 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON March 26, 2013 The Spin Doctors are taking centre stage now that the last of the concrete on the pier deck has been poured. The city manager has already hired people who specialize in spinning legal matters, which appears to be a skill set the communications people at city hall don’t have – so the city manager is going to set aside ten big ones to cover the cost of explaining some expected news on the legal side of getting that pier build and how we went from just under $7 million to just under $20 million.
 The pier will be illuminated with lights that change their pattern and their colour whenever the software tells them to change. The fireworks to the right is part of the Sound of Music budget. There is good news though. Staff is getting absolutely giddy and talking about opening the pier in 67 days and planning for that event. People from the events department and the communications people are moving to centre stage to make it all happen.
 An artists rendering of what the completed pier is going to look like. Those brown rails will be painted Burlington blue. The caissons that hold the pier up will also be illuminated. On the construction side things are going great. There is an artist’s rendering of what it is going to look like when you are able to walk out to the end.
Some of the light standards have been erected and they are powered up.
The public got told that there is going to be a computer application that will control the lights that will adorn the pier and the beacon that is to be installed – no wind turbine however, that got thrown under the bus when the city’s Director of engineering forgot to read the manual and didn’t know what had been installed in terms of electric equipment.
Craig Stevens, the go between for the city and the contractor, told a council committee meeting that the software that runs the lights will be able to do almost anything. “As Stevens put it, “If you can think it we can blink it”.
Expect to see some weird light patterns coming from that pier during the first six months while the techies get the hang of the software. The beacon will look like a lighthouse on the horizon. It will certainly change the waterfront view of the city.
 That yellow patch will be shutdown to repair the promenade that will lead to the pier entrance. The promenade running from Lakeshore Road down to the start of the pier will be closed for a number of weeks while that section of the walkway is repaired. The heavy trucks that ran in and out did quite a bit of damage and the walkway to the pier has to match the look of the concrete on the pier.
 Light standards are being installed and are already powered up While the snafus on getting the pier built is a story yet to be told – the news today is that what we are paying a King’s ransom for, is going to look very nice and it will do us all very proud. There is some tinkering to be done; no one is sure quite yet just how the lights on the beacon will glow but if the ones being installed now don’t work – new ones will get put in their place.
 It doesn’t look quite complete without a turbine at the top of that beacon – one of those missed opportunities. The brown coloured rails will be done in what is known as Burlington blue. It will take the city as much as a year to get used to the thing and in time they will come to love it and forget about the outrageous cost. There might be some reckoning come election time but the only people who any blame can be attached to are the Mayor and Councillors Taylor, Dennison and Craven – they were there for most of the messy stuff.
For the moment – revel in what we are going to be using in the very near future.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON. March 25, 2013 The Mayor met with members of the Chamber of Commerce Friday morning to give them an update on where things were going with the city and how he was dealing with the problems that cross his desk.
The crowd this time around wasn’t as large as it has been in the past. So – what do we know now that we didn’t know before? Well Mayor Goldring has decided the focus for the rest of this term of office has to be on getting jobs and new employers into the city.
The Economic Development Corporation (BEDC) is being totally revised and will be coming back to Council with a new mandate that will focus totally on bringing new business to the city. The BEDC has had challenges it wasn’t able to meet in the past given the business model they were stuck with. City Manager Jeff Fielding saw the problem and asked that a re-make of that organization be a priority.
 The Mayor answered all their questions; there just weren’t very many of them and none seemed to touch on the serious problem with the Industrial, Commercial and Institutional sector tax revenue. Part of the problem is that the people doing the remake are basically the same people who oversaw what BEDC was doing in the past. Was city manager Fielding the only person to see that the model they had wasn’t working? In the three years our Burlington has been covering the BEDC we didn’t see any suggestions that the mandate was flawed and not sustainable come before any city council committee.
Something put a fire underneath the BEDC board. A former advisor to Mayor Goldring thought the best thing that could be done was to blow the board up and start afresh. The BEDC has a twenty member board – is that too large. Most of the big five Canadian banks don’t have boards that size.
Are the right people on that board? Are there people on that board doing more to ensure their own interests are protected rather than being focused on the long-term economic growth of the city? Is there anyone on that board asking the hard questions? We were impressed with what we saw of the work Paul Subject, president of STANMECH Technologies Inc. was doing.
 BEDC Executive Director Kyle Benham has his hands full with the development of position papers, project development and both re-building and re-orienting what BEDC can and should be doing for the city is serves at arm’s-length. Last December the BEDC board received a Transitional Plan and then created an ad hoc committee to amend BEDC’s operating model and business plan to create a land development corporation. The public hasn’t seen that Transitional Plan yet nor do we know who the members of the ad hoc committee are.
Burlington had a situation where two city council members, the Mayor and Ward 1 Councillor Rick Craven, sat on the Performing Arts board that went from a half a million dollar requirement to one that ballooned to over $1 million – so keeping representation like that on our boards would not seem to be in the best interests of the taxpayers.
Having a public that is fully informed works best in a democracy; having boards and committees that are closed – even secretive at times, results in closed thinking at best and cronyism at worst. We deserve better from the people out there representing us.
The BEDC held a workshop last Friday that wasn’t public so we don’t know what they did.
One of the interesting bits of information the Mayor mentioned, almost in passing, at the Chamber breakfast, was that Burlington has more than 60 business operations in the city that work on water issues; they do things with water and there was the sense that there may be an opportunity to look at this cluster and see if there are ways to support what they do and attract other companies in the water business to the city.
Burlington isn’t known for anything specific in the commercial world; we’ve got a bit of everything. Hamilton has steel mills – well had steel mills would be a more accurate statement.
The people doing the economic thinking for this city (we really don’t know who they are) are of the view that looking for possible clusters of companies where three or four companies will draw others of the same type is a possible economic advantage. That’s got potential.
Later in the year Goldring will be traveling to Germany to meet with companies over there that have operations in Burlington and see if there are ways some of the operations can be expanded.
 Sandy Thomson, chief thinker over at Thomson Gordon Group pauses while answering a question on what he wants to see in the way of better heritage protection Wage costs – always of interest to the business community. The Mayor sketched out the problem all the municipalities have with their unionized labour forces, particularly those involved in public safety. When there are differences of opinion over a labour contract the province appoints an Interest Arbitration. The results of those arbitrations have been giving the municipal sector significant grief – the labour side seems to be winning all the time. The Mayors in the province want the “capacity to pay” to be part of what gets looked at – and they would like to see the process moved along a little faster. Goldring pointed out that some of these arbitrations take as long as three years to get resolved.
The firemen in Burlington have in the past chosen to show their muscle. At one budget discussion meetings there were close to half a dozen of them at one table and took over the discussion. On another occasion a group of fireman all sat in the public gallery at a council meeting. Those displays are part of ensuring their voice is heard. The fireman were all over the Dalton McGuinty provincial election.
The Mayor had a decent meeting with the business sector – until the very end when there were no more questions. Those that he did get were perhaps planted and certainly softball in nature. That’s part of the way things get done at Chamber events. What was awkward was leaving the Mayor standing at the podium when there were clearly no more questions. His hosts should have moved to the podium – thanked him for his time and given him the round of applause he had earned. Instead he was left standing there. Awkward indeed!
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON March 25th, 2013 “Busy day Monday as we return to normal jobs and prepare for a trek to London for game 6 of our playoff series” was the note we got from John McNeil as he frantically continued to vote and vote and vote again to earn that award of $100,000 from Kraft Foods that would be used by the Burlington Lions Optimist Minor Hockey Association (BLOMHA) to cover the cost of getting more players on the ice pads.
 John McNeil was at his keyboard until the very last-minute Sunday night – squeezing in that very last vote for the Kraft Foods $100,000 award They were minutes and then it was over – you could try to enter a vote but the system wouldn’t take it – and for those hundreds in Burlington who had been voting for two days – it was over.
During the hectic two days parents still had to get their kids out to hockey games, still had to do the shopping and keep the house in order.
Now – the wait while the Kraft Foods people do the counting – which should take just a matter of minutes because everything was electronic but it will be more than a week before they go public.
 If you were at the McNeil house Saturday night you were at a keyboard – voting. So for now those that did the work – a chance to sit back and know they did their best. During the next few days there will be hundreds who will say ‘if they’d known they would have voted.
The Mayor was chatting up the business types at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast Friday morning and he forgot to mention the event – even though he was touting that Burlington was now the # 1 mid-size city in Canada within which to live. We hope our Mayor at least went on-line to vote a couple of times – won’t be too long before he’s looking for votes himself.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON. March 24, 2013 While they can’t see the finish line –they all know where it is – hundreds of people who are involved with minor hockey or know someone who is involved, got dragooned into going on-line and clicking away at a red button with the word VOTE on it.
Have you voted yet? If is before 11:59 pm on Sunday the 24th of March – you can still vote. Vote NOW!
They were out to win the $100,000 that Kraft Foods had put up for their Hockey Goes On contest. Kraft asked for nominations and got thousands of them from across the country. They narrowed those thousands down to twenty from five regions they created. Ontario was one of the regions and Burlington was one of twenty communities in the region. John McNeil was the hockey person nominated from Burlington by Kristen Priestner, a parent who had a son playing for the BLOMHA Bulldogs in the atom division.
BLOMHA, Burlington Lions Optimist Minor Hockey Association, focuses on developing skills in the game of hockey and building character.
McNeil and Priestner pulled together the people they needed, first by reaching out to the other sports organizations and asking them to support the effort. Then friends, family, associates – even passersby were asked to support the effort.
That was the kernel of an operation that just grew.
 If you were at the McNeil household Saturday night you took your turn clicking away at the keyboard and registering votes for the Hockey Goes On $100,000 award that was up for grabs. There is no way for anyone other than the people at Kraft Foods to know who is leading. Each community just has to do its best to get its people out voting. This is a bit of an oddity in that anyone from anywhere can vote and they can vote as often as they want. If someone has the fortitude to stay at the keyboard for 10 hours – there is nothing to stop them. The community that sticks to it and organizes the most people with the most dedication gets the $100,000 that gets used for the development of hockey.
The force behind the Hockey Goes On was a need to recognize the people, those volunteers who make hockey happen at the minor league level. Some of those players might make it to the professional league level but that’s not a BLOHMA objective. Rick Dawson who serves as the president of BLOMHA is there to help kids play the game and take their talent as far as it can be taken and to build character and community values in the process.
The organization has thousands of kids playing the game, hundreds of coaches and many other support people who are part of what hockey at the community level is all about.
 Katherine Hartman on the left (Barracudas player helping out her cousin and BLOMHA), Tiegan Priestner, (birthday girl helping her brother) and the youngest Daniel, with the official BULLDOGS mascot. Kristen Priestner knew exactly who she wanted to nominate from Burlington when she heard of the contest. Sheila Ramage knew that her weekend was shot when McNeil got nominated. Sheila is one of the team that runs the operations side of the BLOHMA office and handled a lot of the phoning around and keeping people in touch during that 48 hour marathon.
Our Burlington asked Kraft foods if they could tell us anything about how the event was going. We got this back from their offices:
“We are pleased to report that we have had an outstanding response to the Kraft Hockey Goes On voting period. As you may know, Kraft Hockey Goes On helps Canadians share their passion for the game by recognizing important local contributors who make hockey happen in communities across Canada. Through the program, we began accepting nominations on January 21st and received over 1000 inspiring stories about the dedicated Canadians who invest their time and energy into local hockey every day. Nominations closed on March 8 and on March 16, we announced the top 100 nominees, as narrowed down by a panel of judges.
“Canadians are now voting for their favourite local hockey supporters at KraftHockeyGoesOn.ca and working hard to rally votes on Facebook.com/KraftHockeyGoesOn. We did experience a short period of down time on the site as the voting period began yesterday at 9a.m., but resolved it as quickly as possible and we are excited to see the votes continuing to roll in. The voting period continues until 11:59pm EST this evening, so we encourage Canadians to keep on voting!
 Flyers were needed – quickly. friends got called in, printing presses inked up and paper-cutter turned on. Colour Works Printing pulled in all the child labour!they could find. was it enough?
“The top five nominees who receive the most votes will be recognized for their contributions and $100,000 will be awarded to their selected Hockey Canada-affiliated minor hockey association. The subsequent top 20 nominees with the most votes will be recognized with a $20,000 donation to their selected minor hockey association.
A point of clarification: Each Region, and Ontario is one of the five regions, will have one – $100,000 award and four $20,000 awards.
 Every hand, or in this case, keyboard counted. Two Bulldogs on the way to a tournament in London on Saturday clicked while on the 401. “We look forward to seeing the impact that these funds will have on local Canadian hockey communities and are proud to recognize the individuals who do so much to make this nation’s sport go on every day. Canadians can tune-in to the winner announcement taking place during the Montreal Canadiens vs. Philadelphia Flyers NHL match-up on TSN on Wednesday April 3, 2013.”
Burlington is up against: Stittsville, Goderich, Atikokan, Barrie, Renfrew, Verona, Sarnia, Weston, Langton, Moose Factory, Kitchener, Prescott, Napanee, Pelham, Amherstview, Lakefield, Cornwall, Brampton and Fergus.
There are still a couple of hours to vote.
At press time Kristen Priestner reported: “We had Moms voting in the lobby right up to game time tonight at Appleby, one Mom (Shannon Scullion) even voted throughout the entire game because she felt guilty about taking the time off to go for a run this afternoon! We had siblings putting flyers around the parking lot and voting throughout the game as well.”
” Back to it, crunch time now! May have to have a team party on results night!”
There will be a nail biter of a party at the McNeil household the night the award winner is announced. Should be a great hockey game as well – Canadiens and the Flyers – not much better than that.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON March 23, 2013 It was an all hands on deck day and as much child labour as they could round-up.
The BLOMHA – Burlington Lions Optimist Minor Hockey Association people are calling in every favour they can find. Printing up flyers and getting them handed out wherever they can. All eight McDonald franchises in Burlington have jumped on the bandwagon. A number of supermarkets are handing out flyers – this is better than an election campaign.
 Get to the Kraft web site; click on that vote button till your fingers hurt and be part of bringing $100,000 to Burlington and the BLOMHA organization. The objective is to get more votes from Burlington than the other 19 cities we are competing against. There are some formidable communities on that list; they are Stittsville, Goderich, Atikokan, Barrie, Renfrew, Verona, Sarnia, Weston, Langton, Moose Factory, Kitchener, Prescott, Napanee, Pelham, Amherstview, Lakefield, Cornwall, Brampton and Fergus.
They are all after the $100,000 that will be given to the community in Ontario that register the most votes. Anyone from anywhere can vote, they can vote as often as they like and there is no age limitation. Here is what you do: Click on the LINK and vote.
 Katherine Hartman, on the left (Barracudas player helping out her cousin and BLOMHA), Tiegan Priestner, (birthday girl helping her brother) and our youngest Daniel, with the official BULLDOGS mascot. Daniel is obsessed with Bulldogs hockey, he’s got his Bulldogs hat on and bulldogs pj pants! John McNeil was nominated by Kristen Priestner, a parent whose son plays for the Bulldogs, a BLOMHA team that McNeil manages. Kraft liked the look of McNeil and asked if he would accept the nomination – he was up for it and Kraft Foods got back to him to say he had made the finals. Now he had just over 48 hours to pull the BLOMHA people together and get the keyboards clicking on that vote button.
McNeil found he needed more flyers and a buddy with a printing press and a large paper-cutter, Colour Works Printing, jumped in and produced more flyers.
 Three Bulldogs in the backseat all voting on the way to London, hope they don’t burn their eyes out for the game! The Bulldogs Atom A team are in the Championship Series of the Alliance and are hosting the Ontario Hockey Federation Championships in Burlington at Central Arena April 12 – 14th, facing off against the winners of the GTHL, OMHA, NOHA and the ALLIANCE, a true test for provincial supremacy! Yet another reason for Burlington to get behind the vote for local hockey and keep them shining!
Kids who were being transported to a Bulldogs game in London, Ontario logged in and voted while driving along the 401.
T cc was at home with a friend getting ready for her birthday party and she logged in as well. Hundreds of kids and their parents were on-line clicking away.
McNeil has opened up his house for a Bulldog party and will have friends chatting about the “good old hockey game” while five to six of them use the WiFi in the McNeil house to log in and vote. McNeil just might find out how many people can access the internet through his WiFi if they all bring their lap tops – and if Burlington is going to see that $100,000 everyone – and then some – are going to have to get into the game.
 Here is one of the Bulldogs little brothers, also a novice bulldog himself at Colour Works Printing cutting up some more flyers to help out! More Child Labour! Can Burlington pull this off: Kristen Priestner certainly thinks so: “BLOMHA has the heart to do this! Come on Burlington, we need our community to pull together this weekend! I remember ever so fondly my son’s years in Timbit hockey: This money could go a long way to helping those with children in Burlington who cannot afford to give their kids a chance to play! The boys on James’ house league teams were fast friends after a few games. In fact, one of his teammates lost his father to cancer in his novice season (7 years old), and as a family our FLYERS team pulled together. The coach, Scott Wright (now a Bulldogs Select Coach himself) and a few of us Moms set up and ran a “Skate-a-thon” in one week’s time. Proceeds went to the Carpenter House, a well deserving local hospice, and our BLOMHA house league team raised $12,000! Amazing what just one team can do in a short period of time with their hearts in the right place. Just so happens that John McNeil’s son was also on that house league team and he gave a speech (at 7 years old!) to the Rotary Club and went door to door and raised $3000 himself! Think what Burlington could do, if we pull together and vote this weekend OVER and OVER!!”
Do you get the sense that this woman is going to make this happen for Burlington? I’d bet on her.
Did we tell you where to Vote. HERE
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON. March 23, 2013 How do you increase the revenue of an art centre? Sell more art would be one answer. Then how do you sell more art? You have to have what people like and you need to figure out how to grow an appreciation for art and that takes time and funding.
Anne Brownell, Corporate Enterprise Specialist at the Burlington Art Centre, has come up with a way to get the art the BAC has in its rental inventory off the racks and out where it can be seen – and develop decent revenue for the Centre as well.
 There are more than 400 paintings in the Art Rental inventory When you see an office or a board room in a television program chances are some of the art on those walls came out of the BAC inventory. Awhile back a colleague contacted Anne Brownell inquiring about what the BAC had in the way of art that could be rented. As a result of that call BAC art is now seen on CTV’s Flashpoint, Cracked and Rookie Blue.
Brownell couldn’t pull the racks out fast enough – that initial contact has resulted in a tidy little business for the BAC. The art rental and sale business contributes 30% of the revenue for the art shop.
Selling art is a complex business – people have to know you are there and they want to know that the collection has depth and consistency.
The Burlington Art Centre recently sold two painting to the Province of Ontario collection. This came about when the mother of the curator of the provincial collection, who happens to live in Burlington, got her daughter to look at what the BAC had – and was impressed enough to buy two pieces.
 Donna Fratesi, on the left holds up one of two paintings sold to the Province of Ontario collection. Helping is Anne Brownell of the Burlington Art Centre The province bought Jeanette Obbink’s ‘Killarney Rock’ and also Donna Fratesi’s ‘Almost Heaven’. While these two are no longer available for rental or purchase they could have been and there is a lot more like these two in the BAC collection.
 Donna Fratesi’s ‘Almost Heaven’, is now part of the province of Ontario collection. Ms Fratesi has 24 painting in the rental section of the art gallery. Her work is certainly popular. There is one “gotta” to all this – you must be a member of the Burlington Art Centre. That’s another good deal: A family membership is $120; Individual $105; and Seniors $85.
That membership gets you a reduced price on every event and a 10% discount on all your purchases.
Corporate memberships are also available – $250 annually for those which have the added bonus of being available to every employee. Great way for an organization to brighten up the walls of their offices. Corporations get to rent pictures for a six month period.
McMaster University’s De Groote School of Business on the South Service road used to be a corporate member; they didn’t renew last year. One would have thought the university, that pinnacle of culture, would be a continuing member. Maybe business and art don’t mix? The Burlington Art Centre is certainly showing that they do, indeed they do.
 Every painting has a story behind it. ‘Killarney Rock’ was started on the spot, with the canvas duct-taped to a tree, as a plain air painting during a canoe trip to Killarney National Park. The painting was finished later in the studio as it was too large to finish in one sitting.
Developing a reputation and a customer base is critical to selling art. People who buy art tend to start slowly and look to people who have a wide selection.
For those of us who live in Burlington there is an opportunity to rent art for a period of three months, hang it in your home and decide if you really like it. You can grow your appreciation for art by renting a piece that you are really not sure about, hanging it on your home and if after 90 days you realize that the piece was not for you – you return it. All you are out is a small rental fee.
The Burlington Art Centre has been doing things like this for the past 35 years. They are taking space in the newest art facility in Burlington when they bring Randy Bachman to town as part of their 35th anniversary celebration. The Shoreline Room at the BAC won’t hold the crowd they expect so they’ve rented the Performing Arts Centre for the event. Nice to see the two organizations working hand in hand.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON March 23, 2013 This should be illegal.
They want you to vote as often as you can.
No limit as to how often you can vote AND no age limit either.
Before reading any further – slip over to the voting link we are talking about and vote a couple of times – you’ll feel better after doing that a few times – then come back and read on.
Can you imagine if those rules applied in the municipal election – we’d have a council of nothing but nut cases. Don’t anyone dare come back with the comment: Isn’t that what we have now?
 From left to right Katherine Hartman (Barracudas player helping out her cousin and BLOMHA), Tiegan Priestner, (birthday girl helping her brother) and our youngest Daniel, with the official BULLDOGS mascot. Daniel is obsessed with Bulldogs hockey, he’s got his Bulldogs hat on and bulldogs pj pants!
Kristen Priestner’s daughter is voting today and it’s her birthday. Her brother is in the van with his Dad on the way to London to play “the good old hockey game”. But they will be back in the evening and at the key board. If you live on Marc Lane or anywhere near the street, drop in on the McNeil household – won’t be hard to find his place – the street will be filled with parked cars and the rooms will all have that blue glow from computer screens. Wonder how many computes can get through the WiFi in the McNeil household?
What’s this all about – and who is giving away $100,000?
Kraft Foods has a contents going on where 20 communities from five different parts of Canada have been nominated and are finalists in this contest. John McNeil was nominated for Burlington and is up against 19 other cities and towns in Ontario.
The place that gets the most votes gets the $100,000 – with $20,000 going to the next four.
 If this guy approaches you – take the flyer and vote – as often as you possibly can and bring that $100,000 first prize to Burlington and BLOMHA. The money has to go to the promotion and improvement of minor hockey. And in Burlington BLOMHA is a leader in the development of hockey skills and the building of character.
This is a two-day event – it started at 9:00 am this morning and ends at 11:59 pm on Sunday the 24th. Remember, no age limit and you can vote as often as you want. What Kraft Foods is doing is seeing just how much spirit a community has – the one that gets its people out and on the keyboards is the one that will take the prize.
Has Burlington got what it takes? We will know at the end of the month when the results come in.
There is no tally of who is ahead – you don’t get to know that – you just have to dig deep and get your people to the web site where they log in and vote.
 By Pepper Parr
BLOMHA – the Burlington Lions Optimist Minor Hockey Association is working like crazy today, Saturday and again on Sunday to register the votes needed to bring $100,000m to their organization.
If you want to know what being a real # 1 is all about – click on the LINK – then come back to the story.
 This is all about getting additional funding for this minor hockey team. Let’s see how well the city gets behind the effort. The puck got dropped at 9:00 am sharp; then it looked like the server went down; probably because f a surge in demand. Then it was up and the puck was red and you could vote.
There was a box you had to enter two words into before your vote got counted – that was to prevent anyone from setting up a program that would automatically place votes
When you are entering the two words, watch the spelling and don’t leave a space between the two words.
The players now have to log in, enter the two words shown and the vote gets counted. Then do just that – again and again – and remember – there are 19 other communities doing exactly the same thing. Burlington will win if they do it more often than anyone else.
That’s what Burlington has to do for the next two days if they are to be the winners of the Hockey Goes On contest that is going to put $100,000 into one Ontario community and $20,000 in four others as part of the Kraft Foods promotion that is celebrating the way minor hockey is played across Canada.
John McNeil was nominated from Burlington and has been getting this community lined up to click away.
All eight of Burlington’s McDonalds restaurants have joined the campaign and are promoting the contest. The Burlington Lions Optimist Minor Hockey Association (BLOMHA) has every parent they can find going on-line and voting.
Kristen Priestner, the woman who nominated John McNeil is busy working her magic and reaching out to the masses.
 John McNeil, nominated as one of twenty people in Ontario to take part in the Kraft Foods Hockey Goes On contest that could bring $100,000 to the city for minor hockey. He will be going hat in hand for the next two days asking everyone he sees to go on line and vote. McNeil will be at his keyboard for as long as he can – but he has to drive his son’s team to London for a game there. Perhaps they will all have tablets and find a way to get on-line and vote as they drive to London. McNeil is a techie – he just might figure out a way to do that. McNeil, who doesn’t let much get past him, has the people in London voting for Burlington. London didn’t make it to the finals in the Hockey Goes On contest.
All this activity – and guess what? The server went down and was down for close to half an hour. There must have been dozens of people at Kraft scrambling around like crazy to solve the problem – but it dd get solved and the game goes on.
Just vote and vote and vote and vote. If you can teach your cat to read and type – do that and have it vote as well.
Click for the link.
 By Staff
BURLINGTON, ON. March 22, 2013 From 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 23, 2013 the Halton Regional Police Service will join Halton Region and other municipalities to turn off lights for an hour in non-essential, non-emergency administrative areas. Public safety and police emergency response services will not be compromised or affected in any way.
 Recognizing Earth Hour isn’t going to make any difference to the work the Halton Regional Police do – they have flashlights “We recognize that we all have a role to play in community safety, however our collective contributions should expand to include activities that benefit our respective communities. With that in mind, the Halton Regional Police Service will once again do their part in contributing to Earth Hour initiatives through a focus on non-essential administrative areas,” said Deputy Chief Bob Percy.
Areas which will continue operating business as usual include the Service’s 9-1-1 Operations, Communications, and District Station front desks, as well as other essential police facilities. Non-essential administrative areas will be dark for the hour.
The Service does not anticipate Earth Hour will result in any increase in public safety risks, any more than those presented by a short duration power outage or at night when people retire for the evening.
Although participation in Earth Hour is a personal decision, the Service is also encouraging all its employees and their families to join in wherever feasible at home, as well as at work.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON March 22nd, 2013 There is an opportunity for the people of this city to bring home a “real” #1plus $100,000 that will go to the Burlington Lions Optimists Minor Hockey Association – BLOMHA.
Have you heard of “Hockey Goes On” a promotion sponsored by Kraft Foods? A number of years ago Kraft sponsored an event that resulted in Dundas, Ontario getting a new arena. The event was so strong a promotional vehicle for Kraft that they decided to revise it and build on the enthusiasm for “our game’.
Hockey Goes On is there to celebrate those unsung heroes that make the game go on. The sponsors divided the country into five divisions with Ontario being one of them. People within each division were asked to nominate the person they felt had done the most for minor hockey in their community.
Kristen Priestner nominated John McNeil who manages the Burlington Atom A BLOMHA rep hockey team that skate under the Bulldog banner. Priestner’s son plays in that league.
Kraft got in touch with McNeil to ensure he would accept the nomination and onto the list he went.
The Kraft organization then took the thousands of names that were nominated and selected 20 for each division. McNeil made the cut and Kraft once again called him to ensure that he was prepared for all the news coverage there would be.
McNeil was up to it.
 The T-shirt tells it all. John McNeil wants everyone in this city to let 19 other communities in Ontario be aware of the Burlington Bulldogs – they are out there gunning for the $100,0000 that Kraft Foods wants to hand out to a minor hockey association. Now McNeil doesn’t actually play hockey, he wishes he had, but he missed that sport for the most part. His job with BLOMHA, the Burlington Lions Optimists Minor Hockey Association is to handle everything “off ice” as he puts it. He has coaches galore that he works with; his job is to ensure that everything comes together – which he apparently does so well that Priestner put his name forward.
Burlington was now about to see just how well McNeil hustles. He plans to use all the old marketing skills he has along with everything social media will let him do. Can McNeil pull it off? Will the city get behind this initiative and pull in the $100,000 Kraft Foods is putting on the table?
First thing he did was get to the media; then he put out calls to all the other sports organizations in town and ask them to support McNeil and BLOMHA.
The prize is well worth the effort. Kraft will donate $100,000 to BLOMHA which McNeil hopes gets used to cover the costs of the kids who can’t afford to play hockey – “it can get expensive” said McNeil. Besides the $100,000 top prize there are four $20,000 prizes
CBC recently reported that the average family with kids in hockey spend $1,000 per child on fees and equipment. For McNeil getting those kids whose families just can’t afford that amount – this is a big deal. He would like to see some of the money spent on upgrading equipment the organization already has and then spend money on upgrading the skills of both the coaches and the players.
 If you’re within five feet of John McNeil he will put one of these flyers in your hands and badger you to log into the Hockey Goes On web site and be part of the effort to bring $100,000 to BLOMHA Flyers have gone out to anyone who will pass them out. McNeil asked the Mayor to mention the event on his blog. Teams of kids will be at the BLOMHA offices on Saturday working the computers and voting as often as they can. “We want them there in two-hour shift” said McNeil. There will be all the pizza they can eat.
McNeil realizes that the other communities will be doing exactly the same thing – looking for every possible angle to get anyone and everyone logging in and voting – and voting – and voting.
Burlington is up against Stittsville, Goderich, Atikokan, Barrie, Renfrew, Verona, Sarnia, Weston, Langton, Moose Factory, Kitchener, Prescott, Napanee, Pelham, Amherstview, Lakefield, Cornwall, Brampton and Fergus.
Some of those smaller town have great community spirit. Is theirs greater than Burlington? We will know sometime next week.
There is a website link to the story on the work he does with his team and minor hockey in Burlington. This is where you vote.
 This is what you are looking for on the voting web site. It will be red when you get to it on Saturday morning. Vote early and vote often – as often as you like. In the upper right hand corner you will see a button – it will be red when the contest starts
So from 9am this Saturday, March 23 to midnight Sunday, March 24, you can vote as many times as you can. Help bring this funding to the kids. All it takes is clicks.
John McNeil is leading this push – he’s the guy they nominated so he is the guy Burlington wants to push over the top; it’s almost like dialing for dollars.
First thing Saturday morning you go to the web site – look for that red button in the upper right hand corner and click.
Log out and go back in and click again – and just keep on clicking. There is no limit on how many times you can vote for McNeil.
John McNeil was described by Priestner as “the “Manager Extraordinaire” of the Major Atom A Burlington Bulldogs (BLOMHA) of the Minor Hockey Alliance of Ontario. John is the heart and soul of our team and what he gives back to hockey you must see with your own eyes to believe! He is the epitome of a true sports fan. He lives, eats, and breathes Bulldogs!
“His level of organization is second to none. Parents new to the team this year will constantly question if he is “for real”. His weekly emails and reminders are full of detail. He maintains a phenomenal website with up to date stats, team summaries and also takes fabulous photos to share. Tournaments are a thing of beauty with John’s attention to detail ensuring a fantastic experience for every family and never a worry.”
“Social events for the team are hosted at John’s place, the highlight being the Parents’ Christmas Social until the wee hours. Or, arranging a party bus for parents to attend a “Cupids for Cancer” fundraiser. John truly never misses a trick. A highlight for the boys came in the form of John McSanta, distributing some serious Bulldogs swag Christmas presents at a super fun team Christmas party.”
“His level of dedication is witnessed when he is the first to arrive at the rink to hang our team banners or the last to leave and clean up. He is a critical fundraiser for the team with contacts galore. In case he didn’t have enough responsibility, he is also organizing the illustrious Ontario Hockey Federation Playoffs which we are hosting this year.”
“I can’t honestly believe that John ever has time to do his day job, given that he seems to give every hour of his day to this team. When we won the Alliance provincials last year, John surprised the boys by setting up an NHL style dressing room with their names posted over their hooks and motivational signage. They were thrilled! He continuously goes beyond the call of duty and we appreciate the care and kindness he provides to our boys! John’s heart barks for the Bulldogs!”
That from one parent: Let’s see how loud Burlington can bark for McNeil.
That website link again.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON March 21, 2013 Here we go again. A magazine that promotes its readership with a list of the best place to live, the safest place to live and maybe even the nicest place to live and then all those locations promote this specious recognition.
Burlington, Burlington, Burlington! We are better than some phony recognition given to us by a magazine promoting their circulation.
Unfortunately, you can bet real money that the Mayor will tout this phrase every opportunity he gets and the members of city council will do the same damn, stupid thing.
 The nicest thing about this graphic put out by the city is the picture. This city has huge potential but we will never rise above our provincial past as long as we let others define us.
It is what we do with what we have been given that should make us important.
Can we grow to the point where leading corporations choose this city because it has the very best schools, the very best sports organizations for our children and a performing arts centre that is the envy of the country because of the type of event it brings to its stage?
The Burlington Art Centre has one of the very best ceramics collections in North America – and we have it stuffed into boxes because there isn’t any adequate space to display that collection.
Much of the city grew out of a land grant given to a native who served the British Army during the American revolutionary war. Born a native, became a savage warrior and grew into one of this country’s early statesmen – Joseph Brant is recognized by a pathetic little museum. He was a great Canadian but we don’t seem to be able to tell our citizens that story.
Why oh why, oh why do we need outsiders to tell us how good we are?
The late Jane Irwin reminded city council that we are called Borington for a reason. Time to grow up and be who we really are.
Has anyone noticed how vibrant the Alton Village community is becoming? Are we aware of the way our downtown is going to change in the next five years?
Do we use the Escarpment as a place that provides the fresh vegetables we consume or do we just talk about how nice it is?
Can we grow beyond the festivals that take place on the waterfront?
There are a lot of things done in the city that are superb and we don’t need a magazine with a circulation smaller than the population of the city to tell us what we have going for us.
 By Staff
BURLINGTON, ON March 20, 2103 Some of the city services won’t be available over the Easter weekend – March 29 (Good Friday) and April 1 (Easter Monday); some facilities will remain open for families to enjoy. City Hall will be closed.
Roads and Parks Maintenance will provide basic and emergency service only during the Easter weekend.
 With just a bit of a break in the weather-it is Spring now – we can all get out on our bikes Easter weekend. Parks and Recreation Programs and Facilities: There are many activities for the whole family to enjoy at city pools, arenas and community centres over the Easter weekend. Hours of operation and services available vary at each city facility.
Burlington Transit and Handi-van will operate a holiday service schedule on Good Friday, March 29, 2013. The administration office and downtown transit terminal will be closed. Regular transit service will be in effect for Sunday, March 31 and Monday, April 1, 2013. The administration office will re-open Tuesday, April 2, 2013. Please call BusLINE 905-639-0550 or visit www.burlington.ca/transit for more information.
The Provincial Offences Courts in Burlington and Milton (Halton Court Services) will be closed on Friday, March 29 and Monday, April 1, 2013.
Parking: Free parking is available in the downtown core at all meters, municipal lots and the parking garage on Good Friday, March 29, 2013. The Waterfront parking lots (east and west) do not provide free parking on statutory holidays.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON March 20, 2013 Was she pushed or did she jump? What kind of a difference will the Brenda Heatherington resignation as Executive Director of the Performing Arts Centre make to the city and the Centre?
Make no mistake about this – her resignation is this city’s loss and a significant loss at that. As Executive Director there were challenges on the business side of the operation she headed up. She wasn’t and isn’t a business person; she is an artistic director with an impressive ability to relate to people one-on-one.
She knows the performing arts and she knows how to develop an audience; she did that exceptionally well in St. Albert, just outside Edmonton, Alberta where she served for 17 years. She understood that a market needs to be grown and that growth takes time.
 She could light up any room she walked into; she knew how to grow the market for performing art – she just needed more time and more support. Part of the problem, besides the business acumen, was that Heatherington didn’t know Burlington, she was not of this community and didn’t understand how deep its rural roots are. She wasn’t given the time to acclimatize herself to a city that is still shedding its provincialism
Our Burlington has been very critical of Heatherington’s board of directors. Our view was that they failed her time after time. They expected her to do more than she was capable of doing. Someone on that board should have spotted the problems on the business side and taken the steps to bring in the help she needed.
With Heatherington in place as the Executive Director and a strong business person beside her watching the numbers side and advising her, Brenda Heatherington would have gotten the Centre to the point where it was getting by on the half a million it was always going to need from the public purse. On occasion she would have gotten lucky and needed less.
There are people who were members of the board who went out and twisted arms to raise the $11 million that was the public capital campaign. They approached their friends and told them that all the Centre would need was half a million each year and the city was committed to providing that money.
When the budget for the Centre was put out showing a need for $1.2 million in 2014 and $1.4 million for 2015 many people felt they had been misled.
Someone needed to explain to Heatherington that it was not possible to tell the public that more than a million dollars would be needed every year.
In a town the size of Burlington relationships are very personal and friends don’t like to learn that they have let their friends down. The people who signed the cheques saw the place as theirs and also as a part of growing Burlington.
For reasons that are still not clear, the board seems not to have realized the disappointment many felt over the way things were working out. The two political representatives from city hall, the Mayor and Ward 1 Councillor Rick Craven, were either deaf and didn’t hear what was being said when the disappointing numbers were posted or they fully believed they could ride it out until things got better.
City council went along with the budget request – what else could they do? But they attached strings to the money: a full business plan review done not later than October of this year.
There are those in a position to know who will tell you that the marketing and sales people failed Heatherington.
There are those who wondered why the hours worked by the team were managed the way they were; the handling of the night managers rankled some people.
The Board wanted to see more entrepreneurship: Heatherington is an artist, someone who works with talent and develops audiences. She can read a balance sheet but delving into the day-to-day operating costs and budget management, wasn’t going to happen. A bank teller she never was.
People will ask if there is a lesson for us in all this and many will wonder what is going to happen next. Sales for the year are good so far and rentals are approaching the very good level.
The program for the fall is in place and will be launched sometime in May. Heatherington will be in town to do that launch which we understand is very strong. That’s what Heatherington does well.
As for the Board – well three new people are to be appointed. The board in place today did have an entrepreneurial bent to it and some of them put their money where their mouths were. One Board member bought 200 tickets to an event and invited his staff and business colleagues.
Others, Peter Ashmore in particular, put in untold hours labouring over the books, looking for ways to improve the financial picture. The numbers were not good – did anyone really expect that they would be? The performing arts is a business you grow over time. Audiences have to be introduced to new ideas and different kinds of entertainment.
Many expected a $40 million building to be used for local amateur theatre and be a place where local talent could be grown. This is Burlington folks, a small, at times very provincial place where the shopping choices are limited and the gasoline is higher than that on sale in Hamilton.
The Blue Jeans Gala, close to the most popular event held, was a smashing success. Was it superb performing art? Jimmy Tapp was on the stage, the Mayor was at the piano and the Member of Parliament tripped over the broom he was supposed to be dancing with as he forgot his lines. The crowd loved it – this was the Burlington they knew. And that was the Burlington Brenda Heatherington had to grow an audience out of.
It was do-able but everyone had to be much more candid with the facts, much more professional in the way they did their jobs and far more transparent.
Where will Brenda Heatherington go next? Back to Alberta to be with family? That was the media release line. This woman has skills that communities in Ontario would love to have available. She will do well.
When the fall program is announced in May we will realize what we are losing when Brenda Heatherington turns in her security pass. When we look back at how things went at the end of the year let us remember that the program we experienced was put together by Ms Heatherington.
The full story of the behind the scene boards of directors machinations will play itself at the cocktail and dinner parties held in the tonier parts of town.
 By Staff
BURLINGTON, ON March 20, 2013 Those new, bigger blue boxes the Region is handing out are quite a hit – the demand was big enough to have 3,500 + in Burlington line up along Upper Middle Road to get their large blue box.
The Region thinks it has learned a few lessons from the demand last time they did a distribution in Burlington and have upgraded the procedure for the next local distribution.
 On the North Service Road – just to the west of the Mercedes-Benz dealership west of King Road. 9:00 am to 3:00 pm Next Saturday, March 23rd at the Closed landfill on the North Service Road just to the west of the Mercedes-Benz dealership you can drive up and get your box between the hours of 9:00 am to 3:00 pm.
This time the Region is going a little high-tech and will be “tweeting” on @HaltonRecycles where you can get real-time updates.
If “tweeting” isn’t something you do that often you can reach the Region at 311 and they will give you an update verbally.
Couple of rules you have to follow. You drive in; open your trunk or the back door of your car and let the staff at the site put the bin in your car. No getting out of the car and you can’t walk up and pick up the bin.
The Regional staff wants to keep things moving – just follow the instructions.
 Our Regional Councillors will do almost anything for a photo-op; this time they are showing you the new 22 gallon blue boxes. While the newer blue bins are popular you don’t have to use the new size – the older 16 gallon units are still being emptied.
 Here is what you can put in the new Blue Boxes AFTER April 1st. Getting the boxes now readies you for the new list of items you can now put out for recycling. That list, in its entirety is available here.
The first distribution in Burlington had vehicles lined up along Upper Middle road from Corpus Christi High School all the way over to Appleby Line. Shouldn’t be as bad this time out
Residents heading out to Blue Box Pick-up Events can call 311 or check www.halton.ca or @HaltonRecycles on Twitter for real-time updates regarding wait times at each event location.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON March 20, 2013 They were less than ten minutes from getting away with at least $300,00 in cash along with documents that looked like passports, coins and jewellery. Police were responding to a security alarm at a bank on Fairview.
 It was Show & Tell time for the Halton Regional Police as they displayed the more than $300,000 in cash that thieves nearly got away with after the broke into a branch of the TD Bank of Fairview early Monday morning. The alarm, for what is turning out to be the biggest bank break-in this city has ever experienced, came in at 1:00 am Monday March 18th. Security alarms are all part of what police on night duty contend with – but within seconds the officers responding to the call knew they were dealing with a bank which drew in other patrol cars out on the road.
 When police arrived at the bank entrance the doors were secure – but there had been a bank alarm. The duty officer would have been alerted and additional police cars pulled into the parking lot of the Nicholson Plaza on Fairview immediately west of Walkers Line.
 Police would not say how they believe the thieves got out of the building – but if there were cars with lights blazing in the front – the rear of the building would appear to have been how they got out and then crossed the railway tracks. The first thing the police did was establish a perimeter which in this case meant covering off space on the north side of the railway tracks which complicated things.
 The thieves came out of the building on the left and crossed these railway tracks and were found by police dogs amongst trees on the north side of the railway tracks. The canine unit was brought in even though at that point the police didn’t know what they were dealing with. While the police officers on the plaza side of the building were checking the front entrance the police officer and the dogs did their routine searches and came across five males hunkered down amongst trees on the north side of the railway tracks and took the men into custody. Police say none of the five resisted arrest.
In police custody and awaiting a bail hearing on Thursday are:
John HICKEY, 44 yrs of Caledon
Alexander PAPIC, 48 yrs of N.F.A.
Aldo SIMONI, 31 yrs of Scarborough
Mentor VISHJAY, 36 yrs of N.F.A.
Besim RUGOVA, 32 yrs of N.F.A.
 Police photo of the hole cut through the floor of a second floor unoccupied office directly above the bank vault. As the investigation unfolds, and this is still a very active investigation, the police report this was a “very sophisticated and well planned bank break-in.” The accused had actually gotten away with it and were out of the bank and across a set of railway tracks with the $300,000 in duffle bags before the police were fully aware that a bank had been broken into.
The investigation so far shows that the thieves had taken empty office space on the top floor of the two storey building presenting themselves as workers doing renovations. It is not known if they actually rented the space or if they had just broken in and did all their cutting and drilling at night
Police report they believe the men were in the space for at least two days prior to their escaping from the building early on the Monday morning.
Walky-talkies were recovered along with construction tools used to cut through the concrete floor. The doors to the offices on the upper level had very small hallway windows which on the north side of the building were covered over. There was no building permit anywhere near the offices where the hole was cut through the floor.
There are tenants on the second floor of the building.
The police described this break-in as one with a “degree of sophistication … that is unrivalled” in their experience. Detective Donna Whittaker, who has been with the force for 20 years, is still following leads and working with other police jurisdictions to learn if they have come across anything like this.
The thieves appear to have spent a lot of time planning and appear to have known where the weaknesses were in the bank’s security system – and there certainly were weaknesses. Cutting through a floor and dropping into a bank vault, scooping up hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and then getting out of the building and on the way to vehicles on the other side of the railway tracks suggest there were some delays somewhere.
Expect the bank to be giving the Fairview branch a tight security review.
 Tools of the trade for renovators and thieves. When police first arrived at the bank the entrance doors were secure. The police were not prepared to say how the thieves left the building but they did report that the men were able to cross the railway tracks and hide amongst trees on the north side of the railway tracks.
The bank, a branch of TD Bank, brought in a senior staff member to meet with safety deposit box holders and, if their box had not been broken into – they were allowed to do whatever they wanted with their valuables. For those who were looking at a gaping hole where the safety deposit box they rented used to be – there will be all kinds of forms to fill out to describe what was in the box.
 Deputy Chief Andrew Fletcher and Detective Donna Whittaker answer media questions during the display of all the cash and other valuable recovered during a bank break-in where the bad guys almost got away. The police seized an acetylene oxygen tank, concrete cutting tools, repelling equipment, ladders and auxiliary lighting sources.
The police believe they have recovered everything taken from the bank but they may not be certain they have everyone involved in custody. There were probably lookouts stationed in the parking lot and in the immediate area which is perhaps why the thieves were able to get out of the building before police arrived.
Three of the accused did not have a fixed address and there is the suspicion they are from out of the country.
 There was not going to be another un-authorized withdrawal – this officer from the Tactical Rescue Unit watched everyone very closely. The police were keen to display the cash that almost got away – and they were equally keen that the money didn’t get away a second time. Two officers from the Tactical Rescue Unit, fully armed, were stationed outside the community room and the Burlington station as well as an officer inside watching a room full of shifty eyed reporters.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON March 19, 2013 Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward was the only Council member to come up with very specific suggestions on how to reduce the spending, which she feels is creeping outside what this city can afford. While Meed Ward doesn’t bring to the table the depth and understanding of municipal budgets that other council members have, and she doesn’t have anything in the way of a financial designation, she does know how to add up the numbers and she doesn’t think this city has to spend what it plans to spend.
Meed Ward would reduce the human resources merit fund from 1.5% of the HR budget to 1%. Savings: $157, 000
Meed Ward would eliminate the E-gov facility rentals. Savings: $165, 000
Meed Ward would eliminate the Risk & Consulting services. Savings: $909, 000
Meed Ward would eliminate additional leadership training; she argues there is already $500,000 in the budget. Savings: $80,000
Meed Wards wants the Brant House Museum to find the $7,000 they wanted for part-time curatorial services within the 2% increase they were given. Savings: $7,000
Meed Ward wants to take out the sum that was set aside for the Burlington Arts Centre foundation board restructuring. Savings: $100,000
Meed Ward didn’t want to give the Performing Arts Centre any more money. Savings: $488,000
Meed Ward, who doesn’t sit in the Burlington Economic Development Corporation board wants to reduce the BEDC ask to $160,000 from $370,000. Savings $210,000
Is she right? She is certainly worth listening to. She argues that “some of the spending increases are hidden because they are “onetime” funding not counted in the tax levy, and result from raiding our Tax Rate Stabilization reserve fund drawn to the tune of almost $2 million.”
What we saw this budget session was a tougher Meed Ward. Her view seemed to be that ‘if you can`t show me real savings and that you are going to do things differently – then I don`t want you to have any more of the taxpayers money.’ With that tone she is certainly playing the kind of music her people want to hear. She is a politician and she fully intends to be Mayor of this city – sooner than many in this city are ready for. My guess – it`s not a bet yet – within five years.
Let`s look at the specifics of what Meed Ward wanted to cut.
Merit pay: The city allocates 1.5% of the human resources budget as an amount managers can allocate to deserving employees as merit pay. Some of the people at city hall do a superb job and deserve an additional reward; that`s how you keep good people. The finance department has been doing a great job. That 1.5% is not given to every employee – it is allocated by the managers – some may get 2.4% while others get nothing. It is merit pay which the city manager will sign off on – fully expect Jeff Fielding to ensure that the merit pay is merited. Meed Ward wants to cut that 1.5% of the human resources budget back to 1% of the HR budget. That won`t be popular with staff but the voters will like it – is it good financial stewardship? It`s not bad.
E gov facilities: The city currently has three full-time people working on what is called E-gov; an approach that uses technology to get information out to people and to get information from people and to provide services faster, easier and more cost effectively. The city has yet to tell its E-Gov story. There is no space at city hall for these people – so the city went looking for a place to house them, found what they needed for the next three years and budgeted $165,000 to cover the rent. Where did Meed Ward expect these people to work – they need an office, preferably one that is heated.
Risk consulting: The city’s audit department is beefing up how the city manager checks on how money was spent. It is one thing to say we are going to have Results Based Accountability – but someone then has to go into each department and look at the projections and the results and report on if the objective was reached and if not – why. That stuff doesn’t just happen; there are procedures and processes that are put in place and followed.
The city manager is making the city hall bureaucracy much more professional – and that does not come cheaply.
Three people were brought in and will be added to the staffing compliment over the next three years. Why not put them all on staff now – that would mean upping the staff count and the city doesn’t want to do that.
Staff training: The city manager realizes there has to be a huge cultural shift at city hall. Doing things the old way is no longer working. People who work in the municipal sector are a product of the business they are in. Don’t expect them to do things differently; that’s not the way the business works and Fielding understands that, which is why he entered into an agreement with McMaster to have them train city hall staff. The 200 men and women taking these courses, amount to an Executive MBA with one fifth of the classes focused on municipal administration. Meed Ward thinks the city manager should make do with the $500,000 he was given. Is she right? On this one – she would be wiser to go with the request. The city will get, is already getting value and that will only increase. The down side is that Burlington is probably in the process of training people who will move on to other municipalities. We will be the best-managed city in the country and the place that everyone poaches to get first class staff.
 The Museum got the $7,000 they wanted – but it was an abuse of process making that happen. And the museum needs a lot more than $7,000 to do justice to the role Joseph Brant played in the development of this country. Brant Museum. Meed Ward opposed the $7,000 the Brant Museum wanted for part-time curatorial. Many felt Councillor Craven abused the delegation process by asking his colleagues to make an exception and have Burlington Museums Executive Director Barbara Teatro plead for the funds – which she got. The Brant Museum needs a really hard look in terms of the job it does researching and promoting the story of Joseph Brant before it gets any additional funding. Craven pulled a fast one and got away with it.
The Burlington Art Centre is going through a very tough stage. They have, in the recent past, had to turn to the foundation and draw down funds from them to meet operating costs. The foundation currently has a meager $35,000 on hand – not a healthy place to be.
The BAC Board and the Foundation Board were once one and the same – they have been divided into two separate boards which is how most places set these things up. The Foundation is usually the fund raising arm; the BAC board handles governance and oversight.
The BAC knew that it had to better define its role in the community. It is getting harder to capture any mind share with all the competing demands for attention. The creation of the Performing Arts Centre took away a lot of the attention the BAC used to get.
They asked the city for $125,000 and wanted to put $50,000 of that into the foundation as a reserve. They wanted to use the rest of the money to put together a marketing/business plan as well as a branding program that would set the BAC apart from other cultural institutions in the city.
They got $100,000 in one time funding to do what they’ve explained they feel they have to do.
Meed Ward doesn’t feel their funding should come from the taxpayers – she doesn’t seem to appreciate that the Art Centre is there for the taxpayers. The city might be dipping into the reserves – that’s what reserves are for.
 The Performing Arts Centre was never supposed to make money – the public just wasn’t ready for the place to lose as much as it lost or to need as much to stay alive. Performing Arts Centre: Meed Ward was one of the Council members that did not attend the Official Opening of the Performing Arts Centre. She has an understanding of the way the place should work that many don’t understand. Her view is that the professional events brought to the PAC have to pay their own way and at the best of times earn enough to leave funds available to support the community events, the non-profit groups that were supposed to be making great use of the space.
Meed Ward wants the profit-making types to subsidize the non-profits. She doesn’t think the PAC needed money to pay for an additional technical person – the increased business would cover that cost and if there were no increase in business then the PAC wouldn’t need the additional technical person.
Meed Ward didn’t see any value in the additional sales associate. The amount they would be adding to the revenue side wasn’t worth the cost or the risk.
Meed Ward doesn’t bring an “artsy” view to the PAC. For her it has always been a nice to have but now that we’ve got the place she doesn’t want to see it sucking up all the funds the city has in reserve. On that one – she should have gotten more in the way of support from her colleagues. That the Executive Director resigned the day after the budget was approved messes up that situation somewhat.
Meed Ward is tough on what the PAC can and should do for the city. A more developed appreciation on the part of what the PAC can do for the city would help – but Meed Ward has a constituency and they like what she is saying.
 The city needs to see more photo ops like this. The business model the BEDC had in place was a close to total failure. It took a shock from the city manager who reported Burlington was going to experience negative commercial growth in the tax base for 2013 to motivate the BEDC board to do something. Meed Ward wants more information on how they are going to solve the problem before she approves funding. Council decided to give them what they were asking for. Economic Development Corporation: We now have Meed Ward who is a more involved Councillor on things economic, which up until now has not been one of her strengths. She still struggles with some of the concepts but she knows how to add and she brings the view of the average person to the table. For Meed Ward the “what” has to be done is no longer the issue – the city needs more jobs; the city has a great story to tell potential corporations looking for a place to locate and we have the economic land needed. That the land isn’t ready for occupancy is an issue that can be resolved. For Meed Ward, the issue is how we are going to do this and she doesn’t believe the BEDC has a grip yet on the how part and she doesn’t want to give them anymore funding until the “what” has been made very clear.
For her, and her constituency – it is pretty clear. The nuances that BEDC Executive Director Kyle Benham talks about are beyond the ward two council member. Those two are never going to agree on much but she has clout at the Council table – Benham approaches as a supplicant.
 Meed Ward argues that the Sound of Music produces revenue for the city. The numbers in the right hand column are monies paid to the city for services the city provides – that’s SOM money being paid to the city.
Meed Ward says they pay the city $96,200 Sound of Music: Meed Ward isn’t afraid to spend money. She thinks the Sound of Music is one of the best deals the city has going for it and she was quite prepared to let them have the $37,000 they were asking for. She would be inclined to give them more if they asked and would love to see the Performing Arts Centre delivering economic benefits the way the Sound of Music does.
Meed Ward wanted to cut spending – that’s good, politicians have an ability to spend and try later to duck the consequences. Not this lady. Unfortunately some of the cuts she proposed were ill-advised and not thought out thoroughly. One of the problems is that Meed Ward antagonizes people; she pushes buttons and moves people out of their comfort zone. And so they push back. We saw Councillor Craven pushing back in a most inappropriate way.
Meed Ward is learning – and she does have the capacity to learn. No one is really sure who is advising her – she doesn’t have an advisor, a trusted confidant she can bounce ideas off.
She does have a constituency and they love her. How large is that constituency and can she grow it to the point where it will carry her to the point where she wears the chain of office. Too early to tell – but she gave them all a run for their money this budget session.
 Meed Ward doesn’t like the direction the tax curve is taking and fears for the impact this could have on the seniors who have fixed incomes. She asks if the tax dollars are being spent in the right places. For Meed Ward it is all about the tax rate which she says has increased 60% in the past 10 years. The graph shown is not something she is proud of and not the kind of city she wants to run.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON March 19th, 2013 – City media release. The City of Burlington has approved the city’s 2013 current budget, which will increase taxes by 2.07 %, or $19.08 for each $100,000 of residential urban value assessment.
“I would like to commend staff, and the city’s budget committee for a job well done,” said Mayor Rick Goldring. “As a municipality, it is always a balance of priorities to look at the quality of life expectations of today with the long-term financial needs of tomorrow. I believe we have effectively made some decisions that serve the people of Burlington while still keeping tax rates competitive with those of other municipalities.”
“Council approved an increase to the hospital levy to $3.6 million, and an increase in funding for infrastructure, with $2 million dedicated towards the city’s local roadway resurfacing program.
“When approving the 2013 current budget, City Council focused on efficiencies in service delivery and the key strategic priorities, outlined in the city’s strategic plan, Burlington, Our Future,” said Ward 3 Councillor John Taylor, chair of the city’s budget committee. “Council takes very seriously every decision related to spending, whether it’s the operating budget or the capital budget. We are focused on what matters to the people of Burlington.”
It took them five paragraphs but they finally fessed up:
“The 4.46 per cent tax rate increase to the city’s portion of the property tax bill is combined with the Region of Halton’s increase of 0.8 per cent and an education increase of zero per cent, resulting in an overall property tax rate increase of 2.07 per cent.”
 Councillor Sharman wanted to skew the budget numbers to make them look better.  Councillor Taylor told Sharman “playing with budget numbers for political reasons will come back to bite you.” What council tried to do was use the regional portion of the tax levy along with the Board of Education levy, which were both a 0% increase over last year, and combine those two with the Police budget, which had a small increase over last year – and use those lower numbers to make the city numbers look better. That’s what we call “trying to pull a fast one”. It was Councillor Sharman, an accountant at heart, who first mentioned the 2% number. Bit of jiggery poking on his part which Councillor Taylor warned would come back to bite him. The surprise is that the Mayor went along with the scam.
At the Council budget debate, where they basically review and for the most part rubber stamp what was done at the committee level, the more contentious matters get a second hard look.
The public can delegate and this year there was a delegation from Bfast, a citizens advocacy group that wanted Council to defer the bus fare increase until there was an opportunity for some significant public comment. On that level the Bfast people were correct: the city did not take the matter of a rate increase to the public. So much for community engagement.
Transit, the funding of the Burlington Economic Development Corporation, the funding of the Performing Arts centre, finding the money to keep the roads in decent repair and ensuring that we maintain our contribution to the hospital were the items that got all the attention.
 Did they develop a good budget for you? It wasn’t a bad budget but it papers over quite a few problems and doesn’t provide enough money to fill all the pot holes. Taylor appeared to be the only person who had much in the way of empathy for the people who can’t afford the cost of transit. Meed Ward was with him on this to some degree – but the rest, they just didn’t get it. Going without isn’t a part of their life experience.
“In 2012 the city generated a surplus of $2.3 million. The surplus was used to reduce the impact of one-time or temporary costs on the 2013 budget, said the city’s media release.
It went on to point out that “The city has a long-term financial plan that creates a sustainable financial position for Burlington.” City Manager Jeff Fielding said: “The budget is aligned to the City’s investment and operational priorities as outlined in that plan. We are in good financial shape, with a solid base budget, responsible debt management and adequate reserve fund balances.”
Was it a good budget? It wasn’t a bad budget but given that the budget next year will be the last before this council has to go to the polls again – they’ve not left themselves much room to offer the voters some goodies to keep them happy and plump – before they get plucked again. Councillor Dennison sent his regrets – he was unable to attend the meeting – can’t blame any of this on him then can we?
A 2.07% increase – nice try. Just how stupid do your think these voters are?
 By Walter Byj,
Staff reporter
BURLINGTON, ON March 19, 2013 I witnessed my first full council meeting on Monday night, and left with mixed feelings. I was somewhat impressed with the knowledge base of the Councillors, but disappointed with some other aspects of the meeting. Following are my observations, in no particular order.
What was the reason for the barbs that were quite apparent between Councillors Rick Craven and Marianne Meed Ward? Is there a personal history here? To be fair, throwing barbs seems to be common among all of the Councillors. Maybe that is part of the political game, but one would think that it could be done in a more civil manner. It appeared as if members were trying to achieve points over each other.
 Freshman reporter Walter Byj thought the transit fare delegation made some strong points – doesn’t understand why their advice wasn’t taken. Then there was the matter of the two delegations that wanted the proposed 8% bus fare price increase deferred. Although it did lead to one council member re-evaluating and changing her vote (Meed Ward), others on the council seemed to take any opposition as a personal affront to their good judgement. Is this ego at play, or are people just being stubborn?
Is this response common to previous or future delegations? I got the impression that because the Councillors did a lot of hard work and have a great new plan, then their decision must be right. The fare increase is a go with only Rick Craven and Marianne Mead Ward voting against.
Councillor Blair Lancaster seemed quite upset at the way the discussion was and asked the delegation if council should do nothing. “We want to work with the people, not against them,” said Lancaster.
 Reporter Walter Byj wondered if the amount gained with a transit fare increase would offset the amount being given to the Performing Arts Centre? While council was eagerly raising bus fares, not sure how much will be raised, they were just as eagerly spending close to half a million dollars over the next two years for the Burlington Performing Arts Centre. Hopefully the bus fare increase will cover this expenditure. At least Councillor Ward was consistent as she voted against both the fare increase and the additional funds for the BPAC.
I wish the Performing Arts success, but not sure at what cost. Mayor Rick Goldring did mention that although the BPAC did lose money last year, the professional shows did turn a profit. Hopefully this does not turn out to be another pier, which was not discussed at all. That was good news.
Was it the English accent or the cadence of his speech, but I got the impression that Councillor Paul Sharman seems to know what is best for Burlington. I kind of got the feeling that I was being talked down to.
Not sure if this is common to all the meetings, but there were no break scheduled for this meeting. Not sure as to why this is so, as even the most exciting of events plan a break so that everyone can take a moment to refresh. And trust me, the excitement level here does not compare to a sporting event.
Well, that is my quick review. Thank goodness we have reporters who do this on a regular basis and summarize the proceedings in their stories. If you can’t attend the meetings, at least read the articles so that you will have a better understanding of the proceedings. As for me, I just might sit in on another meeting as making judgements on just one is not fair. Not sure if I will attend the meeting live at city hall, or watch it on Cogeco Cable.
 Walter Byj is a more than 40 year Burlington resident who lives north of the QEW. He was employed as a Sales operations and planning manager with a major consumer products company for more than 30 years. He also worked in the field as a sales representative calling on department store branches in south-western Ontario. Walter also did his time at Dofasco where he did follow through for customers in the Hot Roll and Plate section. A graduate of Ryerson University Walter Byj completed a Bachelor of Business Management degree and diploma in Business Administration between 1967–1973 in a combination of full and part-time study.
 By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON March 19, 2013 It is usually the city of Burlington handing out an award for something. At times one gets the impression there is a department that does nothing but think of people an award or a certificate can be given to.
But last night it was the city that got the award – given to them by the United Way of Burlington and Greater Hamilton . City Hall staff were the recipients who last night were represented by Wendy Hough, one of the brains in the IT department. It was nice to see the people who do the work get the credit.
 When it matters, city hall staffers put their backs into it. Community building at its best. Len Lifchus, Chief Executive Officer, United Way of Burlington and Greater Hamilton, gave the city the Arcelor Mittal Dofasco community award, which in the past has been given to Scotia Bank, Mohawk College, the Spectator and CUMIS; nothing shabby about that crowd.
Lifchus advised Council that he had recently moved to Burlington, which will certainly add to our heft as the second best place to live in Canada, and told city council that Burlington city hall staff had donated more than $985,000 to the United Way in the past ten years.
Council learned as well that many city hall employees that receive service awards donate the value of that award to the United Way.
City hall staff are usually the kick off point for the Burlington United Way campaign each year when they block off part of Brant Street and literally pull a heavy truck or some other heavy piece of equipment down the street. The city departments compete with each other for the shortest pull time. One year the Planning Department had two teams on the street.
Staff gets a bit of a break from their work and set the tone and the pace for the campaign in the city. There is no shortage of criticism about what city hall staffers don’t do – which for the most part are unfounded. The kick off United Way event put on by the city hall staff is the first steps in a campaign that is much-needed in this city. All those civil servants deserve the award they were given by the United Way last night.
Good on all of you.
 City Hall media release:
BURLINGTON, ON March 19th, 2013 –Brenda Heatherington, the first executive director of the Burlington Performing Arts Centre, announced today she will leave in June to spend more time with her family.
“I was brought in three years ago to open this incredible venue,” Heatherington said. “I have watched The Burlington Performing Arts Centre go from a hole in the ground to a theatre with exceptional life and vibrancy. It is a good time now to pass the reigns to someone else.”
Heatherington came to Burlington from The Arden Theatre in St. Albert, Alta. in May 2010.
 Heatherington brought great experience in finding the talent that draws audiences into theatre seats. That talent is going to be hard to replace. “I am truly grateful to everyone who has welcomed me here in Burlington, from the staff and volunteers to the board of directors, members of City Council, the arts community and the many people who have been part of The Centre,” Heatherington said. “It is a privilege to work with you all, and I will miss you as I refocus my time and energy on new adventures and on my family.”
The executive director of the Burlington Performing Arts Centre reports to the board of directors. The Centre will begin a search for its second executive director to replace Heatherington.
“Brenda brought to the Burlington Performing Arts Centre solid community experience, energy and enthusiasm, helping give The Centre its best possible start,” said board chair Allan Pearson. “On behalf of the board, I want to offer my sincere thanks. We will continue The Centre’s positive momentum, presenting high-quality shows, excellent rental opportunities and leading theatre performance and education programs.”
In 2012, the Burlington Performing Arts Centre attracted 68,542 visitors. The Centre won the Award of Merit for Barrier-Free Design from the March of Dimes and received LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification for new construction from the Canada Green Building Council, CaGBC.
“The Burlington Performing Arts Centre is recognized as an excellent venue for culture and entertainment,” said Mayor Rick Goldring. “Brenda and her team, together with the board of directors, have done a tremendous job of making The Centre a place where the performing arts thrive and where people can meet and enjoy a lively downtown experience.”
The Burlington Performing Arts Centre’s mission is to provide the people of Burlington with a broad range of excellent performance opportunities that will both inspire and delight, delivering diverse, world-class arts and entertainment to the community and showcasing Burlington and its arts community to the world.
Editors note:
The Performing Arts Centre has been under consistent criticism by citizens of the city and some members of city council for the revenue short falls. While council approved the budget for 2013 they also required both the Performing Arts Centre and the Burlington Art Centre to undergo full business plan reviews in the fall of 2013.
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