City Council agrees: more time will be made available between initial reports to Council and when decisions are made final

By Pepper Parr

April 13th, 2026

BURLINGTON, ON

It came up as a Motion to make changes to the 2026 Council calendar meeting schedule

Mayor Meed Ward and Councillor moved the Motion.

From this point on it was back patting.

Mayor Meed Ward: The motion really does respond to community feedback.

Mayor Meed Ward(MMW) The motion really does respond to community feedback. So this is one of those opportunities to do what Councillor Stolte said earlier when we were talking about the Charter, which is actually to tell folks when their input has made a difference. We have had a we’ve had both systems over the years that I’ve been around here. We’ve had a week between committee and council, and then we’ve had, you know, the very next week. We heard from Committee,  from several community members, that they would value a longer break between committee meetings and council meetings. It would give our staff additional time to put the materials together, particularly now that we have the standing committee pipeline to permit on the Thursday, which provides really little turnaround time.

Thus just gives everyone a little bit more time and helps to address theTuesday after a long weekend as well. So we’ve reset the calendar to avoid council meetings being on a Tuesday after a long weekend, which is kind of like a Monday, but also to provide that additional space in between. That’s the intent, and I want to thank all the residents who have given us their input on this. We have heard you, and this is the result. Thank you.

Councillor Stolte:  I kind of wish I’d taken the opportunity to speak first, because I don’t have a lot to add to that. Thank you for using the opportunity as a good example of exactly what we talked about in our engagement Charter, which is explaining to the community how we have used the information and the suggestions and the feedback that we’ve received from them.

The 418 page document is shown in Councillor Kearns’ hand.

Councilor Karen, perhaps just a question around the content. I want to recognize that this is a welcome breath to manage the information that’s coming before us. But I also want to say we’ll need some leniency when still in council, because this package here that’s been received. I had four days with it, four business working days. It was received on the Thursday. We had a four day long weekend, we had four days of business functioning, and then we had another three day, two day weekend, and then we were in chambers right now.

We had four days with the better part of 418 pages, not including our closed materials. And so I’m glad that we have that extra breathing room. As I did say, I’m waiting for some additional information to come to this council in this cycle. So maybe if we have a little bit more open mindedness and leniency, people might just be finding out about items when they come to committee in the public and may want to have some more dialog with us. That’s a little bit more than four business days worth of review when we get into these holiday crunches. So I look forward to a little bit of that additional breathing room as these agendas can be big or small, depending on the cycle, and we’ll see what we can do when we get to council with it.

Nisan’s working relationship with his community is constrained by his not living in the ward he represents.

Chair Nisan:  I’ll just say I haven’t gotten any comments.  I actually haven’t gotten any feedback  that we need another week between committee and council. The information for council is this is very similar to what comes out for committee. So if there are concerns I would be happy to receive it.

We made a decision a couple years ago, to tighten up the schedule a bit, to leave time for our other and our other duties. Fortunately, I don’t see any conflicts in my calendar for for this change in year, and it can be reviewed in the next term, when that calendar meetings comes up. But I gotta say, I haven’t seen any upswell of requests for this. I’m willing to give it a shot, and maybe some sharing could occur from the two movers to me, because I have not seen any. I don’t know what problem we’re solving here, but I will just ask staff if there’s any concerns with this change, whether this messes anything up for you on your end, like, Wouldn’t want you know, any vacations to be canceled, or trips or anything. But any issues at all with this? Are we all good

City Solicitor Blake Hurley: From a legislative services perspective, the proposed amendments don’t cause any concerns. Or from from a city process perspective, there’s there’s nothing there good to go.

Nisan: Okay, that’s good enough for me.

Councillor Stolte saw it quite differently. “I have received quite a bit of feedback over the years, so it’s not something that was a groundswell as of late. To me, it was something that the mayor and I had talked about, that the whole DC conversation kind of was a culmination of having heard that feedback a number of times. And I think when, whenever you hear once, it’s a one off, and I wouldn’t have put emotion forward on a one off, but twice is a coincidence, and by the time you get to thrice, you have a pattern. And I think I certainly saw a pattern coming here.

Nisan: I’m going to call the vote on the motion, which is to direct the city clerk to amend the 2026 calendar of meetings for council and standing committees to add a full week between committee and council, all those in favor, any opposed, that carries.