By Pepper Parr
October 17th, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
We sent the following to the City’s Communications people.
In the media release you sent out on the Mayor’s Budget there was the following statement:
Residents and business owners were asked to share their feedback through the 2024 Budget Survey.
How many feedback comments were there?
The response:
A report will go to Council, including 2024 Budget Survey info.
A better experience.
The Communications department is consistent. They appear to take the position that their job is to manage the flow of news. When it is decent, even a little on the positive side – they can’t get it out the door fast enough.
We will wait and see what gets made public when it gets to Council.
Earlier today the Communications people had time to put out a piece on celebrating of the changes made to the ground floor of city hall – it was going to allow residents to have a “better Experience” when they had to do business with the City.
The Clerk has still not responded to me, and fulfilled his duties to enforce the Code of Good Governance procedures that govern the operation of the Integrity Commissioner. I described this issue in the Gazette a month or two ago about a complaint I made on conflict of interest in Ward 1.
Nobody at City is responsible or accountable on this file, including primarily the Clerk who is responsible, Tim Commisso, Council, the Mayor, and seemingly all of Senior Staff at City. Talk about Strong Mayor. No communication visible on this file.
I can only echo the comment questions of the departures and make a bet that the Strong Mayor is behind this, and she certainly interfered politically to get what she wanted from the Integrity Commissioner, and the silence of the Clerk.
This matter is not going away.
Thanks Tom for your tenacity. We can assure you that the legislated requirements for good Governance that senior staff and particularly the Clerk, City Manager, the Mayor as CEO and members of Council are ignoring will not go away either. Never in the history of our commitment to work for the best interests of our community, province and country has senior staff and councillors behaviour been this bad with no change for the better in sight.
Ontario Ombudsman declared based on his experience with complaints that municipal councillors made provincial counterparts look like choir boys.
Right Lynn to Incompetence Department. The issues we have with Council and Committee communications such as June 2016 – Jan 2018 Minutes, Videos, Agenda etc. and the diverting of all our communications to the Clerk’s office for response, no matter who we address our emails to are the responsibility of the Clerk. He has passed the buck on this one since mid-2022 prior to the election. Despite his public claims and the Municipal Act summary of his responsibilities that he is responsible for the council chamber and what goes on there. Anyone taking bets on who goes next.
And still no comment on why Kwab left just as Commisso also announced he’ll be leaving? The Communications Department needs to change their name.