By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON May 6, 2011 – So, said the guy in the sales lot – you’re looking for a Strategic Plan – what kind of a budget do you have ?

Not all that much money and I need something that will last me at least four years.

How heavy duty will your driving be?

Not sure exactly, some of my travel will be very heavy duty will all kinds of passengers and many of them will have a lot of baggage – and then there will be those short runs to the LCBO. It will be a pretty solid mix.

Colour matter? Four door? Automatic transition? Sound system?

Probably blue – we’re a blue town. Four doors for sure and a hatch back – we are going to have people crawling in and out of the thing. Automatic would be nice – don’t need sound, there will be all kinds of talking going on.

If Burlington was buying a strategic plan from a sales lot that is how the conversation might go – but we are not going to buy a strategic plan we are going to build our plan with a level of community involvement that includes over 80 community groups and almost anyone else who has something to say.

The process is headed up by Allan Magi, Executive Director, Corporate Strategic Initiatives and Michelle Dwyer, coordinator of Corporate Strategic Initiatives. From now through to September they will be directing the effort that will have city hall staff, your Council and you the public figuring out and thinking through what the strategic plan for the city should be for the next four years.

With a Strategic Plan in place ( and we won’t have that until sometime in September) City Council can then begin to develop a budget for the remaining years of its term and move forward on each of the objectives set out in the Strategic Plan.

Council and senior staff members have been working through just how they want to create the Plan while Magi has been working on the relationship with the consultants and keeping in touch with Council members while Dwyer has been gathering data and getting input from staff. This, apparently is the first time staff have been as directly involved at input into a plan, said Dwyer and many appreciated being asked what they thought and felt the city should be doing in terms of the direction it will grow in. Dwyer pointed out that many staff members live in the city and they want to be able to comment both as citizens and employees who have an insight into what can and can’t get done. For Dwyer that realization was a pleasant surprise.

Much of the research and data gathering was done by Dwyer who came across an idea used in Edmonton that she thought could be used in Burlington equally well and that was a Work Book that people would download form the web site and complete.

Dwyer has been with the city for some time. She worked in Parks, the in Clerks and now with Community Strategic Initiatives. She was also the United Way associate for the city. Dwyer studied at Mohawk College.

Dwyer will tell you that this assignment is one of the most exciting she has worked on. She is getting an up close look at what the different departments see as the future of the city and at the same time working with stakeholder groups who have their own vision. Out of all these groups will come a Mission, Vision and Values statement and that, Dwyer will tell you, is a big deal.

Mayor Goldring mentioned the workbook at a Q&A held by the Chamber of Commerce and suggested that citizens gather with their neighbours in small groups and go through the Workbook. The idea didn’t exactly float but didn’t fall to the ground like a lead balloon either. It was a different approach, sort of like homework for the community, an idea that Dwyer came across in her research and convinced the Mayor to give it a try in Burlington – and it worked.. People downloaded the workbook, went through the document and sent them back to city hall. A number of people also did the one line survey that was put up.

The creation of the Strategic Plan is running on several levels. While Magi and Dwyer gather material, work with staff and then organize the more than 80 stakeholder groups in the city and arrange for presentations to Council, a group of Consultants hired by the city to take senior staff and council through the finer points of crafting a Strategic Plan. Just how do you create a Strategic plan anyway ? The plan that was in place for 2006 to 2010 had very little impact on the how the city grew and wasn’t much more than a collection of statements and a lot of nice pictures.

This Council didn’t want to make that mistake again but who knew just how to do this. The city didn’t have that level of expertise in house. The standard citizen Quality of Service survey was revised with input from both staff and Council – results of that work are in the review and analysis stage

Another phase is the community input, which is where community groups make presentations to city councillors. The first took place at the Burlington Arts Centre where seven groups presented. The second input session had 13 community groups telling Council what they think should be in the Strategic Plan. The community stakeholders resulted from a list sent to council for input – groups were added or deleted from the list.  Forty four key stakeholder groups  were asked to provide for council consideration three priorities they would like to see in the Strategic Plan. Some came forward with the “same old” but there were some interesting insights.

Allan Magi came to Burlington 20 years ago and expected to return to the consulting work he was doing – but hasn’t managed to do that. He explains that the Strategic Plan process he is leading will be the eighth Burlington has produced and that Burlington was one of the first municipalities to get into the process of creating a Strategic Plan.

Past plans have been less than inspiring and this Council wanted to do it differently and Magi was given the job of leading the process. “We first wanted to ensure that Council had ownership of this Plan” he explained. “We wanted the Plan to be more operational and to tie the first part of a 20 year plan to the term of office for the Council” In other words Magi was charged with coming up with a plan that was based on a 20 year vision

with clear objectives as to what would get done ion the next four years..

“There are huge intangibles in a Strategic Plan explained Magi. It is a Council’s vision that they drew from the citizens. We wanted ground level input and we wanted to cast our net as wide as possible. In the past the community input was somewhat limited and this Council didn’t want to make that mistake.

Magi was involved in the city portion of the Shape Burlington report that was the first document to put the city on a different path and has worked very closely with the Shaping Burlington people, who were the successor organization to the Shape group, that were commission by then Mayor Jackson to ask some fundamental questions as to just how the city worked and where the problems lay. Former Mayor Walter Mulkewich and the late John Boich co-chaired the Shape group and delivered a very significant document.

Magi came out of that process with a much different view of what the city wanted and is using much of what he learned to produce a Strategic Plan process that will build on what Shape Burlington taught us.

Magi learned that the city had to move much earlier on getting public input – “much, much earlier than it has in the past.” “We knew we needed more interaction but we weren’t completely sure how we would do that. We knew that we had to test ideas and try to anticipate the direction the process was going in to be sure we were on the right track.

A Strategic Plan can become a wish list and remain just that but this Council wanted a document that would have ideas and direction and be something that citizens saw as reflecting what they saw for their city. At the same time the objectives set out in the Plan had to deal with fiscal reality. Burlington is at the beginning of a shift into a different form of development. Gone are the days when there was “greenfield” development after “greenfield” that produced significant revenue from the development charges.

The city had to think in terms of making better use of what it has and that has meant quite a bit of infill development – and if the reaction to the rather small development in the Queensway community and the upcoming plans for a large apartment building at Brock and Ontario are any example – the infill process is going to be noisy and awkward.

There are challenges on several fronts. The city has frozen suburban development at the 407 and now faces the possibility of a new highway around Lowville and the Mt Nemo plateau which would have the all but immediate effect of moving the suburban development to that new road. Many feel this will be the end of the rural north for Burlington. Big, big community fight at that level – which saw one of the larger community demonstrations in front of a downtown hotel against any Niagara-GTA highway.

The city has to decide what it wants to do with its languishing western Beach and also what to do with the downtown core that isn’t living up to expectations. Understanding how we are going to manage the city for a growing seniors population and the challenge of bring high quality, high paying jobs, to a city that doesn’t have any Class A office space.

All these issues will, ideally, be reflected in the Strategic Plan that Allan Magi and Michelle Dwyer are stick handling through a very delicate process. Hovering over everything Magi and Dwyer di is the fiscal reality. Burlington managed to come in with a very small tax increase for 2011 – due to a very significant surplus from the previous year. The city may not be quite that fortunate next year and will have to teach its ratepayers how much what they want is going to cost.

Magi, who came to the city with an MBA tucked under his arm and a bit of consulting experience on his resume is now managing two consultants from a firm that has an international consulting practice who are helping Burlington put together a Strategic Plan that Magi would like to see, when it is completed, as one of the best any municipality in the country has produced. One wonders if Magi saw any of this coming the day he walked into a Human Resources office in Burlington for his first interview.

Magi has learned that there has to be more process and that while process takes time it does result in a more cohesive community. While this isn’t new territory for Magi it is stretching him and he seems to be having the time of his life on this assignment.

He came to the city to work in the engineering department, the moved over to water resources and on to Recreation and Parks and now he heads up the Corporate Strategic Initiatives and works closely with the KPMG consultants who were brought in to help staff and Council put in place the management tools and processes that will allow for the creation of a Strategic Plan.

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By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON May 3, 2011 – It turned out to be This is Emergency Preparedness month. Boring. Do you have the candles tucked away, do you have food for three days in the basement and do you have bottled water set aside and do you know where to run to, to grab those important documents and get out of the house in time?

Debbie Wade, 8th floor fire marshal at city hall cleared the floor and then followed the Mayor to street level. Fire Marshall’s get to wear the hat – Debbie isn’t keen on it.

All of us have some of the stuff in place and I thought that given this is Emergency Preparation month We would do a story on what is not exactly an exciting news item.

It occurred to me to meet with the Mayor and ask how he decides if he should declare a State of Emergency and then just how does he do that. So there we were, sitting in the Mayors office. He had the Emergency Preparedness manual in his hands – it’s confidential – and he was explaining the procedures involved. Then the fire alarm began to ring. Frank McKeown, the Mayor’s right hand man stuck his head in the door and asked: “Pepper, did you do that?” “It wasn’t me”, I replied as the Mayor reached for his suit jacket and coat and headed out the door. I followed, notes in hand.

Everyone left in an orderly manner with the Mayor holding the door for Debbie Wade to go before him. “You first Mr. Mayor. I’m the Fire Marshall for this floor and I’m the last person to leave after I’ve checked to make sure the floor is empty.”

So we all trooped down the eight flights with the Mayor carrying his Emergency Preparedness Manual and an umbrella. We got down in just over four minutes and were clear of the building before the fire trucks arrived. So, we know that part of emergency planning works. The city does a dry run a couple of times each year. Each Fire Marshall has a back up and that is over seen by Ron Durocher.

Before we were so rudely interrupted Mayor Goldring was explaining how he, as Mayor, acts when there is a city level emergency. Previously I had asked McKeown what the procedure was for the Mayor when there was a major emergency and McKeown said that was one of the questions he and the Mayor asked each other the first hour they were in the eighth floor office of the Mayor at City Hall. They soon found the Manual with all the detailed instructions.

Shortly after asking the question the Fire Chief showed up with a copy of the Manual in his hands and took the Mayor through the steps he has to take if he decides to declare a State of Emergency and then went through the procedures. This Mayor was making sure he didn’t find himself where former Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman of Bad Boy fame found himself when he called in the army to clear snow from the streets on that city. This Mayor wasn’t about to make himself look like an idiot.

Burlington firefighter does his paper work for what turned out to be a non event when the fire alarms went off at city hall.

The back up office for command central is Room 247 at City Hall. If there is a major emergency the Mayor and other key staff assemble in that room and use communications equipment the fire department has in storage ready for instant use.

Later this month the Mayor and the Emergency Control Team will meet and do a day long exercise of running the city as if there were a major threat to the city and its citizens.

Asked what he thinks his job is when there is a major emergency Mayor Goldring said he” “tied to visualize what it might be that he had to deal with. I thought of the major derailment that took place in Mississauga in, what was it, 1979 – 80. What would an emergency look like and what would I do?”, he asked.

And then went on to say he saw his role as assuring the citizens that the problem was under control and that the right people were in place to deal with the emergency.

Mayor Goldring, out on the street in the rain with his staff while the fire alarm is checked. The Mayor brought his emergency Measures Manual with him.

I see my job as assuring and empathizing with people. I would be out on the street meeting with people and making sure the interests and the needs of the people were being taken care of.

There was no “I’m in charge here” in the words the Mayor used. “I would have manuals to work from and would ensure that what should be done is done.”

While the Mayor doesn’t pretend to be an expert on emergencies he does think about what could happen and appreciates that a lot of rail traffic goes through Burlington and that there are thousands of trucks on the QEW which runs right through town and that there are ships out there on the lake and all have the capacity to carry chemicals and liquids that are toxic and could be very dangerous if released.

So, the city appears to be in the hands of people who know what to do in the event of an emergency or a catastrophe. What about you? Are you at all ready – and what should you do today that would make you ready.

Literature and information on what to do in an emergency is set out at city hall. Worth looking at if you’re in the building.

One of the things you might consider is getting a back up card for your bank account and make out a list with the numbers of all the important things. Your Passport could be in a safe place and having a list of the numbers: Health Card, Driver’s License, critical names and telephone numbers.

There are a number of organizations that are there to help and your neighbours are the best resource you have. Know your neighbours well and let them know you. Society works when we take care of each other.

If you want to really do the job log into any of the following:

Red Cross: www.redcross.ca/storefront

They have an excellent emergency kit that is contained in a knapsack. Handy to have.

Where do natural disasters take place. Click here – all pretty close to home.

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By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON April 29, 2011 – It started at 74 units to be built on property that consisted of six houses – the 74 was said to be acceptable based on good planning principles. The local community didn’t like it one bit and they got noisy.

Three houses that front on Queensway west of Guelph line wait for the wrecking ball and the creation of a development that will create 58 housing units in a community that has had nothing but small bungalows.

That brought it down to 64 units – locals still weren’t happy. That brought it down to 58 units which is where it was left after a long council committee meeting that had Ward 4 Councillor Jack Dennison suggesting that maybe, just maybe, taking out two more units would make everyone happy – but he wasn’t able to get anyone to take him up on that idea. So the community is now battling a development of 6 semi detached units; 18 back to back townhouses and 34 standard townhouses.

Ward 1 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward was the proponent behind getting this project down to 40 units, which from her point of view was “perhaps acceptable” given that there were only six units on the property that was assembled for this development which is located south of the QEW and west of Guelph line; a part of the city that was originally developed as Veterans Act Lands, and like Aldershot, is a community where there are streets with no sidewalks.

It is an older part of the city with larger than normal lots where there is a clear sense of identity and mild resistance to change – at least to the kind of change that the proposed project will bring to the community. Most people saw the level of intensification this development was bringing about to be close to offensive however, it did meet with the zoning and official plan. This is a community that is a just a very short walk to the Burlington GO station, minutes to the QEW and a hop to a large Mall and a skip to a good supermarket. The only thing the community doesn’t have it a “big rock candy mountain”. Easy to understand why these people like their community just the way it is.

The roads in this community are narrower; 6-7metres with no side walks when the norm is in the 9 to 9.5 metre width. If sidewalks were put in the width of the road would decrease. Traffic flow is already a problem and 56 additional homes with a car and a half – well you can see where this is going.

What made this one a little difficult was that there were six properties being assembled for the development with those at the north end zoned a little differently than those at the south end. While planners understand theses intricacies – the average homeowner gets snowed under by this level of detail. All they want is for their community to remain much the same – even though most of the delegations – there were five of them, said they understood change was necessary – they just didn’t think this level of change was fair and good for their community.

Burlington is faced with pressure from a couple of sides. First the province has called for growth and intensification under the Places to Grow Plan. That is just a fact the city and its residents have to deal with. The small enclave of a community that is snuggled in west of Guelph line and south of the QEW is a classic example of what the province wanted to see changed. The lots were created in what is for the most part end of WWII bungalows on mature streets that don’t have sidewalks or sewers. Most of the lots are large by today’s standards; the six that were assembled for this development are large enough to have a very decent sized market garden in the back. You could play a football game in the yards that existed in the properties that were assembled.

The developers saw the opportunity and as one resident said at the Community Development Committee:
“If this project goes through there will be others” and indeed there will be others. Developers see the value and individual homeowners also see an opportunity to cash in and take away the value of really large lots.

So, the requirement to intensify is very real and developers are quick to spot the opportunities and exploit them. The building of homes is a large part of the local economy and more homes means more tax money collected. The location for this development is fabulous. One could walk to the GO station from this project and indeed it was suggested that this development was a perfect opportunity to create a protected bicycle lane that would be on the edge of the Queensway, allowing a rider to be at the GO station in 10 minutes. Provide decent bicycles lockers and the city will have taken a big step to putting its plan for more cycle use in place.

Burlington has a unique rural component that begins north of the 407 and extends to the northern edge of the municipality and includes the Mt Nemo plateau. If the city wants to maintain that rural community, and if you speak to people in Lowville and Kilbride there is no doubt that they want to keep the rural setting, then the development is going to have to take place south of the 407 and QEW – which brings us back to communities that face a development that everyone knows is going to significantly change the place they have chosen to live and raise their families.

This is the challenge that faces Burlington and one that adds wrinkles to the brow of Mayor Goldring. He can see a situation where there will be a battle in every community that undergoes social and development changes. He truly believes there is a better way to do this – but so far hasn’t come up with the formula needed.

“We were not informed about this amendment despite the fact that I had requested to be informed.”

Richard Szymczyk

However, as several people making delegations said: “We know change is coming and we accept that – but can the change be something that respects who we are, where we live and the life style we have created for ourselves.”

Is this the only way we know how to manage the growth that is going to take place? Is there not a better way for the developers to provide the housing that is needed and for the people who live in a community to have a significant say in the way the community is going to change? Is there a person or a group of people within the community that can pull people together and ask the city to provide some resources that will help the homeowners maintain the community they have and at the same time manage the growth?

Some Queensway residents have decided to let developers know they are “available” and put For Sale signs on their lawns. Is the beginning of the end for a once quiet enclave that is going to go through a significant intensification?

Or is taking the fight to the Ontario Municipal Board where a tribunal will listen to both sides and announce a decision that everyone will have to accept the only solution? And in the meantime confusion, disruption and a slow breakdown of the social fabric that created the community in the first place. Individuals will sell their homes, take the capital gain and look for a new place to live. Indeed that has already started

Richard Szymczyk, speaking on behalf of the Queensway Ratepayers, brought some focus to what was happening to the community when he said there were two fundamental issues before the committee: process and that of content. While content was a major issue, it was process that had the residents up in arms for they felt they had been short changed when it came to an opportunity to review what staff was proposing and that they were not fairly or adequately heard. “I take some issue”, said Szymczyk “with the fact that the document we have before us, outlines in great detail support for the intensification, but neglects to inform you about the very strong opposition made by those who will be most affected – the current residents.”

Szymczyk complains about the amount of time the community had to respond to a staff document (and this complaint is heard frequently) Szymczyk said “we have had access to the amendments for only a week and it is virtually impossible to organize a community meeting and develop a response. In that period of time. The way the game is played now, ratepayers have to use their spare time to respond to developers who are at times rapacious – and if asking for 74 units and accepting 58 isn’t rapacious then I don’t fully understand that word –and devote all their time to this profit making venture.

There is nothing wrong with profit but does it have to be at the expense of community? And by the way – just who is 1066834 Ontario Limited? They are a division of 967686 Ontario Inc and are located at 4305 Fairview avenue, Suite 216 right here in Burlington.

Szymczyk complains as well about a change in a zoning by law that allowed an increase of more than 30% in terms of density.” We were not informed about this amendment despite the fact that I had requested to be informed.” This complaint has been heard before as well and it appears that the city doesn’t go that “extra mile” for ratepayers and citizens but has a lot of time for developers who work at their projects full time.

It is a small matter of making allowances. For example, a number of people complained that they did not get notices. The City Planner, Bruce Krushelnicki takes great exception to hearing that he is not being fair for he is a very fair decent minded human being. But here is his dilemma. He is required under the Planning Act to advise people of changes by mail and an email address is not sufficient to meet the requirements of the Act. Fair enough – but surely it would be possible to create a list of the mailing addresses and at the same time maintain a list of email addresses and uses both to send out notices? And what’s with this requirement to send notices only to those people within a 120 metre radius? Surely the Planning department could look at its maps and be generous when creating the radius within which people have to be notified and make that radius large enough to cover people who are ‘likely’ to have an interest in the development being discussed. This is a small matter and one that could be undertaken by a progressive community. It is the Spirit of the law that matters rather than the Letter of the law.

Marianne Mead Ward, then a candidate said in her Oct 2010 Special Bulletin for Queensway Residents that City Council has “quietly changed the allowed densities for a controversial housing project in the Queensway neighbourhood –and not one city official or elected representative came clean when directly questioned at a public meeting.” There was an opportunity for Mead Ward, now the Council member for ward 2 to come clean at Committee meeting on April 18^th and review for Council and the 40 plus people in the Council Chamber the sad history of this development application, but there was more comment from Ward 4 Councillors Jack Dennison than Mead Ward.

This has been a messy one from the start, complicated by a property assembly that has different zonings on different parts of the six lots involved. It is certainly an intensification, taking six lots and trying to plunk down 74 housing units which has been ratcheted down to 58 units – with the residents howling for 40 units. This is a difference of opinion that seems headed for the Ontario Municipal Board.

One of the six houses waiting for demolition in a neighbourhood that has been stable and secure sine the early 50’s

There was a zoning bylaw that called for 30 units on a hectare of property that could be taken to 50 units per hectare if underground parking was put in place. Underground parking was never part of the plan but that didn’t stop city council from putting through a zoning change that allowed for an increase from the 30 units per hectare to 40 units. These zoning changes took place during the summer and at a time when Mead Ward didn’t have an office at city hall. Now that she has – she is stuck with what is going to be painful from a community point of view and expensive for the city when it has to pay for the OMB hearing that appears to be a certainty if a ratepayers spokesperson is to be believed.

City planning staff are satisfied that the modified 58 unit proposal, which falls within the medium density housing range, is appropriate for and compatible with the surrounding neighbourhood. The developer doesn’t appear to want to go any further and so it will get one more round of debate at a city council meeting and then a final vote. Will anyone ask for a recorded vote on this one or would they rather all just hope they can hold their noses and get it done?

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