February 1st, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
The practice at City Council meetings is to have each member of Council comment on what is happening in their ward. They have up to two minutes.
At the last Council meeting City Chief Administrative Officer Hassaam Basit got five minutes to report on what he has been doing and what Staff have done.
He started by assuring Council that he wouldn’t be more than five minutes
“ I’m going to start by reading an email that came in just two weeks ago, January the 13th.
“I’m just writing to send a very heartfelt thanks to the people in the event I witnessed this past weekend, I was so touched I had to ensure I reached out to share. My elderly neighbor needed to go to the hospital during the heavy snow on Saturday morning. So this was two weeks ago when the fire department arrived. They shoveled the entire driveway, including the sidewalks of their property during this time, the snow plow had come and cleared snow on that side of the road, but had to skip my property and that of the neighbors. Shortly after the ambulance left, the snow plow returned and cleared the snow on our side of the street. I was so blown away by the immense care and compassion, and I’m hoping that my message gets passed along to those involved. Thank you so much to the fire department and the snow plow driver. My children learned an important lesson about caring for others, as well as taking initiative in your community from watching the whole thing unfold at the window. Thank you so much, City of Burlington.
Basit continues: “A few other quick updates. Healing Forest is now being featured at the Paletta Mansion, and it’s open for the community to enjoy. There’s information on our website. Just like to again, thank city staff who worked with a community organization to make that happen.
“The City of Burlington has been providing transit services since 1975 which makes this our 50th year. To commemorate this event there will be a Burlington Transit branded PRESTO Card.” Basit suggested that these cards might well have some value in another 50 years. He did not say who was covering the cost of these branded cards nor did he say how people acquire one of these cards.
On the RCC, Recreation, Community and Culture side. “The City of Burlington youth programs was successful in securing nearly $30,000 from Halton Region for building safer communities project by Public Safety Canada. These funds will support enhancing the youth belong program with new furnishings for equipment and for youth friendly spaces, staffing to boost youth engagement and social events, connecting youth with community partners in our services.
“You heard the importance of reaching out and connecting with the community from the Police Services this morning. Even though a lot of social services responsibilities are with the region, the city does play a role, and it’s important to highlight when we are successful.
“Over the holidays, the Burlington Teen Tour band performed in 12 Christmas parades across southern Ontario, with each drawing about 25,000 attendees, and the one in Toronto attracting an estimated 750,000 spectators.
“Switching gears to HR, equally fun, the city filled 191 full-time regular contract positions in 2024. We’ve heard from council that when funding is approved for positions, they need to be filled and we’re endeavoring to do that.
“The city has moved the needle immensely over the past 12 months on that front; to give you an idea, filling 191 full-time regular application jobs meant going through 18,000 applicants. Those are being boarded onto our Work Day system, which is making things much more efficient. We are continuing to see these recruitment process improvements in the part-time hiring process as well, especially within the RCC group, leading with faster hiring, minimizing the amount of manual entry, and improving candidate experience. The city is committed to employee development and growth and continues to offer a variety of opportunities.
“I’m pleased to share that in 2024, 34 employees qualified to receive tuition assistance, up to a maximum of $2,000 to help support educational pursuits that were identified as increasing both the individual and the city’s capabilities, especially on Legal and Legislative Services Division. That may sound like it’s not good news, but it actually is.
“The City legal team, working with the building department staff, was successful in obtaining convictions on 13 charges relating to building code violations at a single high rise building. This was a significant result, both in terms of obtaining compliance with the building code and thereby increasing the safety of the building’s residents. Significant as well was the significant fines imposed by the court: $150,000.
What Basit didn’t say was – who the developer was that got whacked with the fines. Any Guesses?
“The Committee of Adjustment meetings are now hybrid. I would like to congratulate everybody that worked on that,
The 2020 Lake Shore Ontario Land Tribunal hearing (Waterfront Hotel site) decision favoured the city. I know you’ve all read the detailed decision that was released. The thing of note is that the tribunal confirmed that the objective should not be to maximize the number of persons and jobs that can be accommodated on any particular parcel of land, but rather it is about finding the right balance as to what represents good planning. These reasons will assist the city in evaluating and responding to other development applications within the downtown and elsewhere.

A significant part of what makes Burlington the city it is – is the beautiful canopies that grace many of the streets. Scenes like this will not be part of the developments that take place around the GO stations.
“Canada’s community canopies fund from Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which I’d like to thank councilor Nesson for bringing to our attention.
“There is now an invasive species fund for remote sensing technologies to monitor invasive species across the city.
“We were also successful in receiving baseline funding for Burlington transit, which many of you were at that announcement.
“The Finance department has compiled the total funding dollars earned by the city through these types of grants for 2024 – they are just over $16 million for 2024
“On the communication side, I know that all of you contribute to City Talk. During the postal strike, staff pivoted and released a digital version of it that increased traffic to the City Talk website, web page by 1100 so people do read what you write in those newsletters.
“We had 800,000 City Talk ad views across the website.
“Burlington’s website experienced significant growth among active users, increasing by 7.1% to 1.55 million active users; sessions increasing by 4.1% to 3.2 million sessions – previously the number was s3 million sessions.
“On the engagement side, RCC and com staff have launched a new public feedback automated device that’s in place, which is generating lots of strong engagement. We’re going to pilot and expand that project across other areas of the city.
“The city’s communication and engagement efforts resulted in almost 100,000 visits to city initiatives on the Get Involved Burlington page with an engagement rate of 18.6% to give you a benchmark, the industry average is 10% so that’s almost 20,000 surveys, completed documents, viewed, items, downloaded and questions asked between the city and its residents. That’s outstanding engagement.
“Switching to Finance. I know, through Permit to Pipeline and other metrics, we’ve all heard about the number of units that are that have been approved. So the other side of that, or related to that, the city in 2024, collected $11 million in development charges, that will assist the city, with the development of growth growth-related infrastructure,
“Tax staff have successfully completed the first interim billing utilizing our new property tax software, and they are now in the process of generating 69,380 tax bills. About a third of our residents, 35% of the properties right now are registered for pre-authorized payment plans – we’d certainly like to see that percentage go up significantly.
“On the Burlington Digital Services (BDS) side investments continue. Of note, the BDS team continues to reduce our technology debt, and that’s one of the recommendations that came out of the audit committee. They have decommissioned several systems, three in particular, just in the last month. They are also continuing to upgrade our network across various city locations, and one that may not come to mind, the Greenwood Cemetery. It’s important to have digital services connectivity networks there as well. So they’ve done that.
“We’ve also continued to invest in our cyber security, bringing on the Microsoft Sentinel deployment, which will allow us to better capture events across our architecture.
“And lastly, City staff hosted a design charrette with key landowners and urban design professionals to discuss opportunities for the future development of Appleby go MTSA. Appleby go MTSA represents an important growth node for the city. A Charette, which is a fancy word for a collaborative design workshop, allowed multiple developers, including the city, to work together to explore how specific design elements can be incorporated into forthcoming developments to get the best possible outcomes from mobility, walkability and place making for this important growth. Note, that initial feedback from this pilot from participants has been very positive, and there was general agreement among the landowners around the need for specific design considerations to be built into future development plans to actually achieve these outcomes. This approach is a new one for the city.
And with that Chief Administrative Officer Hassaam Basit ended his presentation – there was no applause – that kind of behaviour is not permitted in the Councl Chamber

Wasted Time, Wasted Priorities – The administrator not only went over his allotted speaking time but, spent those extra minutes—and more—touting vanity projects and bureaucracy that don’t lower your taxes, don’t make City Hall more efficient, and don’t improve basic services. That tells you everything you need to know about where the priorities are.
Residents vs. Rhetoric – What we need to hear is a plan to cut waste, make City Hall more efficient, and put money back in taxpayers’ pockets. What we got instead was a long-winded self-congratulatory speech about things that don’t improve your daily life.
Accountability Matters – We keep hearing about ‘achievements,’ but let’s ask: Did your taxes go down? Did city services get better? Did spending become more efficient? If the answer is no, then it wasn’t an achievement—it was a distraction.
The Clock Doesn’t Lie – If leadership can’t even respect a simple time limit, how can we trust them to manage a city budget responsibly?
Did Nison write his speech for him ?
The forest does not need healing ! It needs some clean up of fallen branches and tree trimming imo.I have been walking there since childhood and have not noticed “healing” but I will keep my eyes open in future.
It was an approved project of the Neighbourhood Community Matching Fund, 2024. It’s a self-guided walking trail with signage. From City of Burlington webpage:
“A Healing Forest is being created within the natural landscape of Paletta Lakefront Park in honour of Truth and Reconciliation and as a part of the National Healing Forests Initiative. Healing Forests promote community and relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Included will be a self-guided medicine walk, which will highlight the many species living within the forest informed by Traditional Ecological Knowledge….It has been established through the collaboration of Indigenous and non-Indigenous professionals working together in the spirit of reconciliation to develop a unique space for healing, community, and connection to nature. ”
https://www.burlington.ca/en/news/deadline-approaching-to-apply-for-up-to-10-000-for-community-led-projects.aspx
More relative to taxpayer concerns, I would have loved to have heard progress and costing to original budget on our 2 major capital projects – Bateman Community Centre, and the new Skyway Arena. With respect to the latter, I think I heard (hopefully I am mistaken), “slightly more than half of the cost is more than than the City expected” – but this is not an unique situation!!
Any idea what a healing forest is at Paletta park?
“A recent example of an approved Neighbourhood Community Matching Fund initiative is the Healing Forest at Paletta Lakefront Park.
A Healing Forest is being created within the natural landscape of Paletta Lakefront Park in honour of Truth and Reconciliation and as a part of the National Healing Forests Initiative.”
https://www.burlington.ca/en/news/deadline-approaching-to-apply-for-up-to-10-000-for-community-led-projects.aspx
I still don’t know what a healing forest is.
I think it’s a fancy word for what you and I would call “a nature walk”. It sounds better and more impressive if you can serve it up with a word salad.