By Eric Stern

December 11th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

BRAG has watched the City of Burlington present a 7.51% Burlington tax increase as 4.97%, 5.76% and now, after the regional and police increases have been approved, 5.82%

The marketing technique used to present a 7.51% Burlington only increase as an ever-changing series of lower numbers, does residents a disservice. Terms like impact and overall are not well understood by the community.

When Burlington talks about the Burlington budget and Burlington taxes the conversation should be about Burington’s 8.3% total property tax increase and 7.51% increase to existing taxpayers.

Communications about the impact on the overall bill should wait until all the other levels of government involved in the overall bill have passed their own budget increases.

Your taxes increased by 7.51% more than 2024.

By Staff

December 12th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Steve Robinson, Manager of Burlington’s Urban Forest, reports that he had the unique opportunity to present alongside Tyler Searls and Ben Kuttner today at the 2024 Ontario Urban Forest Council (OUFC) conference. We presented on the merits of Managing Urban Woodlands as Assets, using the City of BNurlington’s Woodland Management Strategy as a case study.

Starting in 2025, the City will be implementing the City’s Woodland Management Strategy and 37 Forest Management Plans. These plans are integral for the purpose of mitigating tree related risk, addressing invasive species, providing a means for reforestation, and supporting the maintenance of other critical infrastructure like storm water conveyance within our creek block

 

By Staff

December 11th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

During the City Council meeting yesterday, the Mayor said, as part of her Personal Privilege remark that:

“I would like to address comments made at the Special Council meeting on the budget. This is the soonest opportunity, as I was not at that meeting due to attending a funding announcement at the hospital, one of the delegates mused that perhaps our CAO knowingly misrepresented the budget increase percentage. Now normally I don’t repeat personal attacks or defamatory statements, but it’s critically important to clarify what is in bounds and out of bounds when we are aiming for respectful dialog and respect in the workplace.

On that “soonest opportunity” the Mayor attended an event where she didn’t get to say a word.  Some believe the Mayor didn’t attend the Council meeting because she was pretty sure Council was going to vote against her on two matters – which they did.

The Burlington Residents’ Action Group (BRAG) replied pointing out that the exact statement made by the delegate was:

“It was interesting to watch Mr. Basit present a 4.97% on November 4th when the Halton Police budget had been made public on October 30th. Did Mr. Basit knowingly misrepresent the truth?”

“The statement poses a question. The facts are the facts and the police budget increase was widely reported as being 13.8% well before the November 4^th meeting.

“As I understand it, after factoring in new revenue from new homes the police increase works out to 11.8% (that number has since increased to 14.3) to existing taxpayers. The increase to the “overall” tax increase number the City of Burlington loves to use looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

To add insult to injust the Mayor has now blocked BRAG from commenting on her LinkedIn site.

 

 

 

 

By Pepper Parr

December 11^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

During the December 10^th Council meeting Mayor Meed Ward raised two Points of Privilege.

In Robert’s Rules of Order questions of privilege affecting the assembly may include matters of comfort, amplification, or safety. For example, it may be difficult to hear the speaker. In this case, a question of privilege could be raised to close the doors and windows.

Without naming the people she was referring to the Mayor appears to have decided that her personal preferences come first, so she did the following:

“I will take this opportunity in relation to the special meeting of council to speak to a point of privilege. And I’ll do that now before calling the vote as part of our respect commitment to a respectful workplace.

“I would like to address comments made at the Special Council meeting on the budget. This is the soonest opportunity, as I was not at that meeting due to attending a funding announcement at the hospital, one of the delegates mused that perhaps our CAO knowingly misrepresented the budget increase percentage. Now normally I don’t repeat personal attacks or defamatory statements, but it’s critically important to clarify what is in bounds and out of bounds when we are aiming for respectful dialog and respect in the workplace.

“Comments opposing the tax increase, suggesting cuts, offering suggestions around communications or an improved process, these and more are not only appropriate but welcome, however, attacking the personal integrity, honesty and character of anyone, whether a council member, staff or another member of the community, is not welcome our procedure by law, Section 44 two states that no person will speak disrespectfully to or about anyone in council chambers, and that’s what happened here.

“I do want to acknowledge Councillor Nissan for also speaking to this on a recent online post. This has exposed him to unwarranted criticism and misinterpretation of what he was calling out, which is specifically the personal attack on our CAO. Being exposed to such criticism discourages anyone from speaking out and calling us to a higher standard of engagement.

“We have guidelines for conduct in our meetings that are aimed at promoting respectful debate and dialog on the issues we face. This is especially important when there are different viewpoints and opinions among staff council and our community. We want everyone to feel heard and safe to speak their views, however unpopular, this is critical to a healthy democracy.

“People won’t run if they’re exposed to personal attacks and a toxic workplace. People won’t apply to work in municipal government and residents won’t come forward to speak. We all lose when these voices are silenced. We need to be vigilant in upholding a respectful workplace and modeling it. We all have a role to play to foster a respectful workplace in service of a healthy democracy. We need to model respect in our own comments and encourage others to do so. My comments are to that end, and my commitment is to do my part alongside all of you. Thank you.”

When introducing a delegation that took place on Tuesday Mayor Meed Ward said:

“Delegates must be respectful of staff, council members and other members of the public who may have a different perspective on the item, personal attacks, innuendo, slander will not be tolerated, and I’ll stop you if that occurs, we do have a respectful workplace, which includes council chambers. So please focus on the issue you’ve registered to delegate to, and if you did speak at committee, try to bring new information forward and not repeat what you said at committee.”

Then twenty-six minutes later the Mayor called for a second Point of Privilege.

“There were some things said that the audit committee is failing in their duties and that staff are failing. There is simply zero truth or evidence to that, and it’s not going to be tolerated if staff, if members of the community, have any concerns about the behavior of staff, there are appropriate independent avenues to follow. We don’t just simply allow allegations that are unfounded to be set in council chambers.”

What I believe we are seeing is a Mayor who has wandered again from serving the public that elected her and pressing her own interests and preferences.

Back in July 2022, people watching a Council meeting webcast heard the MAyor attempt to bully a member of Council into apologizing publicly for something she did not do. It was the most outrageous bit of grandstanding I have ever seen take place in the Council Chamber.

The Gazette recorded that event – remind yourself as to just how bad that performance was – Click HERE

For those who want to decide for themselves if either Eric Stern or Anne Marsden were out of line, their delegations are set out below.

The Eric Stern delegation:

Delegation Monday, November 25, 2025

Good morning and thank you for your time today.

The “Stop the 7​.​5% Burlington Property Tax Increase” petition has been presented to council. Twelve hundred and forty-seven people signed the petition asking for a zero percent tax increase. The multi-year forecast called for 8.9%, by asking for zero we were hoping to meet somewhere in the middle, at 4.4%, oh well.

I have to say I was surprised to see Burlington get out early again this year with the fictional “4.97%” overall tax increase.

It was interesting to watch Mr. Basit present a 4.97% on November 4th when the Halton Police budget had been made public on October 30th. Did Mr. Basit knowingly misrepresent the truth?

On November 18^th I listened to Leah Bortolotti talk about 6.7 million people visiting the website annually. I did another double-take. For a dose of reality, only 200,000 people live in Burlington. Are we expected to believe that every person in Burlington visits the website an average of 33 times a year? How many of these visits are to book the kids into a swim class? More confusing is that the budget document states on page 48 “our website—with its 1.5 million annual users”.

You have approved $148,000 for an SEO Marketing position. What is the payback?

Will there be a staff reduction in Service Burlington because people can find information themselves? Will there be KPIs to monitor this or is this just another overhead cost?

What residents need is information, not marketing spin, Google can make that information searchable. Adding a web marketing SEO position will slow down the posting of information making that information less accessible to taxpayers. Do you remember the taxpayers?  The people who pay for this.

The mayor talks about training bus drivers and then those drivers take jobs in other cities as a justification for higher pay. This statement is not supported by the 5.3% turnover number presented on November 4^th. A rate of 5.3% is lower than any private sector group except for heads of organizations and executives at 3.8%. This indicates the city has the right mix of salary, benefits and working conditions. An average, across-the-board, salary increase of 4.58% when inflation is 2.5% sounds high.

My theme today is clarity. Residents deserve factual information, clearly presented on the city’s website, by staff and the council, without the deft hand of a communications department spinning that information for the benefit of our elected representatives and city staff. I resent being taxed to pay for information to be marketed to me.

Looking ahead to 2026, what considerations are being made for a conservative Federal government and severe cuts to the housing accelerator fund? Much of the expected $21,000,000 may evaporate.

In terms of provincial funding, what happens if the city does not meet its housing targets and no provincial funds are available?

Burlington is building out community centres, transit, etc. for people who may or may not move into the community. What happens if the builders don’t build and the people don’t materialize? Is it time for more prudent cost controls?

The Burlington Residents’ Action Group submitted to this council, in writing, 14 pages of possible cost savings and economies of scale that the city could consider.

I’ve watched many council meetings, people who ask for money often receive money, and people who ask for cuts often receive nothing.

Why are lower tax increases important?

Lower increases leave people with more money for heat pumps and EVs.

Lower increases reduce renovictions by landlords who, through rent control, can only increase rents by 2.5%. This will reduce homelessness and help to “solve the crisis”.

Lower increases leave more money in people’s pockets, reducing food bank visits and crime, and lower the overall cost of policing.

I’ll conclude with, Your Worship, you win, for now, you hold all the cards, residents are not given enough time to review the budget, the budget does not include explanations for the programs, or what the return on the “investment” will be, and requests for details go unanswered.

Congratulations on passing another huge budget increase without the community understanding what the percentage is or what the dollars are for!

The Marsden delegation:

That document will be included when Ms Marsden has made it available.

By John Best

December 10^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

The Ombudsman for the city of Burlington has ruled that it cannot involve itself in political decisions and for that reason is unable to act on a complaint lodged by the Bay Observer about the communication process surrounding the Bateman School Project. The Bay Observer launched a complaint against Burlington City Council in November of 2023, alleging that Burlington Council had misled the public about the real financial scope of the Bateman project when it was first floated with the public, and throughout the election year 2022, engaged in a public consultation process that had participants providing comments and buy-in with no idea of the financial implications of the project.

The Ombudsman found in his conclusion: “I am satisfied from the evidence that the City’s Communications staff followed City policies, and professional practices in the communications field. I further accept that City staff can only publish information they are authorized to share (Our emphasis). I interpret that the remainder (and bulk, frankly) of Mr. Best’s concerns are directed to the City’s political processes or decision-making – which isn’t appropriately within this Office’s jurisdiction.” The Bay Observer had not directed its criticism towards communication staff, understanding their role is to carry out council communications.

What got the Bay Observer interested in the Bateman project was when members of council initiated an integrity commissioner complaint into comments made by Councillor Shawna Stolte at a meeting in late 2021 where she referred to the cost of the project saying, “the reality is that the final cost will be well above $50M.” That figure had earlier only been presented to council in closed session.  The Integrity Commissioner ruled that her comments were a clear violation of procedure and Stolte was sanctioned.

What seemed unusual was Mayor Marianne Meed Ward’s release of a 2,300-word statement the day after the Integrity Commissioners report was approved by council, that had the feel of overkill. Among many other statements, the Mayor wrote, “Any breach of the Code is a breach of public trust. The community loses; The breach related to the purchase of Robert Bateman High School, as the Integrity Commissioner has noted, had incorrect information that risks misleading the public. In addition, while the dollar amount disclosed was incorrect, it could have seriously damaged negotiations as the seller could have interpreted that number as indicative of the City’s price point.” (The mayor rightly pointed out the $50 million figure was incorrect, as the final figure at last estimate is now more than double that.)  What struck us then was the force with which the mayor and  councillors came down on Stolte, leading a reporter to wonder if the urgency of sanctioning Stolte was really the breach of confidentiality itself or the fact that through Stolte’s actions the size of the project was now in the public domain.

Publisher’s note.  During the kerfuffle surrounding the sanctioning of Stolte, the Mayor attempted to force Stolte to make a public apology to a city Staff member.  The attempt was made by the Mayor during a virtual Council meeting.  The Gazette published the rant which can be reviewed HERE

With the Stolte matter behind it, council throughout 2022 developed a public consultation plan that in our view was misleading to participants, and formed the basis of the complaint to the Ombudsman. Both in our reporting, and in our complaint to the Ombudsman, the Bay Observer stated that the complaint, “relates to the genesis of the Bateman project, specifically the failure by council to provide the public with any sense of the size and scope of a plan to spend tens of millions of dollars on renovations to the former Robert Bateman School for use as a community centre as they were conducting public consultation throughout 2022. In fact, I submit that the city engaged in deliberate obfuscation of the financial scope of the project, as they engaged in public consultation. Indeed, those members of the public who participated in surveys and town halls had no idea for what they were actually providing buy-in, making the public consultation piece a sham. The project was essentially presented to the public as a simple land swap, with the end goal providing space for a Brock University satellite campus, a city economic division known as Tech Place and the Library.

The (cost and scope of the) community centre aspect was only alluded to in the most vague terms throughout the public consultation period, when in fact every member of council had known it was a major capital project costing at least $50 million (December 2021). As soon as the election was over the price was announced at $80 Million and has now grown to $100 Million. A decision to embark on a project of this magnitude while giving the public at least a ballpark sense of the cost would not have frustrated subsequent tendering. The fact that this communication process was followed in an election year is particularly concerning as it was a legitimate item for public discussion. Large municipal projects are frequently presented to the public for comment with an approximate price tag attached, in fact plebiscites (on significant public works projects)  are often framed with this information.”

The full Ombudsman report runs to 24 pages.  You can read it in the Bay Observer.

John Best is the Editor of the Bay Observer

By James Porthouse

December 9th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

By Pepper Parr

December 6^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

“They  just do whatever they want with no consideration for the rules, for accountability, for transparency and frankly, for what the data and science are telling them. This is a government that’s off the rails and they’re doing whatever they want at enormous expense to the people of Ontario.”

Who said that: The Auditor General for the province.

How does the Auditor General get the job?

The Legislative Assembly of Ontario appoints the Auditor General for a 10-year term. The appointment is made by Order of the Legislative Assembly after a bi-partisan panel of MPPs unanimously recommends a candidate. The legislature must also approve any removal of the Auditor General.

The Auditor General is an independent officer of the Legislative Assembly who is responsible for:

Ensuring financial transparency

Holding public-sector organizations accountable

Examining the province’s Public Accounts

Auditing the accounts and financial transactions of Crown agencies

Carrying out performance audits of government activities and programs

Assessing compliance with legislation and government directives

Reporting on their examination in an annual report

Shelly Spence, the Ontario Auditor General had a lot more to say about the Ford government.

Tune in tomorrow – we will have more for you.