By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON  March 6, 2012  When your city Council began the process of putting together the budget for the 2012 fiscal year they instructed staff to come back with a document that would result in a tax increase of between 2.5% and 3.50%  The draft budget called for a tax increase of 3.44%.

During the past month Council and staff have been going through a process that has resulted in a committee level budget approval calling for a tax increase of 3.29% over the tax increase for 2011 – that one was less than 1%.

Budget committee meetings were chaired by Councillor Craven who did a superb job of keeping Council members focus and moving through the agenda quickly and efficiently.

What does all this mean to you?  You will be adding $16.96 to your tax bill for every $100,000 of current value assessment attached to your home.  If your house is assessed at $300,000 your tax bill will have an additional $50.88 cents on it

Mayor Goldring said during his election campaign that he would work to hold the increases during his term of office to not more than 10% during the four year period. During the budget discussions Rick Craven, chair of the budget committee, pointed out the 10% was a political statement and not council policy. With a .9% increase in 2011 and a proposed increase of 3.29 % in 2012, the Mayor will be at 4.19 half way through his mandate.

In 2011 Councillor Sharman wanted to see a 0% tax increase – that demand really shook up Council.  The lowest demand we got this year was a 2.99% increase from Councillor Dennison.  The 3.29% increase agreed to at Committee will only go higher when it gets to Council for final ratification.

The final figure will get determined at the March 19^th Council meeting and the tax bills will go out late in April.

Watching a city craft their budget is a fascinating part of the democratic process.  In Burlington it began with the Mayor stating that he would be happy with a tax increase that was somewhere between 2% and 3.5% and city Council sent staff a direction instructing them to pour over every department’s expenses and work towards a figure that fell within that range.  Getting to where we are with this budget has been an interesting and at times exasperating process.

Once staff had been given their basic instructions they beavered away over the books.   In Burlington, the Capital Budget gets done first – that’s the document that sets out the spending that has to be done over an 10 year time frame and set out what has to be allocated each year.  Building a bridge, constructing an underpass, replacing a building.  The replacement of the Drury Lane Bridge is an example of a capital expense.

With longer term need set out, Council then buckled down to figure out what they need to get through the next 12 months.  In Burlington 90% of the revenue raised through the tax levy is spent on salaries and benefits – so this gets a very close look.

Last year the management of the FTE (Full time employees) was such a mess that Council put a cap on what the city manager could hire.  Councillor Rick Craven felt this instruction seriously hobbled the city managers ability to run the city.  But hiring had gotten so seriously out of hand the previous two years that Council put the hobble in place.  Whenever there is going to be a new hire, the department looking for a new person will have to make a sound business case.  Lifting the staffing cap was, in the eyes of Budget Committee chair Rick Craven, the biggest and most important decision made by the committee.

Council had a fine little spat last week when Councillor Taylor said he was opposed to going into closed session to discuss what the staff salary increase would be and if Council did that he was going to leave the Council Chamber and hold a press conference in the atrium.

When Meed Ward was first elected it looked as if she was going to champion a move away from these closed sessions but her desire for higher office proved to be stronger than her journalism degree and for the most part she has been silent when it comes to closed sessions.

Staff had settled on a general salary increase in excess of 2% when they knew that the region had settled on 2%.

Meed Ward did attempt to have the free parking city hall staff get taken away; that didn’t fly and her attempt to have it phased out over three years didn’t get the support of her fellow Councillors either.

Same thing happened to her attempt to have $100,000 removed from the city manager’s Staff Training budget.

Jack Dennison moved back into city hall – that’s going to cost you an additional $15,000. Up until very recently, actually close to the time when council members got moved to the 7^th floor, where the accommodation was a lot nicer than the digs they had in offices that were windowless for some council members and their staff were stuck in a basement.  Prior to the move to the 7^th floor Dennison did most his work out of his health club and didn’t need a full time assistant.

During the part of the process that had Council members digging into very specific spending items Councillor Dennison managed to carve out an additional $600,000 for his Shave and Pave approach to saving the city a bundle and getting our roads to where most taxpayers think they should be.

The city instructed each of the local boards, the Library, the Burlington Art Centre to keep expense increases to not more than 2%, which made it all a little tough for groups like the Sound of Music Festival who came in rather late in the game and asked for an increase that passed the 50% level.  He was rebuffed but expect the SOM people to be at Council to try again.

Mayor Goldring hunkers down with staff from the treasury department delving into the specifics behind a particular recommendation in the Capital Budget.

In order to allow Councillors to get some sense of what cuts at different department levels would mean, the financial ninjas in the treasury department produced a spread sheet application that would allow Council members to cut an amount or add amounts and see instantly what the tax implications would be.  It was a sort of high tech executive toy they could play with at home at night.  When the little electronic memory sticks with the application were handed out Council members stood up and waved the things around like flags.  Councillors Meed Ward and Taylor were like children at a birthday party who had just been given a loot bag.

Director of Engineering Tom Eichenbaum looks over a drawing that Councillor Meed Ward needed additional information on. Italo Di Pietro's body language tells where he is with this conversation. He sits to the right quietly looking over Capital Budget numbers.

Sometime after the bound budget projections and recommendations are put in the hands of Council members the staff congregate in a meeting room and gather in groups at different tables where they wait for Council members to sit down with them and ask detailed questions about specific expenditures.  Because all the relevant people from a department are on hand Council members get  all the information they need and staff get an indication of where a Council member might be going with a particular expense.  The room had the feel of a Middle Eastern bazaar where merchants trade with one another.

A couple of weeks later Council members get the Current budget – this is a much bigger book and tends to get more attention from the public, especially groups that want something specific from the city.

For example this year the Burlington Performing Arts Centre was at the public tax trough seeking additional funding that was not in their original budget document.

For each of the budgets, Capital and Current, council members are able to have an item placed on the Agenda of the Budget and Corporate Services Committee.  Organizations or individuals that want to delegate on an item can also appear.

Last year, freshman Councillor Marianne Meed Ward took up most of the oxygen in the council chamber with a rather long list of items she wanted to have council discuss and ideally get them to go along with her view and have  the staff recommendation changed.  While Meed Ward had a number of items on the list this year, it was Councillor Dennison who looked for every possible nook and cranny he could scrounge dollars out of and have re-allocated to the repair of the roads in Burlington.  Meed Ward did take a run at reducing the city managers staff training budget by $100,000 but that didn’t fly.

The Fire Department needed and asked for funds to hire additional firemen for the newly opened station # 8 in the Appleby Line Upper Middle Road part of the city.  He was told to get by using overtime, which will only  work for so long.  Men and women asked to take on too much overtime, experience overtime fatigue.  Not the kind of problem Fire Chief Shayne Mintz wants to have to deal with.   This one may get some additional consideration at the full Council meeting on March 19^th.

Transit is going through a transition stage and working through the public participation stage of a consultants report and the creation of a Master Plan.  The opportunity to beef up the revenue side by increasing bus fares was lost when Council couldn’t agree on how much and when a rate increase should be implemented.  But this one is going to be coming back to Council – maybe even at the full Council meeting March 19^th.

The city is short millions on the amount available to repair roads and if you drive the city street you can see and feel the problems with our roads.  Dennison has become a champion of the “shave and pave” approach to road repair.  If the city maintains a regular schedule of shaving a small portion of the surface of a road and laying down new asphalt the need to re-build a road at some future date, at a significantly higher cost, can be avoided.

The problem for Burlington is that it has not put enough money into the roads repair budget and as a result the city is now years behind in the work that needs to be done.  The longer the repair work is left  undone the more expensive it gets.  Eventually the road has to be rebuilt completely.

Councillor Taylor has been doing this sort of thing since "the day he used to have hair, it was black then" and knows the numbers as well as anyone in city hall.

If what Dennison is proposing holds through the March 19^th Council meeting, where the budget will get cast in stone, there will be enough money to get all the work scheduled for up to the year 2014 done this year.  That may sound like we are getting ahead of ourselves – but that’s not the case.  We are so far behind that it was going to take years to catch up – which meant years of complaints from tax payers.

Ward 4 Councillor Jack  Dennison, who could probably run for Mayor on the strength of what he has done for roads this budget, took the $600,000 staff had recommended for road repairs and dug out more – a total of $600,000 additional dollars for a total of $1.2 million.

Dennison had Budget committee go along with taking the $400,000 that was scheduled for Strategic Land Acquisition and moving it into road repair and replaced that amount with part of the $4 million plus surplus from the 2011 accounts.  Dennison was just slicing and dicing and looking for anything that wasn’t nailed down.

As a result the terrible roads condition list will get cleaned out – all done – but Dennison hasn’t stopped.  There are funds in the Capital budget which has been approved – like a street that is going to get sidewalks on both sides of the road – Jack wants to cut some of those back to sidewalks on just one side of a road and use the funds saved for road repair. He thinks he can scare up an additional $600,000, for a total of $1.8 million in new money going into road repair.

The “shave and pave”  process Dennison has taken on as his personal mission, has a machine that goes along a street and shaves off an inch and a half of asphalt that is immediately replaced by two inches of new asphalt.  The result is a road that was beginning to deteriorate is now freshened and good for many years.

Goldring is seen to be doing a fine job as Mayor and has taken a Council that was once very fractious and molded it into a team that pulls together quite well for the most part; however he may find himself having to do even better in 2014.  One can almost hear candidate Dennison talking about how good a steward he was of the tax payer’s purse when he not only kept taxes low (he wanted the increase to be 2.99%) but ensured that the money collected was spent on road repair,  the city’s biggest problem.

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON  March 6, 2012  And the music played on.

Dave Miller, Executive Director of the Sound of Music Festival (SOM)

A lazy, hazy early summer evening on the lakefront - sweet music, cold beer and the entry price is just right.

took his case to a budget committee once again.  This time he wore a suit and they had a projector that worked for him and he was able to talk about his numbers but they still took a pass.  But it wasn’t as blunt a pass as his first attempt to get the city to pony up a little more cash. – that qualified as a disaster.

He also brought along a couple of volunteers and the new chair of his board – oddly enough they stayed in the seats in the public gallery; one usually trots them out to hopefully entice a council member to ask them a question or two.

Part of the problem Miller has is  that “show business” is not like any other business.  It chews up a lot of money and everything is on the line until the day of the event – and if it rains – you’re out of luck.

The Festival has a reserve of $400,000 which one would think they could dip into to cover the cost of growing the event.  Better to look at that $400,000 reserve as their “operating” money.  Fees have to be paid, artists want an advance to confirm a booking.  Show business needs that kind of cash in the bank.

Councillor Dennison said he felt he could live with making the grant $17,000 a year over a two year period but Councillor Taylor got crotchety and said based on what he was looking at the Festival made a profit.  And if they made a profit then why did they want more money from the city?  The problem during the second delegation was that the numbers on the committee report weren’t an accurate reflection of SOM’s financial condition.  This is a very successful financial operation that wants to grow the business and would like the city to get on the wagon.

All isn’t lost but Miller is going to have to make a strong business case if he is to get a vote from either Taylor or Lancaster.  Miller has done some of his homework – met with the Council members individually to plead his case.  He still has some work to do but he is beavering away at it.

If he could put together his financials in a format that was simple and direct and show that the Festival is a very financially successful event that brings major dollars into the city.  And if he could manage to convince the people at the Burlington Downtown Business Association to join him at the podium – he might just pull this off.

They are making him jump through hoops and so far Miller has managed to handle most of the questions – but that critical sense of confidence still doesn’t exist within Council.

They stream in by the thousands, all heading for a soft spot on the grass or a seat in the beer tent. The thrill seekers take a spin on the Ferris wheel.

And there is some work to be done on the relationship building side of things as well.  Miller wants to hold another event on a Saturday which makes good business sense but that will mean having all the barriers in place for that second Saturday and the Parks and Recreation people explain that they can’t just leave the barriers sitting out there for a week. “We would have to take them back into storage and then bring them out again and of course take them away again – that’s a lot of work for our people”, explained a Parks official.  However, if the Festival is picking up the cost – shouldn’t matter to the city – should it?

The Festival is a big event and Miller wants to work at having it broadcast which would be quite a coup for the city.  Imagine – the Burlington Sound of Music Festival being broadcast live across the country!  Every one of the seven people at that Council table would stand a little taller and feel quite a bit prouder if the Festival was getting national coverage.

That kind of thing just doesn’t happen.  It takes hours of work; Miller has to cultivate relationships, work angles and convince all kinds of people that this could work and the music is great content for a broadcaster.  That potential isn’t going to happen this year but it is certainly a pony worth putting a couple of bucks on.

Miller doesn’t come across as one of those slick entertainment types that promises everyone whatever they want just as long as he gets what he wants.  He’s a quiet guy who isn’t all that comfortable standing before council explaining things that he hasn’t made all that clear in his written presentation.

This is where perceptive council members can see beyond the presentation and provide the leadership to get the Festival to the next level.  $34,000 over two years to get a shot at broadcasting Burlington to the rest of the country. And we are thinking about taking a pass on that?  Are we crazy?

Might be.  The March 19^th Council meeting is their kill date.

By Tania Mais

BURLINGTON, ON  March 6, 2012  The empowerment of women and a commitment to the issue of hunger and poverty was the theme established by the United Nations for the 2012 International Women’s Day.  The 16th annual International Women’s breakfast presented by Honourable Paddy Torsney,  with guest speaker, Kathy Bardswick, President and CEO from the Co-operators Group Ltd. was definitely empowering but fell short when it came to adequately addressing concerns of local poverty.  Torsney and Bardswick took the time to appeal to the students and aspiring women in the room encouraging representation in politics, economics and the field of mathematics.

Guest speaker at the 16th Annual Women's Day Breakfast, Kathy Bardswick, President and CEO of the Co-operators Group shares thoughts with the 60+ high school students at the event..

There was a powerful buzz in the air as over 190 women filled the conference room of the Holiday Inn in Burlington to celebrate women.  Women were relating to each other with ease and joy.  It was inspiring to be among retired professional women, working women, mothers, eager students and a handful of male supporters.  There were groups of co-workers, friends and families. The conversations were rich, the laughs were heartfelt and the passion was fierce.

As I worked my way around the conference room, I met amazing women, including two secondary school students from Notre Dame Secondary, Sarah Lowicki and Chelsea Urquico.  These ladies were proud to announce that they were handpicked by their Principal to attend this event.  Lowicki explained that she is very active in sports at her school while Urquico advised that she is a mentor to the grade nine students.   I was also pleased to meet a student from Gary Allan Secondary, Katherine Bell and her mother Kathleen Bell while they celebrated the honour of her being chosen by her peers to represent her school.  Burlington Secondary students made up almost 30% of the quests in attendance.

I shared in a joyous conversation with an employee from A Different Drummer Book Store, Carol Hunt.  She graciously introduced me to her long-time friends and golfing companions.  Among the five spirited women (who make a point of coming together to meet at this event annually) were three retired school teachers that worked together in various Burlington schools.  Hunt reported that “Paddy Torsney is a loyal customer of her bookstore and that is how they became the destination for purchasing tickets to the International Women’s day breakfast”. Janet Dawson and her colleague, public health nurses informed me that this was their first year attending the annual breakfast.  Dawron reported “I wanted to come here and celebrate women”.

There was a token amount of male political figures including Mayor Goldring, Ward 1 Councillor, Rick Craven, and the Regional Chair, Gary Carr, in attendance.

Before introducing the main speaker, Paddy Torsney, who will be the 2013 Chair of the United Way, highlighted the value of women in the political arena.  Torsney emphasized the under representation of women in politics at all levels of government.  Torsney invited women to consider running for political office.  She maintained that  “women in politics have better outcomes for children and communities”.

Kathy Bardswick,  president and CEO of Cooperators Group spoke with confidence and ease as she highlighted the value of cooperative model in business and the important role that women play to contribute to its international success.  After reviewing many benefits of the cooperative business model (including the ability to engage and vote on decisions in a democratic style) Bardswick enthusiastically tried to entice the female students in the room to keep their minds open to mathematics and financially based studies.   Bardswick connected mathematical skills with musical ability and well developed problem solving skills.  During the question period, Bardswick highlighted some strides the Co-operative Group  is making to connect with first nations communities and minimize the impact of national catastrophes.

Ann Swarbrick, Executive Director for Habitat for Humanity in Burlington listens as Kathy Bardswick talks about the role the co-operative approach plays in the world of finance.

Ann Swarbrick, executive director of Habitat for Humanity inquired about the lack of commitment to  cooperative  housing initiative in Oakville and Burlington stating that “10% of the population in Burlington and Oakville live under the poverty line”.  Swarbrick wondered “how the Co-operators group  planned to assist the initiative to revalue cooperative housing”.  Bardswick advised that “although Cooperators Group has tried to engage in supportive dialogue regarding affordable housing, the issue does not seem to be resonating with those who have authority to make decisions about housing”.

In my discussion with Paddy, she told me she has sponsored this women’s breakfast for the past 15 years because it “celebrates women and offers the opportunity for continued networking”.  When asked about how Canada fares internationally in regards to the economic, social and political advancement of women, Torsney reported “Canada has a long way to go economically.  Although women are making more income, they should have more opportunity to influence economic policy and make budget decisions”.

In keeping with the theme of International Women’s day to address the issue of Poverty and hunger, I asked Torsney how she thought we could address poverty and hunger in our own backyards of Burlington Ontario?.  She responded: “ we need to get the information out into the community.  Did you see how surprised this crowd was to hear Ann Swarbrick from Habitat Humanity announce that there is a 10% poverty rate in Burlington.  We need to think more about the impact that hunger has on the development of our children and their access to resources. We need to ensure that the local decision makers know about these things.”

The message was clear.  Women in politics and economically influential positions have better outcomes for children and the communities according to Torsney and Bardswick.  The hope is that the young women who attended this breakfast and other events will feel empowered to get involved in cooperative businesses and political office to influence social, political and economic growth and change. We need better outcomes for our children and communities facing poverty and hunger right here in Burlington.

Tanya Mais is a graduate of the University of Toronto.  Her studies and professional life are related to mental health and justice services.  She takes a sociological approach to her work. Her quest is to contribute to social justice within an anti-racism, and anti-oppressive framework.  Currently Tanya is the proud mother of two girls and works part time at a local mental health agency in Burlington as well as volunteering at her daughters school facilitating bullying awareness discussions at the kindergarten level.   

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON  March 1, 2012  She did her best.  She stood up and took a stand.  She was brave.

Alas, her fellow Council members didn’t have quite the same degree of courage and they all sat on their hands when it came to a vote on whether or not the city should continue paying for employee parking.

This is not a small matter – the city pays out $184,844 annually for employee parking and Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward felt this was a perk that was no longer justified and should be done away with.  Other members talked around the issue but none came right out and said they thought city staff should get their parking paid for.  The city provides discounts on bus passes but there is apparently a very small uptake on that offer.  Why take the bus when the city is going to pay your parking.

She was never shy about speaking up and at a Council Budget committee she certainly spoke out about the city paying for employee parking. But every other council member sat on their hands when it came to a vote.

For a city that wants to increase transit use – paying parking for staff that could take the bus to work seems to be a policy that isn’t being lived up to by city management.

There are some situations where very senior people should get their parking paid for – that`s consistent with what is done in the private sector.  It should be noted though that none of the people at the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital get there parking paid for.  That they must pay their own parking is written right into their employment contracts.

Meed Ward is a trooper if she is anything. This wasn’t the only time that she was the owner of the only hand that went up in the air when the vote was called.

She couldn’t get any support on a vote to cancel the free parking so she put forward another motion to have the perk phased out over a three year period.  No takers on that one either.

Meed Ward made three points as she argued for ending the free parking for staff..  There was a matter of principle.  There is no free parking for anyone else.  You pay to park on the streets or the city parking lots and while you don`t pay to park at the malls, the cost of that parking space is built into the rental structure meetings pay for retail space at the malls.  Meed Ward did not think staff should be putting forward expense items that were advantageous to them.  When staff put a line item in the budget to cover parking – they are in effect giving themselves a direct benefit – which comes in at $184,000 plus annually.

Her second point was that Council was expected to show leadership and all the talk of keeping tax increases low is a bit of a sham when the city had an opportunity to reduce the expenses by $184,000 plus – just like that.

Her third arguing point was that paying for staff parking and then fining people who may have spent a little longer than they expected in a store to come out and find they have a ticket on their car – well she thought that was a bit  much.

On a personal note – the Council committee that was debating the budget had announced that they would commence at 9:30 am and break at 12:30 pm – and so I put the $4.50 needed in the parking meter.  They broke for five minutes at 12:10 and then went back into session and stayed there till 1:30 pm.  Had the meter man been in the parking lot I use I would have been looking at a $20.00 parking ticket so that I could sit in the Council chambers to hear a debate about staff getting free parking.

Council members get a free parking spot right outside city hall – fair enough.  They are in and out frequently and they do work long hours.  And they are the Board of Directors – they get a perk.  When this benefit was conferred on Meed Ward she declined and my understanding is that she pays for her parking spot.  Good on you Ms Meed Ward, there are times when you drive people bananas with some of the stuff you do at Council but on this one you are right on principle and you were right on leadership as well as customer service.

Can that populist principled approach get you elected as Mayor?   That’s a different issue.

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON February 28, 2012   Jane McKenna, Burlington’s member of the provincial Legislature is settling into her new digs on Brant Street just fine.  Her tasks as the political representative for the city and her role as a “player” in the Progressive Conservative political scene in the province are coming together quite well for her.

The “official” opening of the office and her co-chairing  the Progressive Conservative party’s Annual General Meeting have had her jumping and seeing very little of her household but, except for two of her children the place is pretty quiet.

She learned very quickly how to listen. She has enough executive capacity to get things done. The next year will tell us if she has the making of a good MPP.

Lady Jane, as we have chosen to call her, is still close to enamoured with Tim Hudak, her party leader, who got a pretty stern  message from the party membership on the campaign that was run during the provincial election.  The sense seemed to be that if the “real” Tim Hudak had been allowed to come out the Progressive Conservatives would have formed the government.

I think the public saw the real Hudak and took a pass.

While the Liberals still hold power at Queen’s Park, given the state of the economy, I think everyone in the province is going to take a haircut.  The demographic shift of the population to the western side of Canada; the  significant shift in manufacturing out of the province and the demands the health care system is beginning to make on the public purse are all coming together and will result in a significant change in what Ontario is going to be.

The province doesn’t have the revenues it used to have and the economy is sluggish at best and is going to remain that way for as long as this government is in office.  It is going to be tough.

Some of the deep thinkers see the province’s role as the “engine of the Canadian economy” coming to an end. Ontario is no longer the province that manufactures the tractors and the combines that are used to harvest western crops.  Technology is also in the mix changing everything.  McKenna is convinced Premier McGuinty made a critical mistake on the deal he made with Samsung for wind turbines.  That one hasn’t proven itself yet and one isn’t sure if McKenna arrived at that conclusion on her own or if she is spouting the party line.

In our half hour interview with the MPP, we did see a woman in the process of getting a good grip on the job to which she brings impressive energy and enthusiasm.  This is the best paying job Jane McKenna has ever had and she is being treated by her political party as someone to watch.  Standing before the 1600 delegates at their convention was a huge highlight for her. She actually got them to swing and sway to the beat of some “big sound” music.

In the close to six months she has been at the job, the Lady Jane has gotten out to dozens of “official” openings and has held at least one public workshop for Seniors where she arranged for people from a broad spectrum of service groups to explain what is available to them and how different services work and can best be accessed.

What Lady Jane has to determine for herself is if she is going to be a lightweight MPP who gets her picture in the paper at every opportunity or if she is going to buckle down, do the hard work and the studying and ask hundreds of questions and read much more than she has ever read in her life – and become an MPP that will make a difference.

She is currently the Vice chair of the Ethnic Outreach Committee for the Progressive Conservative party and the Children & Youth Services Critic for the opposition in the Legislature.  She has had responsibilities for tracking the Children’s Aid Societies for the PC’s.  And, as one politically astute observer noted, “Jane has one of the best seats in the Legislature, the camera will rarely miss her.”

The biggest provincial issue in this city is of course the re-development of the hospital but McKenna is sort of out of the loop on that one.  The hospital people need someone within the government to press their case and they rely on Ted McMeekin to take their arguments to the right people at Queen’s Park.  Ted, who was a Minister in a previous term of office and then was no longer a Minister but then was made a Minister again when the existing minister lost her seat.

She has energy, enthusiasm and more than enough chutzpah for the job. Can she bear down and do the reading and studying to become a truly effective MPP. Burlington wants to hope so.

Now that Ted, who is a very accomplished politician and very tight with the hospital people they see no reason to involve the Burlington MPP.  Joyce Savoline, didn’t do much for the hospital in her time as the MPP.  The one thing the hospital has to have is an advocate that will argue their case.   That Burlington has to rely on the Member of Legislature from a neighbouring constituency says something about the way politics is done in Burlington.

As an opposition MPP neither McKenna or Savoline were able to do very much.  McKenna can, if she chooses,  create opportunities to stand up in the Legislature and ask questions.  She’ll have to get on very good terms with the party whip; but if she’s any good at asking tough questions and fast on her feet with follow up questions, she will be given lots of time.

If you see the Lady Jane standing in the Legislature with a piece of paper in her hand reading a question, that is a sure sign that she can’t go with the flow and go up against the best of them.  Too early to tell if that talent is within her..  She certainly has the “cahonies” to pull it off.

The Burlington Progressive Conservative Association now has new leadership and has gotten away from the dreadful leadership Bert Radfordd  brought to the organization.  With a new executive in place they could develop a strong association that will keep the city blue for the next decade.

Burlington has managed in the past to elect representatives who made it into Cabinet and both ran afoul of the system, when they did things that were no no’s.  Should the PC’s form a government – is McKenna Cabinet material?  Not today – but who knows how she will develop; it’s up to her.  If she makes it into Cabinet the trick will be to keep out of trouble and stay very close to that ethical line.

It is going to take some time for Jane McKenna to create her own political profile in Burlington.  She brings the energy and enthusiasm that always helps in politics but it is going to take much more than a great smile to be truly useful.

The process of nominating her was a true political travesty but she didn’t make that happen.  The association just asked her to be the candidate for a political party she wasn’t even a member of at the time and she said yes..  When you ask McKenna if she would have even dreamed of being where she is today she will quickly say – “never” but she is the MPP for Burlington and she is working at doing the best job she can.

Time may show that Keith Strong and Ron Foxcroft are much better talent scouts than anyone realized.  Strong has a discerning eye and is very good at sizing up situations. McKenna was never a basketball player – so who knows what Foxcroft saw.

REVISED

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON  February 27, 2012  Everyone had heard about the train accident within 15 minutes of it taking place Sunday afternoon.  For the people in the Queensway community I was meeting with mention was made of an almost identical accident four years earlier almost to the day – February 18, 2008 when 19 cars of a 139 car freight train jumped the tracks.

The city called a press conference for 9:00 pm at City Hall to update the media on the Sunday accident.  The bank of television cameras were lined up with all the wires stretched out and the prima donnas that stand before the camera were making sure they looked the way they are supposed to look.

The Mayor was on hand, the Chief of Police, the Fire Chief, the head of Emergency Medical Services.  They gave the media the information they had, answered all the questions, handed out contact sheets with all the information any media person could want – and then everyone left and the city hall atrium became a normal place again.

It was an eastbound VIA Rail train that went off the tracks.  There were five passenger cars with what was understood to be a manifest of 75 passengers.  The EMS people said they had moved 32 people within a 90 minute time frame to various hospitals.

What was odd was that there wasn’t one word said about the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital (JBMH) which is where ambulances would have shuttled injured passengers until there was no more capacity.  The JBMH is literally minutes away.  Hamilton hospitals got mentioned.

Photographers and television crews set up in city hall atrium for press conference on train derailment.

The press conference was told there were three people in the locomotive who were killed and that one of the three was a trainee.  We were told that two of the passenger cars flipped onto their sides.

Gary Sage, head of Emergency Medical Services (EMS), the people that run the ambulances and take care of people who have been hurt, reported that getting 32 people out of the rail cars and to hospitals was an impressive achievement.

The Fire Chief explained that his people were on hand to get into the rail cars, which meant popping out windows and in some cases cutting into the cars to get to people.

There was some confusion with what was understood to be 25 people who could not be accounted for – they seemed at 9:00 pm to have just wandered off – which is odd for a train coming out of Niagara Falls and heading for Toronto –  these were not local people who would have somewhere to go.

No one was able to say just where they were.  The Fire Chief did say that his people had “secured the perimeter”.  In major accidents like this chaos tends to reign until the really seriously injured are taken care of and if helicopter evacuations are needed space has to be determined for them to land, get in and get out.

The names of the deceased were not released until next of kin had been advised other than to say that two were from the GTA and one outside the area.

It was city Manager Jeff Fielding who called the press conference to order.  He was also the man who directed  the questions from the media and kept things from getting unruly.  He’s a pretty direct guy.

The rail line belongs to Canadian National Railways (CNR) but when an accident of this nature takes place the Transportation Safety Board, a federal agency, sends in teams of investigators and they begin the process of trying to figure out what went wrong.  It could be months before the reason for the derailment is known.

Monday morning commuters will use busses to get from the Aldershot GO station to either Burlington or Appleby Line.  There will be a lot of grousing and grumpy people – but by the end of the day things will be back to near normal.

What we saw was how our emergency people handle complex situations.   They did good.

Meanwhile, the police have a bit of a quandary on their hands.  They now have a copy of the manifest in their hands.  The manifest is the document that tells them how many people paid to get on the train.  It may not include the names of the passengers.  If a passenger went to a ticket counter and paid cash for their ticket there is no record of the person.

In an announcement police has said they “would like to ensure the condition and current location of those passengers. All passengers taken to area hospitals or who received treatment at the scene have been noted and reconciled with the manifest. However the current whereabouts of approximately one dozen passengers is unknown as they left the scene using their own mode of transportation.”

What we know then is that out of a passenger load of about 75 people there are 12 that left the scene of the accident on their own.  You can bet that there are a handful of very smart police intelligence types sitting around a table asking themselves some hard questions.  One or two may have decided to just get out of the area and head for home – but this wasn’t a commuter train – this was a Via train running from Niagara Falls to Toronto.

Something suggests to me that there are 12 people who don’t want to be found and they have hot footed it out of the area.  What the police want to know is: Who are these people and what were they doing on that train

February 28, 2012

Investigators are now confident that outstanding passengers on board the Via train from Sunday’s incident have now all been accounted for.  They do not say if any are in custody.