what Councillor Meed Ward had put forward an adjustment to the budget to make the free service available this year.

Cost – no one was sure but $40,000 seemed to be the number. James Young pointed out that it wasn’t a real expense – it was just revenue the city wasn’t going to get.

Councillor Meed Ward just might deliver a real benefit to the senior citizens with this budget.

There is a side bar to this event. More than a year ago – on a December 18th of 2014 when city council was deciding who was going to sit on which committee, Meed Ward represented the city on the hospital board and she very much wanted to retain that committee responsibility.

Her colleagues didn’t see it that way and gave that task to Councillor Sharman and gave the job of representing council on the Seniors Advisory Committee to Meed Ward.

Meed Ward has delivered big time for the seniors – she will be rewarded when she decides to run for a different role on city council in 2018.

Clarkdale PS a finalist in the contest to name the newest recruit to the Regional Police K9 unit- they want the dog to be called Marshall

News 100 red By Staff

June 10, 2015

BURLINGTON, ON

A Burlington elementary school is one of three finalists in the contest to name the newest recruit into the Halton Regional Police K9 unit.

Clarksdale Public School, Burlington has decided the dog should be named Marshall.

T he students at Clarksdale Public School want this little pooch to be called Marshall – and if enough people vote for that name – that is what the dog will be called.

The other two finalists are P.L.Robertson Public School, Milton who chose the name Ranger and Brookville Public School, Campbellville who chose the name Arrow

The Regional police received emails from teachers and school officials and report being very impressed with the efforts that were put into choosing the right name. One school in Milton, as they were working on graphing units in math, chose two names, and conducted a survey of several classrooms to give every student a voice. They tallied up the votes and are completing graphs to show the results.

Several name suggestions were sent in via Twitter and from parents wanting to share their children’s creative ideas.

Now, it’s time for the community to vote! Follow our @HaltonPolice or @HRPSK9 Twitter accounts and vote for your new K9 name by Tweeting or Retweeting your favorite hashtag.

#HaltonPSDArrow

#HaltonPSDMarshall

#HaltonPSDRanger

Non-Tweeters can also vote online at https://www.haltonpolice.ca/SpecializedUnits/ESU/Canine/Pages/K9name.aspx

The name with the most hashtags and online votes will be the winner!

The winning name and school will be announced on Monday June 22, 2015

Cst Mitchell with police dog Juno being trained. Another police dog, Storm, was used in the drug raid in east end Burlington.

Cst Mitchell with police dog Juno being trained. Juno has since been retired.

The new Police Service Dog will join PSD Tracker, PSD Storm, PSD Parker, PSD Bishop and PSD Nero in their efforts to protect and serve the communities in Halton.

The retired Police Service Dogs are: Chase, Kingston, Sniper, Justice, Honour, Gage, Kruz, Baron, Titan, Juno and Valour.

What will council set out to do during its next term of office? How soon will the public learn just how much the August flood is going to cost? Will it take a tax increase to get anything done?

By Pepper Parr

November 18, 2014

BURLINGTON, ON.

We did elect them – well 34. 14 % of us did. In twelve days the newly elected council will get sworn in and determine what they want to achieve in the next four years.

Full team was returned to office. Now they need to get down to work. Long list of tasks and opportunities.

Now that the significant seven have all been returned to office – what do they have on their plates for the immediate future and perhaps for the length of their term of office which officially starts December 1 when they are all sworn in. A stronger sense of enthusiasm and drive would be nice

Mayor Goldring explained to us during the election campaign that his first term was a “cleanup/setup” operation. He didn’t explain what he had cleaned up and he hasn’t clarified yet what he means by “set up”. We wait to hear that story.
A partial list of the issues facing this Council includes:

The city now has a site plan application. Will they approve what has been submitted and provide a permit?

Air Park – what does the city want to do with it? The city now has a site plan application in hand. Once it is reviewed they will decide if a permit should be issued. Bu what is the long term plan for the air park and is the city going to be able to get the cooperation it needs from Rossi?

Beachway – while the homes in that part of the city – just to the west of Spencer Smith Park are not about to be expropriated – city hall is reported to be beavering away at plans and designs that will come forward at some point in this term of office. One wonders when the public will be invited to the planning

Downtown development: Always an issue in Burlington – which in itself is telling. When we get a downtown one wonders if we will recognize it.

Major development opportunity in the Old LAkeshore precinct. Huge developments underway. How will it all play out during this term of office.

Old Lakeshore precinct – sometime this year work will start on the Bridgewater project that is to consist of a 22 storey condo, a seven story condo and an eight storey hotel. The hotel was to be open for the Pan Am Games but that won’t happen. Is there any thinking being done as to what the long term vision is for the properties between Lakeshore Road and Old Lakeshore Road and that part of the waterfront?

Ranked voting: Mayor Goldring kind of liked that idea. Let’s see when he moves to bring it forward now that the province has said it is to be permitted. The only member of the current Council who would have been impacted by Ranked Voting would have been Blair Lancaster – but if you look at who placed second and third – Lancaster suddenly doesn’t look all that bad.

Size of Council. Sometime during this term of office the Regional government will realign its seats and probably give more to Milton. That “might” mean a change in the number of seats Burlington has on the Regional Council. Right now Burlington has seven regional seats which makes every City Council member a Regional Council member as well. Half of a Council member’s income is paid by the Region

Governance: The Council whose term ends the morning of December 1st developed a good approach to Governance and devoted one meeting every quarter to looking and talking about the way they were running the city. There was some very productive work done at those meetings – let’s hope they are continued.

City General Manager scott Stewart doesn't take this smile to hospital meetings.

Does current City General Manager Scott Stewart have a change in the title on his business card in the works – or will the moving trucks be getting a call. Scott has kept the city running for the past six months.

A new city manager and an overhaul of the senior ranks. The task of hiring a new city manager is underway. Burlington is seen as one of the better city’s to run and we will be a popular choice for some of the better people out there. The last time this city hired a new City Manager they brought in Jeff Fielding from London who was energetic and had more new projects going than staff could keep up with. His decision to head for what he thought were greener pastures in Calgary put a lot of new ideas into a tail spin and staff had to scramble to work without the drive and focus Fielding brought to everything he did.

He fortunately had Scott Stewart beside him to execute on most of the ideas. Stewart was in the running for the job of City Manager last time and has his hat in the ring this time around as well. If Stewart doesn’t get the nod this time – you can expect him to be making an appointment with a moving company. The guy has been holding the city together for the past three months.

Citizen Engagement. Engaging the community is theoretically what every city hall is supposed to do. Burlington didn’t do all that well on that level. When Cam Jackson asked the late John Boich and former Mayor Walter Mulkewich to lead research into just what was needed to better engage the people who pick up the tab, few expected the report that was produced. Shape Burlington shook up many at city hall who felt they were unfairly picked on which was quite telling.

Some of the senior staff at the time felt they knew what the public needed and that the public didn’t need to be engaged all that much.

When the Shape Burlington report was released there was some hope – but a closer look at the people who served on that committee was revealing – Paul Sharman and Blair Lancaster were on the Shape Burlington Committee and withdrew when they decided to run for office. They were certainly not champions of involving the public during their first term of office but both got re-elected.

Code of conduct: While the Mayor likes to talk about how well this Council functions – in truth it doesn’t function all that well. The Councillors for wards 1 and 2 can’t stand each other – which makes it awkward for them because they sit beside each other.
Councillor Taylor, because of his experience, has a vision of the city and where he thinks it should go that is quite different than that of his colleague ward 4 Councillor Jack Dennison who has served more than 20 years on Council.

These two old timers (that’s intended as a compliment) never did share a common view of the city and the direction it should take. Taylor tends to work from strongly held principles – for Dennison its all about business.

One would like to think they would serve as the institutional memory for Council and while they both know where all the skeletons are buried they seldom put forward much in the way of long term thinking for the city. Councillor Taylor has done some excellent work with his Mt Nemo initiative but that has yet to bear any fruit. The city is spending $200,000 to determine if a heritage district is worthwhile.

Water Street property. This Council is going to have to make a decision soon on just what they will actually do with that stretch of property between St. Paul and Market Streets. They did vote in principal to sell the property subject to the price to be paid and some legal questions that have to be resolved.

Mike Swartz, spokesperson for the other two property owners, commissioned a report on the evolution of the property including the arrangements that were made for the building of the breakwater and the infill that was put in place to prevent natural erosion.
The report includes the Swartz version of the legal arguments that hound this issue. A concern for many is that the report Swartz commissioned will be used by Council to justify their original decision but because it is legal in nature the city’s solicitor might advise that it be kept under wraps. It would appear that the document is certainly germane to the issue – it should be made public if it informs the debate.

The citizen based Waterfront Committee has taken issue with how this matter has been handled and asked for an investigation on the way the city handled this issue. The Municipal Act allows for any person to request that an investigation be undertaken respecting whether a municipality, local board, or a committee of either, has complied with the closed meeting rules contained within section 239 of the Act. Municipalities are able to appoint an Investigator for the purpose of examining these closed meeting complaints.

A request was made last June – at this point the city Clerk’s office said they have yet to get the report. Might be a can of worms with this one

Georgina Black got Burlington to the point where it produced the best Strategic Plan possible under the circumstances. Will Council now move forward with a plan that has both a vision and drive?

Strategic Plan. The city put together a pretty good Strategic Plan in 2011. It was limited mostly because of the inexperience of the Council at that time. Given that it will be the same tribe creating the Strategic Plan for the next four years we can expect a shorter time frame to get the document done and a better final document.

Georgina Black of KPMG led Council through the 11 half day exercise. She realized part way through the second session with a group that consisted of both senior staff and council that there wasn’t what she called a BHAG – a big hairy audacious goal – something the city wanted to do.

Burlington doesn’t have a vision; it doesn’t have a goal – what it does have is many groups with goals of their own but nothing that the city can get a grip on and work towards.

Mayor Goldring did make an effort in the first half of his first mandate to pull people together and figure out what we wanted to be when we grew up. That event was as close to a disaster as you can get without being called a failure. The Mayor never produced a report for an event that came in at $50,000. It was all private sector money.

Official Plan: A critical document for the city. Frequently a bit of a yawn – not this time. Burlingtonians are demanding that we have a plan that we stick to and not change at every developers whim
Outstanding Development: Eagle Heights in Aldershot; Tremaine and Dundas in the north east end and Upper Middle Road at Burloak in the east centre part of town. All three are major development opportunities.

Economic Development: Where are we on this file? What defines us? Have we created a niche – something are better at than others and are thus attractive to corporations looking for a new location. Have we gotten beyond that tired phrase: the best mid-sized city in Canada?

This is a lot to get done in a four year term. Does this Council have the drive, vision and fortitude to achieve any of it?

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