November 21, 2013

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON.  Each Council member has their own style and their unique relationship with the people who elect them to office.  They bring their personalities and their working style to what they do.  They all hold meeting in their wards and hope that someone will show up.

Councillor Meed Ward has a following; she comes close to filling a room with groups of people around tables working on issues of concern to them.

Others have difficulty attracting groups of more than five.  Councillor Dennison insists on holding his meetings at his place of business where there is a room with a fireplace and bowls of popcorn on the table

John Taylor pulled together a group of about 25 people at the Conservation Halton offices on Britannia Road Wednesday evening.  It was almost like a family gathering but then he has been representing them for more than 20 years.  We erroneously reported that the meeting was to have both Councillors Taylor and Lancaster taking part.  We regret that error and regret that there wasn’t an opportunity to hear what each Council member had to say about progress with the legal differences on the airpark and what their individual thinking was on the role an airpark plays in the development of north Burlington.

Ward 3 residents use the occasion to hear what John has to say and at the same time get caught up with their neighbours.  Rural life doesn’t have those places where people congregate naturally – given that a local Post Office is a thing of the past.  There probably isn’t a coffee shop north of Side road #1

It was interesting to observe how people from across the rural part of the city look to Taylor for comment.  People who are naturally in Ward 6, Lancaster territory, look to Taylor for comment and direction.

John Taylor, in the red shirt, always an attentive listener, sits with Councillor Lancaster on his left and General manager Scott Stewart on his right.

Taylor is not very big on agenda, he tends to roam from subject to subject and he often gets his facts mixed up.  But his constituents like him and they trust him.  You can observe that they realize he has been at the job for a long time and that perhaps another term is stretching his capacity, but they are loyal and unless there is someone they know well – Taylor is not in trouble politically.

Because Taylor doesn’t set out an agenda questions about anything and everything pop out.  The mail boxes on the side roads, the speeding problem on Side road # 1, the Britannia traffic that zooms towards Waterdown and, of course the pier and now the Airpark.

Taylor tells his constituents that the settlement of the pier dispute will go to mediation in January – and hinted that he expects a settlement. He stated he would insist the public get all the financial details. The observation deck on the pier we have yet to pay for completely has no cap on it – Taylor thought it looked like a champagne glass and liked it that way. The deck doesn’t have a wind turbine on it either but that wasn’t Taylor’s doing.

The city will get into mediation on the pier – because it has to.  A trial cannot be held unless mediation has taken place.  All the parties involved in this – and there are five of them, have basically completed the discovery portion of the deliberations.  Everyone now knows who did what when – and they now have to think through what their individual legal strategy should be.  Burlington is not in a strong position.  Mistakes were made – not by this Council but there are members of this Council who were around when the mistakes were made.  Meed Ward, Lancaster and Sharman were not members of Council when the really dumb decisions were made.  But they were there when there was an opportunity to resolve the design problems and complete the pier for far less than it eventually cost and they were there when a settlement opportunity was turned down.

Taylor and Dennison have to take responsibility for those early decisions. They were on Council in those heady days when the province and the federal governments were handing out money faster than it could be counted.  Everyone was excited and there were ideas flying around like balloons at a New Year’s Eve party.

Then reality took the bite it usually takes when the rubber hits the road – and we begin to see where staff, especially those in the Engineering department made some major errors.

But all those details are stories for another day.  We are now in that reckoning stage – the settling up as it were and it is going to cost.  We asked Councillor Taylor what his position would be if there was a settlement that had a gag order attached to it.

Taylor responded that if the city found itself able to resolve the problems during the mediation stage he would insist that the full cost to the city be part of the minutes of settlement and that the city publish those minutes.

 Justice Fitzpatrick, the judge that will hear the case if it goes to trial,  is pushing all the parties on this case.  He wants them into mediation in January and our information is that no one appears to be against mediation – the problems have to do with dates.  Everyone has to be in the room when the mediation takes place.  The issue seems to be one of getting all the calendars to work together rather than one of attitude and the dragging of heals.

Burlington’s city council would like this out of the way well before the civic election next October.  It is going to cost the city and the political objective is now – get it out of the way before campaigning gets serious.  Each candidate will create their own smoke screen to keep the smell away from them.  Stay tuned on this one.

Were it not for the strong delegations Vanessa Warren made to both city and Regional Council there would probably be trucks running along Appleby Line with loads of landfill from who knows where with who knows what in the fill. Warren will become a member of the Burlington Green board this evening – she will not be a candidate for the Ward 3 seat in the 2014 municipal election

Vanessa Warren, who lives over on Bell School Line, showed up and we learned that she will not be a candidate for the Ward 6 seat in 2014; part of the reason for that is there are two other possibilities for someone to run against Blair Lancaster.  One will announce sometime in December, the other is meeting with various people and sounding out her potential.

The first is working through a number of family concerns with his wife – serving as a council member means big changes in the way a family lives its life. 

The second candidate lives in the Alton community which is seen by many as key for a win in Ward 6.  Both potential candidates are focused on their being just one person who runs against Lancaster, they do not want to split the vote.  Mark Carr will not be running in Ward 6 in 2014.  With much deep unhappiness with the way city staff and council handled the Air Park matter before Warren formed her Rural Burlington Greenbelt Coalition, the community wants to see some accountability.  They would also very much like to see more room between Councillor Lancaster and the president of the Airpark Vince Rossi.

Taylor believes the city is in a good position on the Airpark matter however he didn’t talk much about what should happen with the Airpark long term

Taylor explained the changes that are taking place at the Economic Development Corporation where the Executive Director was asked to leave and the “good times” board of directors is being replaced with a much smaller board that will focus on bring new corporations to the city that will hire local people.  Taylor was of the view that Burlington economic development went nowhere for the last ten years while other communities “ate our lunch”.  Ron Witton, a builder, raised his voice and said – no not so – the reason no one wants to build in Burlington is because of the development charges are close to the highest in the GTA.  Taylor’s explanation for that was a little on the weak side.

Dundas is eventually going to become a six lane road; Burlington’s population is projected to reach 190, 000 + by 2013 and a lot more people are going to be using public transit.

What is interesting to observe is that while meeting as Standing committees and as a Council the level of detail one hears at the media table is quite a bit different from what one hears at a community meeting.  Part of that is because Taylor has been around for so long he has a much deeper understanding of the issues – there is something to be said for longevity.

Ownership of the Regional roads: Guelph and Appleby stretches as far south as lakeshore. City has to pay for the upkeep – and it ain’t cheap.

He explains that many of the major roads are Regional property and gave Appleby and Guelph as examples – however the ownership, and therefore the responsibility to maintain them stops at Mainway and only recently has the ownership extended to south of Fairview.  Those are major roads and they require a lot of upkeep and maintenance  – which the Region pays for.  If the ownership of those roads extended all the way down to Lakeshore there would be a considerable savings for the city but Taylor contends that there are “powers in the Burlington core that don’t want the Region messing around with those roads”.  Is Taylor talking about special interests?

The average driver stuck in traffic on Guelph Line who has to wait for two cycles of the traffic light to be able to make a left on Fairview doesn’t care a hoot who owns the road – the just want the traffic to move.  This two tier level of government makes things complex and most people know next to nothing about what the upper tier- the Region does for them, or more importantly,  to them.