By Pepper Parr
January 17th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
A reader, who is more comfortable remaining anonymous, but who we know to be reliable, wrote to comment that “the City went all big on Public Engagement and held Citizen Action Labs – public sessions to consider Citizens Advisory Committees” (my understanding is that this ‘issue’ has been in discussion since 1997).
“A list of many of the suggestions/recommendations was sent around to participants (and is available on the getinvolved site – click on Latest News). Then a staff report was to be presented at the Nov. 4 COW meeting – but pulled, literally at the last moment.
“Explanation, of sorts, can be found
The Heritage Advisory Committee is exceptionally successful. Former city councils gave then a lot of responsibility and they didn’t fail to deliver. There are other Advisory committees that are close to failures.
“Since then, some kind of ‘review team’ was struck to ??? Jim Young and Roland Tanner are two names that I can identify as being invited.
“I caught wind of a Q & A (not my words) to be held at City Hall on the evening of Jan. 23, with some members of existing Advisory Committee members before the staff report gets sent to Council.
“I don’t think there’s anything nefarious going on but it is frustrating when a citizen takes time out to participate and then is kept in the dark until the ‘results’ are presented as a fait d’acompli almost a year later.”
Anything to it? The report was pulled very suddenly last November.
