By Pepper Parr
July 16th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Civic Square will move to final design work.
Council voted on this – there were no comments from Councillors, there was no input from staff.
Truth be told – there really wasn’t that much negative input from the public. The public opportunity to meet with the consultants drew less than 50 people.
There was never any doubt that this Council was going to get a costly, fancy Civic Square that we didn’t need or ask for. We only needed safety upgrades to fix the deck and entrances plus some more benches and shading for seating. All approved back in 2017 by the old Council.
But citizens were never asked the second time after this new Council took over the agenda in 2019 and got funding from other levels of taxpayers who weren’t even aware they were helping us get the Cadillac version. Just as we are never aware when the Feds or the Province promise some of our money to build vanity projects in other towns and cities. Citizens are continually left out of the equation of how their money is spent. Not how democracy is supposed to work and how Councillors, MPPs and MPs are supposed to guard the piggybank for truly important work.
What is worse still Gary is all members of Council our head of legal and Acting CAO all know the decision is based on will of council alone ,and as well as improperly setting aside a previous democratically elected council decision to comply with legislation sees them thumb their nose at staff who have informed every member of this council we are creatures of the province and must be compliant with their legislation. This will come back and haunt this Council, every one of them defiant to the end. Bentivegna is the worst changing his vote from a very loud no as he believed it was not in the city’s financial interests to leave Civic Square as it was, now worse, past summer 2019 to a resounding YES.
VETERAN SQUARE (not Veteran’s Square)
Not much input from the public. Probably because we are tired of flapping our gums and being gaslit by this council and the mayor. Who then eventually decide what they want and what will make her patrons happy.
Also no input from CAO who left Blake Hurley in charge. The battle to have this Council comply with legislation and not over-ride previous decisions of democratically elected councils to put in place their legacy projects at an increased cost of 6.6 million is not over.
There have been numerous Negative comments all over Social Media addressed directly to our Mayor and City Council regarding the Civic Square renovations. Many residents have written negative comments to our City Council. Residents have attended the numerous online Zoom discusssions and completed numerous Surveys on this topic! Saying No, we do not need or want this done.
Residents are Not happy with all of the Millions and Millions of dollars this Council has spent on their numerous Vanity Projects we didn’t need or want!
Our Property Taxes are out of Control!!
The problem is that this Council doesnt listen to their residents and Tax Payers. They do not engage. And if they do engage there is No effect.
Our Mayor and Council will soon find out what Burlington Property Tax Payers think of them and their performance come the October 2026 Municipal Election.
Enough is enough!!!