Council to hold its last meeting until September - much has been achieved - still a lot left to do and some unfortunate practices have crept in

By Pepper Parr

July 13th, 2021

BURLINGTON, ON

City Council meets at 1:00 pm this afternoon for their last meeting until September.

The agenda for that month is loaded.

There have been very few delegations since the first lockdown in March of 2020 – those that did take place left little impression on those listening.

During the period of time the city was in a State of Emergency with its affairs guided by an Emergency Control Group they met whenever it had to –seldom less than twice a week. The City is still in a State of Emergency, which is where the city manager thinks it should remain for as long as possible.

Provincial funding goes to those who are in a State of Emergency.

Last week Council went through an impressive schedule of Standing Committee meetings that were both controversial on some levels and solid governance on others.

The Mayor’s ill-advised tweet about support she got from some of her colleagues but not others was petty politics at its worst – while the comment from Councillor Sharman on the decision by Human Resources to do away with annual performance reports was excellent governance.

Councillor Sharman was not amused.

We will let you know when the annual performance reviews are put back in. Sharman will beaver away at this – expect him to prevail.

Will we see that decision as a Staff Direction? That might be expecting a little too much.

We used to get this: City Council meeting – before COVID

The meeting today will be swift – there is next to nothing on the Agenda page in terms of documents that are going to be approved.

Now we get this. All the Council members were present – they don’t always all appear on the screen at the same time

The City Manager’s work plan – all the things he is going to get done, was not available to media during the Standing Committee meeting.

Some of the narrative in the City Manager’s report was available but the specifics, what was going to get done and when, was not available and the city communications adviser we dealt with said it would not be available.

Public participation was a feature of the Goldring council – there were opportunities to speak – even though they didn’t listen all that well.

This Council is using the pandemic, and the phrase “an abundance of caution” as a reason to keep the public away – and at this point they have succeeded. We no longer hear from Gary Scobie, Jim Young or Blair Smith to name just a few.

During the last Standing Committee  last week we did see some rumbling on the part of Councillor Stolte about finding a way to involve living, breathing members of the public.

Stolte got jerked around but her point was made. The City Clerk did set out his concerns – there were a lot of them, few with much in the way of merit.

Council will wish us all a fun summer and be away from their posts until September. Some will begin thinking about their re-election plans. Two of the seven are at risk with a third in for a surprise once his constituents get roused.

Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.