By Pepper Parr

April 10th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

OPINION

Mayor Meed Ward had several opportunities to speak to City Council when they met for most of Monday and Tuesday of this week.

She appears to have taken a pass on that opportunity and decided instead to write an Open Letter.

It is all there, for you to read.  Nothing has changed, but that is an opinion you should reach on your own. The complete OPEN LETTER can be reached HERE

The question we have for the Mayor is:

Have you met individually and personally with the four members of Council that are, to date, rock hard in their view that they want you to relinquish some of the Strong Mayor powers you hold. In the news letters that members of Council send out none, other than ward 2 Councillor Lisa Kearns, have made public comments on what you have done.

In your Open letter you point out that:

Of the 44 municipalities that have received the additional powers and duties under the legislation, 12 Mayors delegated all duties that could be delegated, 16 delegated none of the duties, and 16 delegated some of them.

I read that information, that you made public, to mean that most municipalities have shared the Strong Mayor powers.

Your colleagues are waiting to hear what you have to say at the scheduled April 16th meeting of City Council.

Use the word “reset”.  I can hardly wait to learn just what you mean by that.

That you chose to send the Open Letter suggests you are feeling the heat.

I see that as a good sign.

Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.

By Pepper Parr

April 10^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

During the two day Council meeting Chris Kroes, Manager, Health, Safety & Wellness reported on Employee Health, Safety and Wellness.  Not much in the way of good news in the document.

Disturbing was the number of public to staff harassment complaints.

There were 58 such reports in 2023 – that’s more than 1 a week.  Of the 58 – 17 required a staff member being away from work.  The 17 lost time incidents in 2023; was up from 10 in 2022

The city is a self-insured employer. What this means is the city does not pay insurance premiums but rather pays for all injury and illness costs plus a WSIB administration fee to administer the claims.

Based on some feedback from senior leaders the City introduced a mechanism for senior leaders to be notified if a WSIB incident occurs in their service area. This allows them to be aware of it and to inquire with their groups. We’ve enhanced our corrective action process for better tracking, trending and ultimately to ensure completion of those corrective actions to ensure that we prevent re-occurrence.

Chris Kroes was reporting on the 2023 Human Resources report said:

“It is important for City Council to have an awareness of Employee Health, Safety and Wellness matters.

“In recent years, we’ve been tracking incidents of harassment and violence more closely. We have successfully increased reporting and follow up on these incidents; this supports compliance with the Occupational Safety Act.

A “citizen” getting something off his chest at a public meeting. Former Mayor Rick Goldring and a now retired staff member Vito had put up with it.

“In 2023, there were 58 incidents reported: a note – this is public to staff interactions and does not include staff to staff cases, that’s handled separately and not tracked here.”

City Manager Tim Commisso later added that 17 of the 58 became lost time incidents.

A general review of the data suggests that around 79% are categorized as harassment in nature, and the majority are verbal interactions. 24% of incidents involve some form of violence.

Kroes continues: “The work done by the legal and clerk’s departments on new public conduct policy has also provided for consistency in dealing with misconduct. It should be noted that management of corporate security has been identified as a resource gap city wide and we are looking to make improvements in this area to ensure risks are adequately mitigated to keep staff and the public safe and secure.

Chair Nisan:  Thank you, Chris for your diligent work keeping us safe. Mayor Mead Ward has a question.

Mayor Meed Ward:  ”I’m very concerned and startled by that number of 58.  I want to clarify that number and follow up

Chris:  “Yes, these are members of public to the staff. That’s the interaction types. We do have a relatively low threshold of reporting, which is which is by it that’s done intentionally and it’s based on our customer service guidelines. Those incidents are members of the public to city staff and there was 58 of those reported.”

Mayor: Can you give us an indication are these and some with violence, which is really terrifying and my heart goes out to anyone who’s experienced that it’s completely unacceptable. So are some of these online harassment or would all of this be? I mean is some of it email? Is it verbal? Or a mix?

Chris: It includes any type of interaction that sort of falls within the customer service guidelines would generally say level two or level two or level three of the customer service guidelines.

Staff who work behind the counters at City Hall are the front line people that are experiencing rising levels of personal abuse.

So those interactions could be in person they could be over the phone that could be via email, just incidents that are conduct that’s harassing in nature. And again, it’s a relatively low reporting threshold and not all of them may actually meet that strict definition in the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

But they are reporting and we are ensuring that there’s adequate follow up and that our eyes are on it from health, safety and wellness as well, to make sure those employees are supported through that interaction.

I will point out that we also focus on how the employee feels after that interaction. So it you know, someone may not have intended something but as we know that that’s not always how it’s received by staff. So again, it’s our primary focus is to look at how they’re feeling and ensuring they’re supported after those incidents.

City Manager Tim Commisso: This is the fourth year we’ve reported out on our safety.  I’m really trying to come to grips with this. I do want to thank Council though, over the last five years for adding more human resources particularly around safety and wellness.

Relative to the number of interactions we have given the work we do every day this is still relatively low, but we will strive to keep that lower. This year, we didn’t do an update on staff turnover. We still have a relatively low turnover level across the organization. And in our management team, our objective is 5% and I’m just waiting to hear back on those numbers.

Mayor Meed Ward: “”I’m very concerned and startled by that number of 58.”

Mayor:  With respect to our front line staff customer facing who may be facing some of us harassment that showed up on the last slide. Do you think there may be more measures that we could take to mitigate reduce that are there some practical steps that you would be able to look into to bring back to us that we might be able to endorse to ensure that we provide excellent customer service, but that we protect our staff at the same time?

Chris:  I think there’s I think it’s a multifaceted approach and it’s based on an assessment of each individual work area, customer facing work area to make sure that they have the training they need in terms of being able to de-escalate and, and sort of, you know, mitigate those interactions from going you know, to a point where it poses a hazard.

Also looking at the customer service counters and making sure that they’re adequately secured and there’s places that people can go to sort of as a as a shelter area so they can get away as needed, obviously there’s emergency protocols like lockdown, hold insecure procedures that we’re looking at improving and enhancing. Ultimately security as a whole and workplace violence risk assessments as a whole.

There’s a lot of work we still need to do and ultimately, there may be some things that we need down the road that we identify and those assessments.  I don’t want to I don’t want to list those out now before we before we get to doing a comprehensive assessment but definitely need to take a closer look and making sure that we’re assessing and controlling these workplace violence risks.

Mayor: Do you have any, do you have an idea how often a like a front line staff would be getting on the on the receipt of bad language for example, or you know, excessive negativity? Do you ever do a line on that? Because of these are not all not all those will be reported obviously.

Chris: This is why we we’ve introduced a very low threshold for reporting. So when interactions are happening that are inappropriate and aggressive and you know, swearing and yelling and that sort of thing.

Chris: We’re definitely encouraging those to be reported and it’s very clear that those need to be reported in our policies and procedures. I would say that, that the lion’s share or the or the majority of the 58, there would be those types of interactions. That would be the majority of it. So it’s verbal interactions that are yelling, swearing, unfortunately, sometimes somewhat threatening. That’s, I would say the majority of the 58 would be would be the yelling and the swearing and that sort of thing.

Mayor: I’m curious around what are processes for reporting. So what you know, somebody feels they’ve been harassed in any way. Whether it meets the OSA definition or not, is there a portal do they come talk to you do they talk to their supervisor what’s what do we tell folks to do or invite them to do if they experience this?

Chris: There is a reporting protocol. It’s handled the same way as any workplace incident, whether it’s a hazard or an injury, incident with injury; our direction has been to report it the same way

It goes to the supervisor first. Again, the supervisor looks at the customer service guidelines and sees you know if the interaction is within those different categories, and then ultimately, there’s an online portal that we have for all incident reports and that the supervisor will log into that portal. They will submit information and particulars about the incident they’ll do a preliminary investigation so that they can report it. That report once they hit submit the entire health safety and wellness team is alerted that something has occurred. And then we have safety advisors that will follow up with the supervisor and dig into it more. Depending on the severity and ensuring controls are placed in place to prevent it. If it if it does, if the activity or the conduct does potentially fall into misconduct as defined under the Public conduct policy, then it’s up to the supervisor and again they consult with us as well to refer for review under the misconduct as misconduct under the Public conduct policy. So that’s sort of the after the initial reporting is done and review is done.

Then there’s a there’s a decision on whether it needs to be reviewed as misconduct under the Public conduct policy and that’s a separate process, as you know, where that gets reviewed by either a director or a committee depending on the department and then steps are taken as a result of that review if needed.

Mayor: Okay, so I’m just thinking about how we because you talked about under reporting, and that notwithstanding some of these might not reach the threshold of what the statute says is harassment.

Nevertheless, they create a very toxic, fearful, degraded environment for people to work in.

You’re asking people to report right so how do we encourage people if you know they’ve got something that is just making them feel threatened, making them feel degraded as an individual? You know, we’ve all seen the we’ve all gotten emails like that personally, our staff certainly have – they take it on the chin more than anyone in terms of very derogatory personal comments, etc. and so forth. So maybe not an  WSIB payable offence, but certainly not a nice way to start your day. So how can we support people to still come forward with those things?

Chris: That’s why we’ve ensured that it’s a low threshold  – so essentially, you know, if you feel uncomfortable if someone was aggressive if someone was yelling someone who was swearing let your supervisor know that’s the first step.

That would would trigger the next steps. We regularly talk about this in safety talks. To say okay, here’s our respect in the workplace policy. Here’s our customer service guidelines. Here’s our incident reporting guidelines. We and supervisors are essentially reminding staff fairly regularly, you know, that if these interactions happen, you need to let me know as a supervisor, and then so I can make sure that’s looked after

So, Mayor, in terms of seeing the numbers increase over the years. I do you believe we’re being effective in encouraging that that reporting and ensuring psychological safety on the part of the staff member to feel comfortable escalating that to a supervisor. I think I think we’re definitely making some progress there. And I’m optimistic that we’re definitely heading in the right direction there.

Councillor Rory Nisan, Chair of the Committee that heard the Wellness report.

Chair Nisan:  Mayor, would you like to move the report?  Do you have any comments?

Mayor: I do. Thank you, Chris for all of your work on this. It ultimately does land on our table as the council as the directors of the corporation. That’s a very significant duty and responsibility on our shoulders to ensure a respectful safe harassment free workplace wherever that harassment is coming from.

And I you know, wheels are turning in my mind around how I can support my own team, because we get this a lot. I say to folks, we’re public servants. We’re not public Punching. Bags. We’re not here for others sport and amusement. We’re here to do a job and serve and that needs to be done in a respectful environment. We all deserve that. The good news is  I read this report and the previous one together. We don’t have any trouble attracting people to come and work for us. So it’s great to see the positions that we funded in the last budget, getting filled and people really wanting to join our team and when they put their trust and faith in us and they come to work for us, and as Tim said, we have a fairly low turnover rate, but we’ll get those numbers. People want to be here and we want to make sure that it’s safe and enjoyable for them to be here and to stay and that they know that we’ve got their back.

Chair Nisan: Thank you, Mayor. I don’t see any other comments I’ll just add my own. I am concerned that it is far more common than the reporting so that the numbers in the report indicating an increase doesn’t necessarily reflect what’s going on on the ground. So maybe you and I can take it offline with the responsible Executive Director as well and talk further about that. I witnessed harassment City Hall, myself late last week.

And it appears to me to be a very common occurrence. So that’s my concern – that there may be an ongoing and an increase in the culture of harassment of a small minority of residents who are not being respectful of people who are here to serve them. I look forward to talking more about the issue and how we can root it out.

With that. I don’t see any other comments. I will call the vote all those in favour. Any opposed?

That item is carried.

By Pepper Parr

April 8^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

Me and my eclipse.

Well, I didn’t feel any emotional change.

It never got dark where I was – up in Mountsburg, a couple of km north of Waterdown.

Pepper Parr – taking in an eclipse. It didn’t get dark but the moon did cover the sun.

The chickens were walking around picking works, the clouds seemed to stand still, the temperature lowered and if I wore my eclipse glasses I could watch the moon covering the sun – but it didn’t get dark.

The coyotes and the foxes that roam the property were nowhere to be seen.  The deer that show up on occasion were nowhere to be seen either.

But there was an eclipse and people did have their experience.  Mine was kind of bland.

The Scotch that was poured was as good as the wine and Ray does know how to BBQ a steak – so the day was not a total write off.

My colleagues elsewhere in the city had different experiences.

By Pepper Parr

April 8^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

This is something new.

Mayor Marianne Meed Ward

The Mayor declaring a Conflict of Interest on a matter related to a Notice of Trespass.

A Notice of Trespass is the document the city uses to keep someone out of the council chamber and away from public events that take place on public property.

The matter is going to be held in a CLOSED session – so we will never know what the Mayor might be up to.

The issuing of the Notices is not really public.

By Pepper Parr

April 8^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

So this is how they handled it.

Last November Burlington Green delegated to City Council asking for $50,000 in the way of support..

If you want to count what Burlington Green has don for the city – start at about 500 – this is the woman that moved the needle. Amy Schnurr, Executive Director BurlingtonGreen

There wasn’t much in the way of discussion at the time.  A number of Gazette readers pointed out that not for profits were not entitled to grants.  The policy setting out that position was due for review in 2023 but wasn’t given any attention.

With the ask in front of them – Council had to make a decision.

BurlingtonGreen has Holy Grail status in this city – a status that is much deserved.

There are some that feel the Gazette is gunning for BurlingtonGreen.  The record will show that we have given them more ink than any other media.

The concern we were focusing on was the practice of taking care of your friends that we were seeing at Council meetings.  Everyone from the City Manager down on the Staff side and every member of Council looked for some way to give BurlingtonGreen the funds they needed.

The Staff report was an embarrassment – it failed to look at the risks and didn’t look for something unique.

They show up – every time.

The need at BurlingtonGreen was real.  Funding from the federal and provincial levels had not dried up but it wasn’t providing what Burlington Green felt they needed.

They had also gone as far as they could go with the Trillium Fund Foundation.

The city decided to:

Approve one time funding for 2024 in the maximum amount of $62,000 from the Green Initiatives Reserve Fund (we were not aware that there was such a fund) as a fee for services provided by BurlingtonGreen

Direct the Executive Director of Environment, Infrastructure and Community Services to execute a Memorandum of Understanding between the City and BurlingtonGreen outlining the services to be provided in 2024, including performance measures in form satisfactory to the Executive Director of Legal Services and Corporation Counsel; and

Consider an ongoing fee for services approach with BurlingtonGreen in the amount of 62,000 per calendar year during the Mayor’s 2025 budget process.

We would like to see that list of services and how they determine the dollar value of each service.  The details do matter.

More importantly is the policy environment – and that appears to have been neglected.  Policy is the reason Council exists – they look to Staff to come forward with reports and they determine what the policy is – and if the policy needs a revision and perhaps an upgrade then Council turns to Staff for input.

Clearly the funding environment has changed – Climate Change is a fact of life.  The question is: How are we going to deal with it on a person to person on the ground level?

Planting, planting, planting – it is in the tens of thousands.

This is where the rubber hits the road for the BurlingtonGreen people. They show up and get the job done.

That is where BurlingtonGreen has led the way.  They literally create events and occasions to improve the environment which is the critical part of getting a handle on Climate Change.  And, most importantly, they have a membership that shows up and delivers.  People who decide they want to run for public could learn a lot about organization from this group.

Their Green Up – Clean Up is not just a public service it brings out people in the hundreds to do the job and celebrate what was done. On one occasion a local hospitality organization showed up with their BBQ’s and fed hundreds in Civic Square – an occasion for which they should have been given a Key to the City.

How the new funding approach plays out will call for transparency and accountability.  This Council and Staff didn’t do all that well on this one.

By Pepper Parr

April 7^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

He “overlooked” an  email linked to the $8.28-billion Greenbelt scandal that was transmitted on private server accounts instead of government servers.

Marit Stiles, Leader of the NDP opposition in the Legislature, filed the complaint with the Integrity Commissioner. She will not be pleased but probably not surprised.

Ontario’s ethics watchdog has cleared Premier Doug Ford’s chief of staff of wrongdoing after the discovery of an “overlooked” email  brought to his attention in a  complaint from NDP Leader Marit Stiles to Integrity Commissioner J. David Wake

The RCMP are not as likely to take the explanation Patrick Sackville gave the Integrity Commissioner at the same face value should they have a reason to call him in for a conversation.

In response to the complaint J. David Wake said he has “accepted” Patrick Sackville’s explanation of how his Oct. 17, 2022 email exchange was missed.

“I have concluded that the Oct. 17 email sent from Mr. Amato to Mr. Sackville’s personal email in the circumstances I have outlined does not support a finding that Patrick Sackville knew about the specific removal criteria for lands from the Greenbelt or the properties selected for removal until he was briefed with others, as he testified, on Oct. 27,” Wake wrote earlier this week.

The Integrity Commissioner said “it is unfortunate that this email was not retrieved in accordance with the request for documents I made to Mr. Sackville … I have accepted his explanation as to how it was overlooked.”

Sackville, Ford’s chief of staff, told Wake it “was an oversight on my part” that the missive fell through the cracks because it was to his personal account rather than his government email.

Sackville said: When asked for all documents relevant to the issues you are investigating, I conducted a diligent search of my records that would be responsive to your request. However, I did not locate the email from Mr. Amato in making that search,” said Sackville.

Patrick Sackville was highly recommended when he was made the Premier’s Chief of Staff. Described as one of the smartest people around. A question that might be asked is: How many emails did he receive on his private server – and where did David Amato get the Sackville personal email address?

“In conducting some due diligence related to freedom of information requests, I later became aware of this email and, consistent with my obligations, provided it to you expeditiously,” he said, referring to the message being found last December.

“I do not conduct government business on my personal email, and would not have expected or anticipated such an email.”

Wake said “it is entirely plausible that he would have given primary attention to the hundreds of daily emails he receives to his government email address and that he may have neglected to be attentive to his personal emails.”

Stiles, who obtained the documents through a freedom of information request, argued the email contradicted testimony given under oath to the integrity commissioner last year.

In the message from Amato to Sackville, the ministerial chief of staff shared a “list of criteria for removals” of 7,400 acres from the two-million-acre environmentally sensitive Greenbelt around the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.

These include “infrastructure services,” such as proximity to roads, gas and hydro lines and water mains, police and fire services.

The email also listed “potential offsets” such as the Paris Galt Moraine, “green space our government has decided not to move on” as well as “options to go larger depending on executive interest.”

At issue is the timing of the email, which is at odds with testimony made under oath to Wake for his Aug. 30 report on the Greenbelt affair.

“Members of the premier’s staff also told us they were not involved in the selection of properties,” the integrity commissioner wrote last summer.

David Amato was Chef of Staff to a Minister who failed to pay attention to what was going on within his department. That cost Steve Clark his job. Ideally it will cost him his seat in the next provincial election.

“Mr. Sackville said he did not discuss specific properties to be removed or removal criteria with Mr. Amato until the briefing that occurred on Oct. 27, 2022,” he noted at the time.

“Mr. Sackville recalled being first briefed about the Greenbelt project at a meeting facilitated by the cabinet office on Oct. 27, 2022. He told me that he recalled the intentions of the policy were discussed and that it should be ‘programmatic,’ meaning that it should be something that could be repeated and made standard.”

However, that was 10 days after the Oct. 17 email in which criteria for removal of the lands from the Greenbelt were addressed. The changes were finally announced publicly on Nov. 4, 2022.

Sackville and Amato are reported to have declined to comment when contacted by the Star on Thursday.

Premier Ford said he didn’t know a thing – for that he should lose his job. It is his job to know.

Ford has maintained he knew nothing about the removal of 15 parcels of land from the Greenbelt, which were estimated to be worth $8.28 billion to property owners.

In separate reports last summer, the auditor general and integrity commissioner found certain developers with Tory connections were “favoured.”

Under pressure, Ford cancelled the land swap on Sept. 21.

The deal is now being investigated by the RCMP.

The public should demand that the Mounties live up to the once rock solid reputation – they always get their man.

Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.

By Staff

April 6th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

Let’s Grow Burlington’s Tree Canopy Together!

BurlingtonGreen and the City of Burlington Forestry Department are organizing a community tree planting to take place from 9:30 am to noon on Saturday, April 20th at Pathfinder Park.

Together we will plant 500 native trees PLUS some lucky participants will each win a beautiful tree to plant at their Burlington homes!

Advance registration is required. Limited space is available.  Click HERE to register