By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON  April 14, 2012  At last, finally – they are going to do something and the troops in the trenches are delighted with themselves – pumped up if you will, but that might be too much of a pun.  The Waterfront Access Advisory Committee passed a motion asking the city to let someone in the private sector look at the Pump House on the Beachway and turn it into a coffee shop

Ward 2 Councillor Rick Craven, whose ward the Pump House is in,  is very much for this project – so much so that he thought the building could serve as the Official Residence for the Ward Councillor.  Donna Mae Ankrett thinks it will make a great pub, others on the Waterfront Committee just want to see something happen along the Beachway but more importantly for all of them – them, they just want to see something done by their committee.

Members of the Waterfront Advisory Access Committee inspecting the Pump House on the Beachway. From the left Chair Nick Leblovic, Michael O'Sullivan, Ken Martin, Jeff Martin, Donna Mae Ankrett and Gary Scobie. Smiles here but in reality not the happiest crew.

This is a committee that has struggled finding itself and finding its mission and purpose.  It has yet to take an real advice to city council.  For the past two years it has struggled with figuring out what it wants to be and why it is there.  The mandate it was given is not one they fully understand and it has suffered by very poor leadership.

While discussing the motion, the meeting, that was made up of 12 committee members, the chair and the clerk along with two city staffers, got noisier than I have heard it since its inception.  But this was positive noise, they wanted to see this project take place or at least move forward and out of the Advisory Committee.

Committee chair Nicholas Leblovic hesitated and continually wanted to talk about all the things that could go wrong; that no one would invest the amount needed to fix up the building, that the kitchen needed too much work.  His committee members just wanted to get the idea out of the committee and into the real world where someone could express some interest and know where to go if they wanted to follow up on the idea.

Turning the Pump House on the Beachway into either a coffee shop or a pub may be the only useful thing the Waterfront Access Advisory Committee gets done before Council decides to disband it. The Windows on the Lake work the Committee did, is going nowhere at City Hall.

The committee wanted to get some life on the Beachway and create something that will draw people to the area which many on the committee believe is a hidden gem a five minute drive from city hall.

The members of the committee have struggled for some time with the style Leblovic has used as chair.  Documents go round and round with review after review.  While there is the appearance of a group of people working towards a common goal that is far from the case with this committee that thirsts for leadership and direction.

The Advisory committee put a ton of work and time into the idea for a design competition for the Old Lakeshore Road precinct.  They got the idea from former Toronto Mayor David Crombie but couldn’t manage to get it off the ground even though a city council committee was prepared to support them.

When Gary Scobie, a member of the committee, appeared before a city council committee asking for funding to proceed with the idea, the committee liked what he was talking about but needed more detail before they would let any city money get used for an idea that wasn’t as well formulated as it needed to be.

Councillor Craven inspecting the Pump House on the Beachway - thinks the place could serve as the Official Residence for the Ward Councillor

The presentation of the idea was a little like one of those things you see a technology start up taking to venture capitalists and getting turned down because all the vital and necessary supportive data just wasn’t in place..  Council committee nevertheless was supportive.

There was more support at a city council committee than there appeared to be within the Advisory Committee when then committee member Sarah Banks worked hard to pull together the information on an idea she was very passionate about.  Banks just didn’t have the support that was needed to make it work, and when she resigned from the Advisory Committee, the idea died and shortly after the Waterfront people decided to give up on it.

Banks and her family moved to Ottawa where one can be absolutely certain that Sarah Banks will be involved.  She was a fish out of the kind of water she needed in Burlington.  She brought charm and grace and a gritty determination to most of what she did.  The soil in this city may have been great for apples and other fruit but it wasn’t the kind of ground Banks needed.  The famed Burlington orchards are gone and so is Sarah Banks.  I’m not sure her committee members even thanked her for her efforts.

The motion to ask Council to consider the idea appeared to pass unanimously but the Waterfront Access Advisory Committee does things a little differently and you never know quite who is doing what.  What was unmistakable was the energy and enthusiasm that rushed through the room when it was passed and is now in the hands of Councillor Craven, who will take it to a Council committee meeting next week.  Ward 1 Councillor Meed Ward was onside and the city general manager who will have to handle the file once Council pronounces on it was in the room and very much onside.

Finally, there was movement and then a hiccup.

Les Armstrong quietly mentioned that the Historical Society had received a letter from a group of  Toronto architects asking for as much information as the Society could give on the Pump House.  Armstrong thought they had been commissioned to do a renovation on the property – but he wasn’t sure.  No one within the city had heard anything about this one – and no one seemed to follow up on it at the meeting.  City general manager of Community Services, Scott Stewart,  will have made a note of it though.

What wasn’t all that clear at the end of the meeting was just how much life there is left in the Waterfront Access Advisory Committee which is sending an exhaustive document to city council Committee on both its terms of reference, to which it wants to make some changes and its mandate which isn’t all that clear to the committee.  There is also a suggestion that the name of the committee be changed.  There are many who are wagering that the committee will be wound up by the end of the year – unless some of the more courageous members do something drastic and get  themselves a new chair and show council that they know how to advise and understand what their job is.

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON   April 14, 2012  We don’t know if the cheque just arrived in the mail or if hospital CEO Eric Vandewall got a phone call telling him to slip into Toronto and pick it  – what we do know is that the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital now has $22.5 million to spend on the redevelopment plan.

The hospital had previously been given $1.5 million, which in the hospital building business is truly “chump change”.  The hospital had asked for an additional $9 million for design purposes about 6-8 months ago but learned on Friday that the $22.5 million to cover the total cost of planning and design was on the way.  For a provincial government that is close to broke, this is truly astounding – but no one in this city is going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The hospital will become a site that looks out over the lake rather than have its back to the water. It will look a lot different and be a lot different when construction is completed. Funds for the next phase are now in hand.

With these funds in hand the close to intense conversations between the city and the hospital might become a little more relaxed.  Burlington had committed itself to raising $60 million as its share of the cost of redeveloping a building that was long past its  best before date.  The definitive agreement between the city and the hospital had yet to be defined and the hospital needed funds to pay the people doing all the prep work that has to be done before construction actually starts.

Mayor Rick Goldring has had intensive conversations with provincial minister of agriculture, Ted McMeekin, who has served as Burlington’s link to the provincial government.  There have been detailed conversations with the minister of infrastructure Bob Chiarelli and conference calls with Deb Matthews, the minister of health and long term care.  Burlington has had to go to its taxpayers and add to their tax bill to save up the $60 million it was told it had to come up with.  Goldring felt he had to be absolutely sure the hospital re-development was not going to be cancelled.  He wasn’t prepared to rely on what he was hearing from the hospital’s leadership.

The city felt it didn’t know enough about just what the funds were going to be used for – at one point all they knew was that a parking garage had to be built so that there was a place to put cars that were now in the parking lot – which is the land the hospital was going to be built on.

The expected view of the JBMH expansion seen looking from the east.

The city was not comfortable with the working arrangement with the hospital and was looking for an alignment of that would serve the interest of the people of Burlington more effectively.  They aren’t there yet.

No one is exactly sure where the $22.5 million came from.  The view out of city hall is that these funds are basically an advance that will convey to the people of Burlington that the province is serious about this re-development.  And serious they should be – JBMH is a hospital in trouble and in very, very bad shape.  It apparently does not have the capacity to effectively quarantine anyone should such a situation arise.  It is just a very old hospital that has to be redeveloped.

All hospitals are required to have their accreditations  certified regularly.  JBMH has said nothing in the past two years about its various certifications being in order.  Bureaucrats tend to beat their own drums when they have the least thing positive to say.  This hospital has certainly had its challenges and significant crisis in the past.  When Vandewall was appointed there was a major house cleaning of senior people on the medical side.  Cleaning a wound, and make no mistake about this, JBMH was a very wounded institution, is just the first step.  Now the institution has to be nursed back to health.  It will take time.

It was a sunny summer day and a provincial government minister was on her way to Burlington with what everyone thought was going to be a cheque for the hospital in her purse. She didn't arrive - then there was an election and that Minister lost her seat - still no money. But the cheque did arrive on Friday and the smile hospital CEO Eric Vandewall was wearing this sunny summer day, is the smile he is wearing today. These things take time.

Lurking in the background of all this was an announcement, that hadn’t been made that McMaster wanted to put their Family Medicine Practice in that “parking lot” building which certainly changed that picture.  Along with the Halton McMaster Family Medicine Practice would go the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital Foundation’s offices.   What we were now looking at was a large building that was much more than a place to park cars.

Vandewall now has the funds he needs to get the place to the point where the tender can be issued, then awarded and construction can begin.  In the meantime Burlington will continue to set aside funds so that it can meet its obligation when the time comes to pay for the construction.  And the hospital can now ramp up its fund raising efforts and come up with its $60.  Burlington has $8 million sitting in its back account.

The city does not expect to have to turn over any funds until the 2014 fiscal year.  By that time a new funds flow schedule will be in place and the city can plan for its capital spending.

While no one knows exactly where the money came from and what kind of an agreement came with it – everyone believes these are real dollars that can be spent. Might be a good idea however to get the cheque certified when it is in hand.  What if Andrea pulls the plug before the end of the month and plunges us into another election.  Is that why the money just arrived?

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON,ON  April 12, 2012  They were all just a little cranky Tuesday evening.  City Council meetings often go that way in Burlington. They all believe that the really heavy lifting is done at the committee level where delegations have ten minutes to speak and the staff who can talk authoritatively are on hand.

At the actual Council meeting they tend to rush through the agenda – almost as if there was a hockey game they want to get home to watch – which I could never understand – they are all Leaf’s fans – what’s to watch, but I digress.

The meeting started out on the wrong foot with a delegation on the pilot project to use vans to transport as many as 12 people at a time to different destinations and out of the downtown core. The view from the Media table was of a Council that just didn’t want to listen to Peter Pellier.  He got cut off when he got to the five minute point and kept getting cut short when he gave what were admittedly long winded answers to questions. Pellier  was complaining  that Gem Taxi had not been advised of the plans for a pilot project.  It was pretty clear that Council wasn’t really listening – they had made up their minds to go forward with Burlington Taxi – that was the heavy lifting stuff they always say they do at the Committee level.  Tough for Gem if they didn’t know about the plan or had not been advised by staff when they were putting together the report that the decisions were based on.

It didn’t get much better as the meeting progressed.  The painting of cycling lanes on Appleby Line came back for what most expected to be a simple yes, let’s get on with this, but Councillor Sharman wasn’t prepared to give up the fight he waged at the Committee level that easily. Nor was Councillor Taylor, who had now been bitten by the “performance measurement” bug that city manager Jeff Fielding let loose.  He had convinced both senior staff and the Council members that performance based budgeting  was the way to effectively run a city and that you measure to learn what the performance has been. They all loved  it when Fielding explained it t them – but now they had to deal with the reality from their side of the Council chamber, which is where the voters make their views felt.

Taylor felt that if the measurement of performance had been adopted as a procedure by the city, then this was one of those opportunities to try it out – so he had an amendment that asked for measurements before bike lanes were painted on Walkers Line and Appleby Line.  The amendment was to a committee decision to put 1.5-metre wide bike-lane lines along Appleby and Walker’s lines between New and Lakeshore. The lines would decrease the vehicle road lanes from four to three making the resulting middle lane a two-way left-turn lane. The committee decision also takes away on-street parking along Walker’s and Appleby lines.

Your council spent untold hours debating whether or not to measure traffic before putting in bicycle lanes to determine what difference if any the installation of the lanes would have on traffic flows.

The amendment would have involved spending $6,000 to conduct resident polling and collect transportation data including collision data, cycling volume, vehicular flow and other indicators over the next two years to determine the effectiveness of the bike lanes.

Sharman jumped on that band wagon and everyone else followed.  If we are going to measure, piped in Councillor Dennison, do we want opinions from just the people who live in the immediate area or do we get opinions from everyone who might have something to say about bicycle lanes on Walkers Line and Appleby.  One Our Burlington reader who was watching the Council meeting live on Cogeco later commented on the Dennison remarks with:  I almost fell off my chair when I heard the Ward 4 Councillor repeatedly talk about “the greater good” (in regards to bike lanes).  That would make a good headline, “Jack D is fighting for the greater good.”

Councillor Lancaster added this bit of wisdom: “One thing to understand about measurements, not everything is effective when measured and you can’t always make the correct decision when measured. Counting the number of riders on any given day on any given road is not going to help the process” explained Lancaster.  “At the end of the day, you make a decision like this without measurements, you make a decision like this because it’s the right thing for the citizens.”   All right – so much for performance budgeting.

Sharman, who tends to the numbers side of things – he’s an accountant, it’s not his fault that he thinks that way, wanted to measure the traffic on Appleby Line BEFORE cycling lanes were painted on the road and then measure traffic AFTER the trial period.

That made sense to Councillor Taylor who was pleased with how well Council had taken to the thinking about measuring performance that Fielding had taught them.  The discussion went back and forth with everyone now getting their two cents worth in.

Councillor Taylor thought he was following the new approach to performance management - turns out he, along with Councillors Sharman and Meed Ward were the only ones who had really learned the lesson.

Taylor finds himself facing a Council that is clearly divided on the issue: Dennison, the Mayor and Lancaster just wanting to get on with the painting of the bike lanes and Sharman wanting to see measurements taken before the lanes are put in.  Meed Ward sees the sense in all that.  So there you have the three “for” and the three “against”.  And the one thing this Council is very uncomfortable with is those split 4/3 votes – reminds them too much of the Jackson days which the public clearly did not appreciate.

Sitting on the fence during all this, or so it appeared,  was Councillor Craven, who one would have thought would be all for counting and measuring.  But Craven voted with the Mayor, Lancaster and Dennison which meant that the vote was defeated and the bike lanes will get painted in and the cyclists will have a space to ride in, that is exclusive to them.

Craven later added that Sharman’s resistance to having the bicycle lanes painted in without any measurement was not really about measuring but more about stalling as long as possible because the voters in his Ward – and Appleby Line is the Ward 5 boundary line – were going to be really upset about losing their ability to park on the road.

Mayor Goldring who is a keen advocate for getting people out on bicycles, didn’t want to fuss around with the issue and said it was time to “shoot the puck, we’ve been ragging it for too long, you’ve gotta shoot the puck, we’ve gotta move on, and if this is what we want, we just have to do it.” Another whack at that performance budgeting and measuring stuff.

Taylor said he thought this was the actual council meeting where we actually got to choose on this matter. I would suggest we’re actually doing what we’re expected to do. Rather strange comment, especially since we have a divided council. “On the one hand, some of us want to do the right thing and paint lines on roads. On the other hand, some of us want to do the right thing and measure. Oh my goodness, what a dilemma,” he said.

They vote – the amendment loses  and that should have been it but the Mayor commented that  “It’s  just unfortunate that after we made a decision in committee, it’s gotta come back again.  It’s just unfortunate after we’ve had all sorts of discussion without new information. Anyways, we’ll move on.”

Taylor who sits to the right of the Mayor at Council meetings wasn’t putting up with that kind of comment and came back with: “I take exception to your comments, Mr. Mayor. This is a council where decisions are made. Committee only makes recommendations to council. Now, just because you’re in favour of on-road bike lanes and you don’t want to measure it, that’s fine, but don’t belittle other people who have another opinion.”

How was that for a smack on the hand?  – the Mayor did not have a response.

Several days later – at the Mayor’s Inspire Series address given by noted urban planning consultant Ken Greenberg, Mayor Goldring closed the event with these comments.  “As we go forward into the review of the Official Plan, I hope everyone can move away from their fixed positions and be prepared to give a bit and come prepared to listen to some other person’s point of view.”

That statement and the behavior at the Council meeting just two days before – well that’s what politics is all about – isn’t it?

Motel balcony is in a dangerous state of repair, decides to close down rather than do repairs.

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON April 11, 2012  We didn’t “do it” but Our Burlington did get the ball rolling when we took a complaint to the Burlington Bylaw enforcement Officer asking her to investigate the state of the Riviera Motel on Lakeshore Road.

Burlington responds to complaints from the public when it comes to the state of a property – they are proactive when it comes to signs.  They don’t have people driving up and down the streets of the city looking for problems.  But when they get a complaint – they take action.

The Riviera Motel is one of the motliest looking things in the city from the outside – we had no idea what it looked like from the inside but it was an eyesore from the street side and from the walkway along the lake’s edge.

It took a while to get enforcement people out to the property.  They had to pull together a team from the building code department and people from the fire department but eventually city staff served a notice on the owners of the property to either bring the building up to building code standards or the place would be shut down.

The owners decided to shut the place down and we are advised that they expect an application for a demolition permit to be made in the very near future.  That will clear the site and get rid of an ugly, ugly and probably unsafe building.  Then what?

The property is owned by a group of European investors whose interests are represented by Mayrose Tyco who have the right at this point to put up a structure that will soar 22 storeys high.  When the height and density were given to the property developer more than 15 years ago the idea was to end up with a “landmark” structure that would define the city.  Define certainly didn’t expand into definite now did it.

Were a developer to approach the city today and ask for height of 22 storeys, the uproar from the Save Our Waterfront crowd would be heard in downtown Toronto.  All we hear right now about this project is – WHEN?  City hall is having close to conniptions with the pace at which developers get shovels into the ground.

The Medica One project on John Street  at Caroline is in “going nowhere” mode and may have been turned into “dead in its tracks”  if the city requires Nick Carnacelli’ s Carriage Gate organization to re-apply for the zoning they were given in 2009.

When the zoning for a 17 storey structure was given, then citizen Marianne Meed Ward delegated to city council several times demanding better transparency for the community.  She wanted to see a smaller building and a better street-scape.  Carnacelli won that battle but has apparently not met with all the undertakings he agreed to in 2009.  Meed Ward is now the Council member for the ward the development is located in – it will be a different conversation at Council when this one comes up next.

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON April 11, 2012  There will be a four month pilot taxi service in Burlington to see if there is a way to get the rowdies off the streets and safely home as they flood  out of the downtown bars and clubs at 2:00 am in the morning.

Burlington Taxi took the idea to a city council committee where it was approved and got final approval at a Council meeting but not without a bit of a dust up when Peter  Pellier,  speaking on behalf of GEM Taxi,  wanted to know why GEM wasn’t  invited to take part in the pilot project.  Good point.   Pellier told Council that Gem Taxi didn’t even know about the idea until they read something in the paper.

Pellier was upset at Gem Taxi not being advised; but he also thought the idea was bad for the taxi business and said getting people home when the bars close putting several hundred people on the street at the same time, was really a taxi problem that needed a taxi solution – which he claimed could be solved if more taxi licenses were issued in Burlington.

Pellier explained that Oakville, which is not unlike Burlington in its taxi needs,  has 107 cabs  and six wheel chair accessible vehicles licensed, while Burlington has just 58.  More taxi’s – better service – explained Pellier.

Vans like these will be on the streets of Burlington on weekends to help get patrons of downtown bars and clubs home faster.

That wasn’t quite the way Scott Wallace, owner of Burlington Taxi, and the man who came up with the idea for the pilot project saw things.  As he explained to Council,  Burlington has corporate taxi companies and it is those corporations that own the licenses.  “Those taxi drivers are our employees and we can ensure that there are enough cabs out on the streets to meet the need.”

In Oakville the licenses are held  by individuals  and as Wallace explained “there is no guarantee that the taxis are going to be on the road.  Many drivers”  Wallace explained, “earn what they feel they need and then book off.”  So while Oakville has more licenses – that doesn’t translate into enough taxi’s available for service.

While Gem should have been invited to take part in the pilot project, the reality is that they probably could not have participated because they don’t have any 15 passenger vans.

One of the prime spots for downtown bar patrons to gather after the 2 am closing is the Charcoal Pit - makes for a lot of noise. Multi passenger vans will be used in a pilot to see if people can get transported out of the downtown core faster.

Every vehicle on the road that is carrying passengers for a fee must be licensed by the city.  Another of the rules in Burlington is that the driver cannot pick up people going to different destinations and are not part of a single party.

With the pilot project approved, Burlington Bylaw Enforcement Officer Tracey Burrows, can now overlook  a van picking up multiple passengers and charging each one the flat rate of $7. which will not actually have a license.  Burrows will be overseeing the pilot project and be part of the team that does the analysis and decides if this is something the city will want to do on a regular basis and make licenses available for that type of service.  Gem Taxi would presumably be able to apply for such a license.

The pilot project is expected to start in May.

By Staff

BURLINGTON, ON  April 11, 2012   The months of April through to September are particularly significant to the people of Holland – it was during that period of time that Canadian armed forces were involved in the Liberation of Apeldoorn, a city Burlington has been twinned with for some time.  The 48^th Canadian Highlanders were part of the force that drove the Germans out of Apeldoorn.

A number of months later there was a ferocious battle at Arnhem which, had it been won by the Allies, would have shortened the war and perhaps ended it in 1944. That particular battle was lost – due more to serious problems getting supplies and fuel to the tanks that were leading the drive, but the war was won and Holland was liberated.

Holland and Canada have had a very special relationship ever since and Canadian troops and bands will be in Holland to celebrate that event.

Part of that celebration will involve twenty members of the Halton Regional Police Service Pipes & Drums that will  travel to Apeldoorn, Netherlands  to participate in several special events and engagements honouring the historic April 1945 liberation of the city by Canadian Troops, led in part by the 48th Highlanders of Canada.

Regional police Pipes and Drums will march across the historically significant bridge in Holland.

Besides the ceremonies in Apeldoorn there will be a march over the John Frost Bridge at Arnhem, which is just 20 km south of Apeldoorn.  That bridge was featured in the historic WWII book and movie, “A Bridge Too Far,” which recounts the Allied forces attempts to break through German lines at several bridges in the Netherlands.  The march over that bridgge is a very special part of the events that will take place during the 10 day trip.

“We expect to have a busy week, with five formal performances and several other engagements as well,” said Pipe Major Allan Eaton.

As a living tribute to the liberation of the Dutch city and the loss of Canadian lives, the 48th Highlanders of Holland Pipes & Drums was founded in 1991. Ceremonies are held each April in Apeldoorn to commemorate the liberation.

Pipes and Drums participating in the ten day tour of Holland to commemorate liberation of Holland by Canadian troops.

In November 2011, the 48th Highlanders of Holland Pipes & Drums were invited to Canada where they performed a series of concerts and Remembrance Day parades in Burlington and the surrounding area. As a token of appreciation, the 48th Highlanders Band extended an invitation to the Halton Police Pipes & Drums to participate in the annual Liberation Day ceremonies in Apeldoorn in April 2012.

“This invitation is an honour and unprecedented opportunity for the Halton Regional Police Service and its band to gain exposure on a world stage as a representative not only of policing but of all proud Canadians,” said Eaton.

The Halton Regional Police Service Pipes & Drums is comprised of civilian volunteers and serving police officers.  As ambassadors of policing and representatives of the Chief and the Service, members of the band devote countless hours of personal time to practice and perform at more than 40 local, regional and national events each year.

The band raises its operating money through fund raising initiatives as well as charging modest fees in some instances for appearances. Founded in September 1987, the Band will proudly celebrate its Silver Anniversary in 2012.

By Staff

BURLINGTON, ON  April 7, 2012  What appears to be the body of a homeless person was found in an area north of Fairview Street, east of Maple Avenue in the City of Burlington. Police and other Emergency Services personnel attended.

The body was discovered just after 2:00 pm and police were notified.

The deceased is a male, 46 years, of no fixed address believed to have been living where discovered. Attempts are being made to locate and notify the next of kin.

The coroner attended the scene. Initial examination revealed no suspicious circumstances, however the investigation will be continuing with a post mortem scheduled for April 8, 2012 in Hamilton.

Burlington doesn’t think it has any homeless people – this man died all by himself Easter weekend.