By Pepper Parr
June 30th, 2022
BURLINGTON, ON
Set out below are the Council Standing Committee meetings that will take place in the week ahead. It is a whack of a work load with some critical items that have to be debated.
It will be the last council meeting at which council members can make decisions that involve the spending of money.
After that they are seen as a lame duck council that is heading for Election Day with every one of them hoping to be elected.
After five solid days of discussion and debate – and who knows what else from a council that has become rancorous, argumentative and an embarrassment to themselves and the city – they hold a council meeting on the 12th to vote on the recommendations made during the Standing Committee meetings.
This is not the way you engage a public.
Honest public engagement is when you state your case and give the public time to review what they have learned, talk to neighbours and decide if they want to delegate.
How well has this council served the interests of the citizens of the city? They get a D – on the engagement scale.
Delegation with this council amounts to making your views known – but not asking questions.
Burlington badly needs a Council that will review their Procedural bylaw and find a way to come up with an approach that has more than lip service.
Jim Thompson recently said what many think. As he was preparing to deliver his delegation he paused and said:
Okay, first thing I want to say is that I find that your opening remarks are patronizing. If I don’t get any questions here, it doesn’t mean that the council understood me perfectly clearly.
It just means you don’t want to ask questions or engage. So with that, can I have the next slide please?
A link to the complete story on that comeuppance this council deserved is set out below.
The schedule:
July 4 2022, 9:30 AM to 11:30 PM
Corporate Services, Strategy, Risk and Accountability Committee
July 5 2022, 9:30 AM to 10:30 PM
Community Planning, Regulation and Mobility Committee
July 6 2022, 3:30 PM to 5:30 PM
Audit Committee
July 7 2022, 9:30 AM to 11:30 PM
Environment, Infrastructure and Community Services Committee
(The 11:30 pm is an error – Clerk’s office mistake)
July 11 2022, 9:30 AM to 1:30 PM
Corporate Services, Strategy, Risk and Accountability Committee
July 12th, 2022 1:00 pm
City Council
Jim Thompson smack council on the side of the head.
I have never said that. Nor am I naïve enough to think it. But what drove Gartside to make the complaint or requested it be number one on the agenda is not the point. The point you, Jim Thompson and others ignore is Stolte was naïve in her dealings with the Gazette, made an error of judgement in making a comment that publicly identified, at least to a relatively small group of people, Gartside in a negative way. Then, no matter the motives behind MMW moving the item to the top of the Council’s agenda, Stolte bit on the hook and began her attack on MMW using “unparliamentary language”. She should have just kept quiet, then read her statement. It would have been done with and remained the molehill it was.