Council stumbles over how to respond to flooding issues; will hold a special meeting of Council on Friday

By Pepper Parr

July 17^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Council was getting ready to adjourn their meeting on Tuesday when when Councillor Sharman asked a question about the flooding that was taking place.

Mayor Meed Ward started with:

All right, folks, we are, I’m asking for a mover and seconder, and I’m going to tap Councillors Sharman and Stolte on the shoulders for that to allow us to waive our procedure by law, to have a brief discussion of the recent flooding in the city, to hear from our staff and to determine if there’s any action this council wishes to take.

I’m getting nods from the mover and seconder: we need to waive section of the procedural bylaw. We will need a two thirds recorded vote to get that on the floor for conversation.”

They found a section of the procedural bylaw that would permit the discussion of Urgent Business.

Terrific, we have a new item on the floor, and I’ll turn it first to our Acting Chief Administrative Officer, Blake Hurley, to say a few words, and then open the floor to committee or council.

Blake Hurley: “I wanted to give a brief update on what occurred yesterday and what continues to occur today. Emergency operations staff commenced enhanced monitoring and staff from departments across the organization, as well as Burlington Hydro, Halton Regional Police, Halton Region staff, Burlington fire, all met yesterday afternoon and continued to meet today to share information that was coming in from across the city and provide a coordinated deployment of city resources to areas of the city that required action. The coordinated response resulted in the city being able to deploy resources to areas where water was pooling and flowing over roadways, closing roads where necessary, removing any impediments and getting traffic signals and Hydro back online.

“Communication staff have been actively communicating closure updates and safety messaging through its communications channels and Service Burlington has also been engaged taking in information regarding flooding on city roads and public property, and directing homeowners to the region’s 311, system and their insurer for calls related to basement flooding steps taken after the 2014 flood, both in terms of capital improvements and in terms of emergency response, have resulted in less impacts than there could have been otherwise.

“Make no mistake, there are certainly impact currently impacted roads and homeowners, but staff from across the departments continue to monitor the situation, including with today’s rains and to ensure that impacts to city infrastructure are addressed and the public continues to be updated. The XLT staff are meeting tomorrow to debrief and determine whether the rainfall, which was estimated to be between 50 and 80 millimeters in a relatively short time period yesterday to determine whether any city road or infrastructure that needs to be addressed, including how or if any necessary improvements are currently budgeted for or need to be considered as we move through the budget process.

We have Enrico Scalera, Director of roads, parks and forestry, to answer any questions you may have with respect to details.

Meed Ward: “With that, I will open the floor. Councillor Sharman, go ahead.

Sharman: The seriousness of this is yet unknown. The situation we had in 2014 after six hours, 180 millimeters of rain. On that date, I was summoned to this room where we had emergency services. We had people from Halton, and at that time, the Halton people didn’t know how many flooded units we had, and the result of that was we did not declare an emergency. I regret that day to this day, and we should have called an emergency then, because I knew the water was going in people’s basements. I was in basements where it was six feet high and even up to the second floor, we had no clue. I had no clue as to how many, and it took another three weeks or four weeks before we realized that there were 3000 homes that were flooded and many not insured. So what do I know right now?

“I know I have a continuing stream of people just from Ward five talking about how their basements are flooded. It’s not all storm water that’s come on over the ground. It’s, it’s, there’s, there is sanitary sewage flooding as well, which is a health problem. And you know, I remember people walking through basements that were flooded with sanitary sewers in there, in the in their in their docks, you know, the small, you know, the rubber thing bad. And people already asking me, how do I, how do I dry out my basement, and can I use a fan who’s just going up the stairs? And you know, the problem is, we don’t, we don’t have enough information already. You know, we’ve got lots of people calling our own customer service line. We’ve got lots of people calling 311, we are we know that there’s a whole bunch

“My, desire is to believe that, you know, we had less, less time, but possibly more intense rain that we had on in 2014 but I think it was intense enough that it will have flooded homes. The water on the roads was as high and the cavitation of water around the in the manholes and the sanitary sewer system, although less water probably flowing through the sanitary sewer system, through infiltration because of all the steps and the money we invested, $20 million of the region, $40 million here in the city. We  cannot overcome the amount of rain we got. So what I’m saying is we need to have a conversation about what represents an emergency in this situation, and make the public be aware that we are concerned about it same as they are. So that’s why I want to bring this forward. I have questions then about, you know, from this morning, we had 100 calls about basements being flooded. What’s the number now? What are we seeing in the last, you know, six hours or so. And you know, what might we conclude from that? So there’s my question.”

Meed Ward: “Who wants to take that? Rico, go ahead, our director of roads, parks and forestry, who’s on the front lines of this with your team?

Enrico:”We are still responding to this event, we are still assessing the conditions of the impact from what we understand yesterday’s rainfall.   That is the second event today, which is also now compounding the issues and our response to the situation. With respect to your question regarding the impact to basement and private property; we just had a call with, with the region – they too have a backlog. They approximately have about 260 calls that they are following up with. Not all that has been followed up yet. That’s the magnitude as we under understand right now. From a city infrastructure perspective, we’re still reviewing the impact, and we have approximately three road segments that are currently impacted. The rest of the infrastructure is currently being reviewed.

Sharman: “At about this time, on the second day in 2014 we had about 250 reported flooded homes. So we’re, we could be a long way from the end of this road.

Meed Ward: Blake, would there be a benefit to declaring a state of emergency with respect to this and and if so, what might it be?

Blake Hurley: “The city has a detailed set of criteria at when it declares emergency and when it operate opens up its emergency operation. As of yet, those haven’t been meet, haven’t been met to in order to establish that we’ve been enhanced monitoring and have had the departments out working on a response basis. What I can tell you with respect to communications and notification, our Service Burlington and our communications staff have been heavily involved to make sure that the word is being put out there what people are to do if they find themselves with a flooded basement and to contact the region. So the hope is that we’re able to get those numbers sooner rather than later; so we have an understanding of the magnitude of the issues, and we can then make decisions at that time as to whether or not any sort of emergency needs to be clear declared.

“In assessing our own infrastructure to see if things are holding up, or whether or not, again, any failures there would necessitate and push us into the factors of needing to declare an emergency.

Meed Ward: “Is there a threshold provincially to qualify for funding? Just again, thinking back to the 2014 flood, where the city did get some funding for our own infrastructure, homeowners could apply for that funding as well. If there is and we didn’t declare a state emergency; my one question around, do we need to declare a state of emergency to get that funding? Appears, the answer appears to be no, but I’d like to know that, and are there thresholds for the city or property owners to qualify for assistance in repairing the damage from a flooded basement or other parts of their property?”

Blake Hurley: “I don’t have that information at hand, but what I can tell you is that the XLT committee is meeting tomorrow morning, and staff continue to meet throughout the day today to make sure we have that best information that’s something we will be looking at and can assess whether or not there’s any advantage to doing so in terms to open up funding opportunities and to determine whether or not this is needed in order to be able to respond to the issues with respect to the city’s infrastructure.

Councillor Bentivegna:  My question directed to Director of roads, park and forestry. I know you got all hands on deck, and they were out this morning. I see all the trucks everywhere coming in, so I know they’re busy. We talked about roads, and we talked about infrastructure, when one of the one of the many calls that I got yesterday, especially up in my neck of the woods,

” Is there something that we can learn from we’ve just gone through 2014 obviously. Now climate change is here. I mean, you know, the one 100 year storm is no longer now. It’s a whole bunch of 50 year storms. They come in two days. But is there something that we can do to look at those situations? Those are situations where residents get fresh because they can’t do anything. We could bail in our homes. We have some pumps in our homes. We really, you know, we have valves, but on the creek, I mean, it’s coming, it’s coming. It’s coming. You know, pictures that were sent yesterday were, you know, it’s a panic situation.

“I do want to thank staff for sending all the information out to our Councilors on a regular basis. That level two thing, it was fabulous, and that’s the information we ended up so is there a plan that we could think about, or what can we do as council to help you get there?”

Enrico: Your point is very, very well taken. Creeks and and the through the through the storm and through the watershed are going to swell through through storm, storms like this, in further impacting that is, is the second flush through through today’s system. What we’ve learned, and what we’ve adopted through 2014 is that clearing of debris is very important. From 2014 a significant amount of the issues, from what I understand, I wasn’t at that, at that incident, but from what I understand, a significant amount of the issues were the fact that inlets were clogged through debris that came down, through the through the system. What we’ve learned from that. And what we’ve adopted is we have a checklist and a proactive checklist to go through in advance of a storm, make sure that the what we call the hot spot inlets that you know in the past, we that that have experienced, you know, backing up due to flooding, due to due to debris that we’re regularly clean, clearing that and maintaining that, I would be so bold enough to say, is that that practice, as has potentially mitigated the impacts from yesterday’s and today’s events. Now saying that we are seeing that creeks are backing up again. It’s due to the volume of the water it’s, there are many locations that are within a established floodplain. So even though it’s, it’s established and generally, generally the public is, is aware. They, you know, the anxiety levels start to get raised up when they do see that the water is starting to rise up. And you know, hopefully after today’s event, things will crest fairly quickly, and we will see some of that, some of that water receding.  Your final question, what can Council do?  The ongoing reeling of communication out to to the public is something that we would continue.”

Councilor Kearns: “Before I start my question, I just really want to recognize the gravity of the situation and the anxiety levels and note to take care of your own mental health. There are resources available, and for anyone who’s struggling right now to reach out, because it can be very devastating the circumstances. So we know that municipal emergencies are defined as situations caused by forces of nature that can have a danger to life or property. I had to pull off the highway today.

“My question is about how we’re going to prioritize things, because we do have Rambo Creek and Hager Creek backing up and storm water facilities coming close to tipping. I saw that yesterday as residents knocked on my door and brought me over to the creek. I did a video call with Enrico to show him.  We’ve got backlogged calls and consistent communications coming out matters of public health concern with people going into wastewater and sewer backlogs.

“We’ve got hydro outages and fallen trees. I don’t know if we’re concerned about weakened tree roots with the softening of the ground for more falls, public road concerns, requests for additional waste pickups. I’m not sure if those are getting addressed through Halton Region yet; the numbers are continuing to climb. I’m wanting to know from staff –  how do we prioritize all of these elements of the situation we have under a state of emergency versus the current enhanced monitoring, what can residents expect to be different in relation to all those considerations?”

Enrico: “When calls come in they are triaged, either through Service Burlington or   if it is a life emergency, through, 911. Basically in an overall incident response, the triaging is obviously life, life safety, first protection of property, and then sure, the continuation of services to the public;, we will continue to do that.

Blake Hurley: Just to follow up on Rico’s response in terms of what the public can expect: the city will continue to work out and address matters that are brought to our attention. That’s why the communication is so important, to make sure that residents are advising the city as to where problem areas are, so we can get staff out there.

“In terms of what’s the difference between the state of emergency and the level two response that we’re in right now. Right now it’s all hands on deck. Really, it’s more of a technical exercise, and we’re going to work with our emergency response specialist to determine whether it meets the technical threshold for the declaration of an emergency. If it does, we will certainly do that. But that’s not going to change our efforts at this point to go out and address everything that needs to be addressed at this point.”

Councillor Stolte:  “A  question that speaks again, to the stress around the creeks and the ongoing maintenance of the creeks and ensuring that that debris is regularly cleared out. I appreciate hearing that there’s something put in place to ensure that when we know a storm is coming, that we go and check some of those hot spots. But sometimes we don’t know that a storm like yesterday is going to be as impactful as what it ended up being, so our immediate response might be limited as far as how we can clear things if we discover that there is an issue. So I just wanted to ask, do you feel as though there is adequate resources and staffing available to regularly go out. I know I’ve heard from residents, particularly around Tuck Creek, that they’ve formed what they call a bridge watch, which is they go out themselves to make sure that there’s not debris clogging, and if so, they let me know, so I can let staff know. But do you feel as though the system we have in place right now to ensure that there’s a regular check and clear and clearing of those culverts and those bridge systems is adequate.

Blake Hurley:  Obviously proactive maintenance can always be improved.

“One of the things we’ll be looking at, whether or not it’s from a infrastructure perspective or a staff perspective that needs to change or needs to be improved, in order to help manage these matters and determine where that is in a budget process for is there is, are we, do we have a capital project on the books that’s going to address some of this, or is there a resourcing allocation that needs to take place to make sure that these are monitored at a level that we’re satisfied with?”

Councillor Sharman: “The learning I got from 2014 was that, because we did not declare an emergency immediately, we did no communications, no effective communications. We did develop no strategy. We carried on business as usual, and meanwhile, people are losing their minds. So if we do nothing today, we have to declare the communications emergency. We have to be talking to the community about what actions we are taking, what we know, what we don’t know, and we have to take that with really significant seriousness, because we don’t talk to them, they will think we’re just sitting, you know, doing nothing, and that is not true.

Blake Hurley: “This is something that is certainly top of mind with respect to the level two enhanced monitoring we’re doing, making sure that communications are heavily involved in rolling out the message in terms of closures, in terms of what to do, in terms of life safety, where to go, in terms of contacting people for flooded basements. So I would compare this to the difference between 2014, as you know, it was more business as usual until we recognized the scope of the issue. In this case, we’re very actively involved in terms of communications and the messaging that’s going out through the variety of cities channels.

“What Council can do is continue to amplify that message, to look to the city’s website, to look to the city’s communication channels that are identifying where people need to do, where people need to go, what they need to do. And that is that that is the steps we’re taking. That doesn’t require a an emergency to be declared. That’s just the city doing as much as it can to help its residents in this situation.

Sharman:  “Could we get a daily update? We have contact with 10,000 people in Ward five through Facebook groups, through my own newsletter as well. We have about 12, 13,000 people. We would like very much to be putting out that message, not just saying, look at the city website, but saying, Here you go. So if you can give that information to my colleague, Brianne. We will get that out immediately.

Meed Ward: “Perhaps I’ll turn it to Jacqueline Johnson, who has an update in that respect, a very helpful update.

Jackie Johnson: Yes, I did just receive an update from Service Burlington that they continue to share information with council through your council assistance.

The latest one was out about five minutes ago, and it talks about all the helpful tips that we’ve been talking about here today.

Sharman: “Can I jump in? Just to clarify, that’s going to all the council assistance, correct, not just Ward five.

Jackie Johnson: “Absolutely it went to all wards.

Stolte: Like Councillor Sherman, I did a mind meld, because he has asked a lot of my questions, and one of them was about regular briefings. I think we need more than daily. And I’m thinking in my mind about when there’s a snow event. We tell people online how often and what time of day they can get their next briefing. I just went to the city of Burlington webpage. We have two banners. One is excessive rainfall, flood warning in red, and it goes to a 404 page not found.

So let’s fix that.

The second is a yellow banner, flood and rainfall update, and all it has is the number to call to report flooding and then to go to 311, it’s two sentences. I think there’s a lot of opportunity to use those banners to add all the information that staff have shared yesterday. I’m not trying to embarrass anyone here. I just want to ensure that we’re trying to work together on this, we’re trying to be helpful to you so you could be helpful to us, so we can be helpful to the community.

“We could tell people when they’re getting their updates, and what time of day we can go check there as well. I think it’s really important to signal to the community, and this is where

“A level two, enhanced monitoring is a form of emergency response; we should be very clear to tell the community that we are in an emergency monitoring moment right now. It’s a level two, and this is what it means, and this is the criteria that has been met.

“My question then is, can we in do in fairly short order, update what’s already on our web page with the information that has just been sent around five minutes ago, talk about the level two emergency, and then, of course, we can all be good communicators with our own networks and share that information broadly to the community.

Councillor Kearns: “I’m going to stay on the communication piece for one moment.  So I hear that we’re backlogged on phone calls.  I’m hearing that we are having staffing challenges for addressing those phone calls. I heard queues as wide back as 30 plus callers while we’re expecting people to be on hold to report this flood while their life is in absolute crisis.

“Can we not be looking at a quick form that can be populated, like the parking exemption form that can give the city the information that you need to decant it to staff so that people are not waiting on phone calls and that our very important customer service folks can be helping to triage more serious calls versus just simple reporting, just, I guess, a question that would help

Enrico: “Just for clarity, with respect to backlog, the comment  was in regards to the region and their follow up to basement flooding. We get a surge through a Service Burlington; from what I understand call levels are returning to normal. There are a number of inquiries to your point that are in the system, that staff are triaging and are following up to and through trying to use sort of efficiencies in the system. I believe they’re using a form of Kobe, our built in AI on on the web, on the web portal, to help help with that, with that triaging. So hopefully that that can provide a little bit of assurance that we’re doing our best to deal with the backlog and go through and inspect things and respond as soon as possible.

And Jackie, you wanted to go ahead? Yes, thank you. And through the Chair, thank you, Rico. So just in addition to what Rico’s saying the backlog, there was an increase of calls, of course, yesterday to Service Burlington. They have opened up all the channels that they possibly can – using socials, using the website, using the digital assistant to have a standard message that goes out, because we are pretty clear on what people are calling about. The team is there to take the calls. The call volumes have stabilized since yesterday, we are using all options available. As of 24 hours ago, my understanding from the manager of customer experience was that we had a call queue of about 200 calls due to rainfall and flooding.

Kearns: “My second question was actually going to be, I’m looking to understand when we will have enough data to move this from Level Two emergency monitoring to level three and above and to full blown state of emergency. I’m more concerned at this point around how we’re collecting the data appropriately that will help to trigger those different thresholds, and that’s why I’m asking questions. When I see Burlington  completely exploding with comments, and I’m glad to hear that the communications department is monitoring that and quantifying it. I hope so that we can appropriately measure and deploy the right resources based on the data that we have available to us and to get us to the right level, as our role is by council to do those emergency declarations, we need the right data to help inform us, and we’re on the path to get that.

Enrico: “We are tracking all of these requests. And one of the key points that is important for staff and that Service Burlington is involved in, is tracking the request whether or not this is a city request in relation to flooding or ponding on city roadways or city Creek city infrastructure versus a basement flooding request, because those requests have to go to the region through 311, and so it’s really making sure we’re triaging those requests appropriately. And I think as importantly as in a communications perspective, is making sure the public understands that for the flooded basement calls and concerns, which, certainly there are many, that is the region, and that is 311, of the region, and we wouldn’t want them to waste their time, quite frankly, trying to get through to the city to do that. So that is something that certainly as part of our communications and the pushing out through the channels that people will see to call the region for those matters, because I think my understanding at this point from those numbers is that’s getting commingled together between the concerns that are being really raised by the public in relation to closed roadways and flooded roadways versus their own flooded basements.”

Councillor Stolte:  “I’m just looking on email, and I haven’t seen any update communication, and I understand if the communication is only going to the Councillors assistance group, just to be aware of the fact that there are on top of this crisis in the community. There is just understandable vacation and illness and back coverage on our community our assistance team. So if you could please make sure that that’s sent to council and staff so that we all have the same information through the chair, absolutely will do that.”

Jackie Johnson: “Our emergency management specialist is working on the next update that she does copy the Counsellors for council and council assistant group, so that should be coming out.  I know she’s working on it right now.”

 

Council was ready to receive and file the verbal update. The Mayor ten opened up the meeting to any final comments.

Sharman:  “I really appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation. It was important and timely. I want to speak to the public just for a moment and to say that we do take this seriously. We’ve learned from the past. The challenge we face is, it rains, and we can’t be accountable for how much rain and when we get it, nor can we nor can we actually fix all the infrastructure, and especially that infrastructure that exists in under your home.

“The questions I’m receiving on Facebook along the lines of, why didn’t you pay for all these houses to be fixed? And we’re talking about billions of dollars, and that will have just even getting that done will be difficult, and then the question of whether or not you actually want it done, and whether or not the other taxpayers will rather pay for it. This is such a complex and serious matter. The fact is, I own a home that was built in 1965 I got water in my basement. Not a lot full disclosure, but it was enough to be caused me to be anxious this morning. And I know the mayor’s house got water in from the storm water. None of us, none of us is immune from this, and we all share those concerns, but there’s no magic solution to any of this. So to have this conversation now, to agree that we’re in a phase level two emergency situation, that we’re going to be stepping up our communications programs and let you know what we’re doing. We’re taking this seriously, and as we understand, as we see how this evolves. You can be you can be certain that we’re going to step up and do more if necessary, and otherwise we will always be responding to questions and concerns.”

Councillor Bentivegna: This is a pretty productive session. I think it’s very, very much appreciated, certainly from the public who are watching and certainly ourselves.

“We’ve gone through this for a couple days, and everything is a learning experience. And when we go through situations like this, this is what brings everybody together. And once we go through the process and we do all the work that we need to do, then we take it to the next level, which is what we’re discussing how we improve our situation. It must have had 15 emails about where we’re at, what we’re doing, what’s next. Those are the situations that we need to look at and say, Wow, we’re doing the right thing. I think the last email said, you know, we’re inundated with hundreds and hundreds of calls. You know, we’re tied up, and it’s unfortunate, but that’s where we are. We’re trying to calm the situations, to our residents, to say we’re working on this stuff, we’re doing the best we can. And then, you know, we’re all saying the same thing. We are going to gather all this stuff, and we’re going to sort of make some sense to it, so that we know next time when we have something like this, we’re going to move forward. The last thing I want to close off is when I say, all hands on deck. I got a call yesterday, and I’m sure that every department divvied up with their workload. I got a call from Hydro president to give me an update on power failure.

Councillor Kearns: I’m being very reflective of how important this dialog is to our community and those who are watching, and I feel that closing the conversation now as we break for summer without a scheduled update for the next verbal update and or dashboard or deck that says all of those different incredible departments that are coming together to address this situation leaves our community in the dark, and they’re subject to kind of drips of social media that they may or may not find.

“I’m wondering what staff’s thoughts are on a pre scheduled emergency meeting, perhaps by Friday, as we continue to gather more information and get more data and identify areas where we may need some additional support called in. I’m wondering if we can pre schedule that by way of a motion, a motion amendment, and if we don’t need it, we can release it. And if we do want to have another community facing update that brings together all of the stakeholders in the departments, I think that could be quite helpful.”

Mayor Meed Ward: “If that’s the will of Council, certainly staff will make that happen. We can work with the city clerk to make that happen.  I can assure you that staff will continue to through their communications updates and the enhanced updates to the web and through the other communication channels to make sure that the both the public is aware and members of council are aware of the steps and actions we’re taking and any changes to the notification level that that may occur as a result of the information that’s coming in. I really think what staff is hearing today is that this is really a communications issue to make sure that everyone is understanding where we’re at and making sure that the residents understand the actions that the city is taking and where they can go and what resources they can access, and whether or not we have a separate meeting, staff certainly commits to doing that and making sure that that information is out there, and from an operations perspective, getting the city back to its regular state in terms of infrastructure. So if that is the will of council, we can certainly work with the clerk to make that happen in the coming days. I’m not sure about a date, but that worked out.

“But as I say, even with if we don’t go that route, rest assured, staff is on it and and we’ll continue to make sure everyone, including Council in the public’s updated. As a follow up, would staff be able to if the if it is the will of Council, which I hope it is, to meet at a pre scheduled date, we can discuss that in the very near future, I thought Friday would be good because it gives us a 72 hour outlook and enough notice for not necessarily an emergency meeting, emergency emergency meeting, but an emergency meeting. I think that that would be really important, where we could see categorically what we’re seeing through our internal emails. How many roads are closed, how many outages are we experiencing? Is there still overland water? How many basements are we up to? Is it the region, or is it Burlington numbers?”

“I think we do need to have a bit more data where we can appropriately determine what level collectively we should go to. So we still all have an obligation under this. We haven’t necessarily turned it over to the head of Council, because we are not in a full blown state of emergency, which that changes the communication streams. And so at this point, I think wider and more open communication could be for the benefit of our community. And so I’d like to maybe just work with the clerk for a moment to see if we could pre schedule a meeting, perhaps for Friday, where we could get another verbal update and any visuals or data that you can provide, as well, like cues and phone calls or things like that, would would be really great.”

That’d be possible? clerk to the chair. Yes, we could, again, upon a vote of majority of council Schedule A Special Council meeting for Friday. That wouldn’t be a problem, and the purpose of the meeting would just be to discuss the Burlington flooding event.

I would also just like to note that there is a provision in the procedure by law, under Section 24.7 that allows a Special Council of meeting to be held without notice to deal with the situation of emergency, disaster or crisis, as defined by the emergency continuity management bylaw, to provide, or provided that an attempt is made to reach council members. But we do have the ability to schedule an emergency meeting if required, without notice, so I just would like to provide that information to council and staff as well. Thanks. And if I may just want to be clear on the two different ones, yes, we can call an emergency, get here right now, immediately. Can we also have a proactive one, just as a placeholder, where we can receive updates and determine if we want to take further action. So I would look, I would look to table that, and we could, we could work on language with a second or do I have a seconder?

Councillor Sharman, so let’s get some some language around scheduling a Special Council meeting on this item. I wouldn’t pick a date yet. We need to make sure we have quorum. So we’ll we can Canvas for the date after we’ll just get some language up on the screen.

Okay, we’re going to take a five minute recess to tee this up. So, we’ll be back at about 10 after.

Meed Ward:  ” This has been moved by councillor Kearns, seconded by councillor Sharman, to direct the city clerk to schedule a special council meeting July 19, at 930 to discuss the Burlington flooding event, much like we are right now. So any questions or comments on that? Go ahead. Councilor.

Sharman: Are we good with the words called discuss?  I just want to level set that this is just going to be a verbal update. So I know it says discuss. It’s just a verbal update. Nobody look for an agenda package with information in it, because it won’t be there. Understood. Do we want to make that crystal clear in the wording to say for a verbal update on the receive a verbal update regarding, yeah, yes, certainly. I think that would be staff’s preference, just so that clarity is there. And the reason for that is it, you know, in terms of making sure that we have to meet agenda requirement timelines to put that information out, that information may be, indeed, outdated by the time we show up Friday morning. So we don’t want to mislead or confuse and would rather bring the most up to date information to you on Friday morning as possible.”

Meed Ward: “Perfect. We’re just typing away. I think we all understand what we’re voting on. But do we need it back up on the screen, or Is everyone good with what? No, okay. There it is. To receive a verbal. We need the word verbal in there, a verbal update.

Perfect. All right, any other speakers to that motion? Okay?

The motion carries, all right now we have the receive and file of the verbal update on the flooding event on the floor.

Meed Ward: I think this has been a really good discussion, and my preference always is to include counsel in these matters, because many minds are better than one, and it’s good information for all of us. And I think we did some good workshopping around what we have heard from the community. And each one of you are eyes and ears to our neighbourhoods, to our constituents, and everyone brings a slightly different perspective, and it’s all really, really valuable. So I think there’s some great things coming forward out of this discussion in terms of how we can best communicate to the community, including the fact that we are in an emergency. It is a level two enhanced monitoring for now, and as the community continues to give us information through your elected officials.

I remember that after the 2014 flood, we invested immediately $20 million into our creeks and culverts and we have increased the amount of investment every budget since I was a Councillor. That is certainly something that has been on my mind today with respect to putting the 2025 budget together, but it’s certainly something we will be laser focused on as we head into the discussions of our 2025 budget. These things are expensive and we’re already behind. There’s already an infrastructure gap between the money available and the needs that are required, and that is increasing due to inflation, unfortunately, faster than our ability to keep up.

Mayor Meed Ward: “And finally, just for perspective, I have the T shirt from the 2014 flood. 40 millimeters of rain in an hour, we got 50 to 80 millimeters. So the volume of rain, though it was over a longer period of time, is quite significant, and still raining out there. I’ll see what shape my basement is in when I go home and start getting the baling bucket out, as I did yesterday for several hours.”

The XLT group is meeting today – We wait to here what they have to say.

Nothing, other than the Mayor’s statement,  from the city so far today on the flooding situation.