Crosby: 'Burlington Council is responsible for the Burlington costs' adding - tell us what the actual tax rate is and not some number you make up

By Pepper Parr

November 19th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

Lynn Crosby delegated at City Council yesterday. What she said is at the bottom of this article.

How Council responded is set out below.  Rarely does Council engage with a citizen. Crosby is more than a butterfly that flits about.  She was heavily involved in the Meed Ward 2018 election campaign and at one point was being considered as part of the Mayor’s staff.

The discussion after the delegation went as follows:

Councillor Nisan:

With respect, this is all about engagement. You mentioned that that there wasn’t enough time for council members or the public to review.  The strong mayor power says we only have 30 days between presentation of the budget and passing a resolution to amend that budget. It was the budget report put up October 25 and we have special council meeting to provide any Council amendments on November 25. Do you have any recommendations for how we would work within the strictures of the strong mayor legislation that only gives us 30 days?

Crosby: I think that you should release a draft budget that is very similar to the proposed one far sooner, because as far as I know, the legislation doesn’t say anything about draft budgets. The information we received prior was way too limited. There was as missing data and numbers. It was just very vague. We don’t even have till the 25th of November, because nobody thinks it’s going to change drastically the last week of November or the day of that meeting; more has to be released that’s very similar to the proposed budget much earlier.

Nisan: My second question it, does the strong mayor powers do mention that if the head of council does not propose the budget by February 1, Council must prepare and adopt the budget.  Do you have a position about that?

Crosby: I might be wrong the way I’m interpreting that. But does that not mean that, if a mayor does not, if February 1 comes and goes, and the mayor has not presented a budget, a proposed budget, then Council does that. Is that what that says? And they also have to do it on February 1.

We’re not allowed to do Q and A, but functionally, that appears to be the case. Some, mayors have taken that route. I thought it was sort of if the mayor doesn’t do it, then Council has to do it.

Chair Sharman cuts in – “ This is not a debate, please.

Councilor Stolte:  My question is a little bit more generalized. I hugely appreciate that you’ve come to talk about engagement, because you are 100% right. There are a lot of ways that we could continue to improve. Do you have some good suggestions about perhaps we should be making sure we have all the information that is common sense. Good, solid, common sense. My question to you, as I said, is kind of generalized, and that’s when it comes to public engagement.

Would you agree that there needs to be a balance in our public engagement, especially when it comes to something like the budget? The budget is detailed. The budget is specific. The budget is very hardcore numbers, literally, and you, particularly yourself as Lynn Crosby represent.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say one of maybe 200 people in the city of Burlington that dives into it to the detail of what you do, and therefore your comments are valid and respected because you take the time to educate yourself, but 200 people in the city of Burlington, of almost 200,000 that represents 0.001% of the population who takes the time and effort to educate themselves to then be able to engage effectively. Would you agree that there’s a responsibility on both sides of the ledger, as far as the city providing opportunities for engagement, but the public also taking the time and energy to educate themselves. So the engagement they’re giving is really effective,

Crosby: Sure, but the problem is – how are they supposed to do that with a 615, page document, you hardly have any time. This is the problem. And so the people that are looking at this, they have all kinds of questions clarifications they’d like to make. It’s unreasonable to think that a massive amount of people in Burlington could do that. I think you need to give them what they need. And I think people have different ways of engaging. Nobody has to come here and stand here. People who are working can’t be here. And no people should not have to take a day off work to come here. People have other ways of engaging, and one of those valid ways is sending emails to council members. You heard Jim’s experience on how that went. You know, we often send, send in emails and you don’t get anything back, or you get a response back, which you don’t really believe quite answered you, and then it says the file is now closed. Well, it’s not closed for me.

I feel like you need to come to where people can engage and even if that’s if they’re replying on City’s Facebook page or this, councilors ones, look at that like that’s still engagement too.

Councillor Kearns: I want to understand a little bit more around what your group or yourself took back from what were considered sort of the height of the engagement opportunities, which would have been the mayor’s individual Ward presentations.

How the information that you saw there and the feedback received be reflected, in your opinion, in the budget that we have before us today?

Crosby: I attended several of the meetings in person and almost all the rest virtually. I did not see any sort of agreement with people who were asking for reductions. I felt like it was too soon – having the meeting before the budget was released. The mayor can’t help it if she doesn’t  have the information. Then, why are we doing this right now?

There, were a number of staff in the room – none of them ever spoke. As far as I could see, none of them chimed in and said that they knew the answer. I felt like a lot of the theme of the meeting was people politely giving suggestions on how the you know, cuts could happen, and how they wanted things to be reduced. Even small things – this idea that if it’s not a giant thing like transit it  won’t make a significant enough dent in the tax rate. So we won’t go there.

The whole theme was, that you need to spend responsibly, and in times of difficulty like now and when the rate is over 8%

Do a whole bunch of little things – they add up. That’s what we did not see.

On the 25th no one really got the point, which was cut all the things that aren’t absolutely necessary  – rein in your spending. We did not get that. Those of us who were at the meetings felt was that it was rather a waste of time.

Kearns: My second question is on the release of a draft budget. I had nothing to present at my own September 18 Ward two community update.

We then had two days of committee. Around the end of October, we did have the the line by line 615 page proposed budget. I was able to pull together a community meeting for the Wednesday, well attended, very rich dialog. I like sort of the theme being brought forward around releasing a proper draft budget with all the lines. I felt like community members wanted to be involved, but the timeline put pressure on sort of disengagement case. Might that be the case?

Crosby: Yes, absolutely. I think that’s important, and I think it’s rather unfortunate that you didn’t get the information you needed when you needed it.

Councillor Sharman: I have a couple of questions. Lynn, the first thing about the 600 page document, there was a summary that was, I believe, quite thorough and full of a lot of information for most people who don’t understand the accounting logic. Do you feel that that was inadequate the first 30 page the summary document in the binder?

Crosby: I think in general, it’s best to look at the actual meat and not just the summary. So, and I think oftentimes the summaries just are too vague.

Sharman: My second question is about the when you refer to as the tax increase of the city at 8.5 and I have to use an analogy to clarify my question. If you go into a grocery store and you buy a piece of steak and vegetables and butter and salt and sugar, each item has a lit has its own price, and at the bottom, there is a price for the total bill, which is what you’re paying, not necessarily an individual item by itself.

Isn’t it true that the tax increase is actually the sum of the bill of all the items, not each individual one, where the blend of the price is actually the bottom one, not the individual one, and therefore, clarity purposes, the tax increase is actually the bottom line, not the top line. Could you comment on that?

Crosby: You’ve completely lost me there. I’m not a numbers person, though, so But to me, that’s complicated, and my point stands. I think that Burlington Council is responsible for the Burlington costs. You’re spending our money as you see fit. At the end of the day, you are spending 8.3% more. You’re asking people to give feedback on the budget by telling them that it’s going to go up 4.9 it is certainly reasonable to think that people’s answers on what they should how what you should be doing or not doing, would be different if they thought it was 4% something or eight.

Sharman: Did you not see in the summary document that we declared the 8.5

Crosby: Yes and No – it wasn’t clear, because at the at the meetings before that, the mayor did, I saw different slides at each meeting, sometimes the 8.3 was there. It was not there very prominently. Yes, it is in the summary, and it is in the other budget document to if you find it. But that does not change the fact that the media releases, the social media, posts, the interviews, – everything – we’re hearing, 4.97   4.97 and that  is wrong, in my opinion.

 

The Crosby delegation:

November 18, 2024 – Budget Committee Meeting

During the budget process

Councillor Nisan:

With respect, this is all about engagement. You mentioned that that there wasn’t enough time for council members or the public to review.  The strong mayor power says we only have 30 days between presentation of the budget and passing a resolution to amend that budget. It was the budget report put up October 25 and we have special council meeting to provide any Council amendments on November 25. Do you have any recommendations for how we would work within the strictures of the strong mayor legislation that only gives us 30 days?

 

Crosby: I think that you should release a draft budget that is very similar to the proposed one far sooner, because as far as I know, the legislation doesn’t say anything about draft budgets. The information we received prior was way too limited. There was as missing data and numbers. It was just very vague. We don’t even have till the 25th of November, because nobody thinks it’s going to change drastically the last week of November or the day of that meeting; more has to be released that’s very similar to the proposed budget much earlier.

Nisan: My second question it, does the strong mayor powers do mention that if the head of council does not propose the budget by February 1, Council must prepare and adopt the budget.  Do you have a position about that?

 

Crosby: I might be wrong the way I’m interpreting that. But does that not mean that, if a mayor does not, if February 1 comes and goes, and the mayor has not presented a budget, a proposed budget, then Council does that. Is that what that says? And they also have to do it on February 1.

We’re not allowed to do Q and A, but functionally, that appears to be the case. Some, mayors have taken that route. I thought it was sort of if the mayor doesn’t do it, then Council has to do it.

Chair Sharman cuts in – “ This is not a debate, please.

Councilor Stolte:  My question is a little bit more generalized. I hugely appreciate that you’ve come to talk about engagement, because you are 100% right. There are a lot of ways that we could continue to improve. Do you have some good suggestions about perhaps we should be making sure we have all the information that is common sense. Good, solid, common sense. My question to you, as I said, is kind of generalized, and that’s when it comes to public engagement.

Would you agree that there needs to be a balance in our public engagement, especially when it comes to something like the budget? The budget is detailed. The budget is specific. The budget is very hardcore numbers, literally, and you, particularly yourself as Lynn Crosby represent.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say one of maybe 200 people in the city of Burlington that dives into it to the detail of what you do, and therefore your comments are valid and respected because you take the time to educate yourself, but 200 people in the city of Burlington, of almost 200,000 that represents 0.001% of the population who takes the time and effort to educate themselves to then be able to engage effectively. Would you agree that there’s a responsibility on both sides of the ledger, as far as the city providing opportunities for engagement, but the public also taking the time and energy to educate themselves. So the engagement they’re giving is really effective,

Crosby: Sure, but the problem is – how are they supposed to do that with a 615, page document, you hardly have any time. This is the problem.

And so the people that are looking at this, they have all kinds of questions clarifications they’d like to make. It’s unreasonable to think that a massive amount of people in Burlington could do that. I think you need to give them what they need. And I think people have different ways of engaging. Nobody has to come here and stand here. People who are working can’t be here. And no people should not have to take a day off work to come here. People have other ways of engaging, and one of those valid ways is sending emails to council members. You heard Jim’s experience on how that went. You know, we often send, send in emails and you don’t get anything back, or you get a response back, which you don’t really believe quite answered you, and then it says the file is now closed. Well, it’s not closed for me. I feel like you need to come to where people can engage  and even if that’s if they’re replying on City’s Facebook page or this, councilors ones, look at that like that’s still engagement too. It is absolutely thank you.

Councillor Kearns: I want to understand a little bit more around what your group or yourself took back from what were considered sort of the height of the engagement opportunities, which would have been the mayor’s individual Ward presentations.

How the information that you saw there and the feedback received be reflected, in your opinion, in the budget that we have before us today?

Crosby: I attended several of the meetings in person and almost all the rest virtually. I did not see any sort of agreement with people who were asking for reductions. I felt like it was too soon – having the meeting before the budget was released. The mayor can’t help it if she doesn’t  have the information. Then, why are we doing this right now?

There, were a number of staff in the room – none of them ever spoke. As far as I could see, none of them chimed in and said that they knew the answer. I felt like a lot of the theme of the meeting was people politely giving suggestions on how the you know, cuts could happen, and how they wanted things to be reduced. Even small things – this idea that if it’s not a giant thing like transit it  won’t make a significant enough dent in the tax rate. So we won’t go there.

The whole theme was, you need to spend responsibly, and in times of difficulty like now and when the rate is over 8%

Do a whole bunch of little things – they add up. That’s what we did not see.

On the 25th no one really got the point, which was cut all the things that aren’t absolutely necessary  – rein in your spending. We did not get that. Those of us who were at the meetings felt was that it was rather a waste of time.

Kearns: My second question is on the release of a draft budget. I had nothing to present at my own September 18 Ward two community update.

We then had two days of committee. Around the end of October, we did have the the line by line 615 page proposed budget. I was able to pull together a community meeting for the Wednesday, well attended, very rich dialog. I like sort of the theme being brought forward around releasing a proper draft budget with all the lines. I felt like community members wanted to be involved, but the timeline put pressure on sort of disengagement case. Might that be the case?

Crosby: Yes, absolutely. I think that’s important, and I think it’s rather unfortunate that you didn’t get the information you needed when you needed it.

Councillor Sharman: I have a couple of questions. Lynn, the first thing about the 600 page document, there was a summary that was, I believe, quite thorough and full of a lot of information for most people who don’t understand the accounting logic. Do you feel that that was inadequate the first 30 page the summary document in the binder?

Crosby: I think in general, it’s best to look at the actual meat and not just the summary. So, and I think oftentimes the summaries just are too vague.

Sharman: My second question is about the when you refer to as the tax increase of the city at 8.5 and I have to use an analogy to clarify my question. If you go into a grocery store and you buy a piece of steak and vegetables and butter and salt and sugar, each item has a lit has its own price, and at the bottom, there is a price for the total bill, which is what you’re paying, not necessarily an individual item by itself.

Isn’t it true that the tax increase is actually the sum of the bill of all the items, not each individual one, where the blend of the price is actually the bottom one, not the individual one, and therefore, clarity purposes, the tax increase is actually the bottom line, not the top line. Could you comment on that?

Crosby: You’ve completely lost me there. I’m not a numbers person, though, so But to me, that’s complicated, and my point stands. I think that Burlington Council is responsible for the Burlington costs. You’re spending our money as you see fit. At the end of the day, you are spending 8.3% more. You’re asking people to give feedback on the budget by telling them that it’s going to go up 4.9 it is certainly reasonable to think that people’s answers on what they should how what you should be doing or not doing, would be different if they thought it was 4% something or eight.

Sharman: Did you not see in the summary document that we declared the 8.5

Crosby: Yes and No – it wasn’t clear, because at the at the meetings before that, the mayor did, I saw different slides at each meeting, sometimes the 8.3 was there. It was not there very prominently. Yes, it is in the summary, and it is in the other budget document to if you find it. But that does not change the fact that the media releases, the social media, posts, the interviews, – everything – we’re hearing, 4.97   4.97 and that  wrong, in my opinion.

and elsewhere, we keep hearing the word “engagement” from staff, the mayor and city councillors.  They say they want to engage with residents and seem to believe that their engagement is real and effective.  In the opinion of many of those residents, however, it is not.

What exactly IS engagement?  Looking at definitions and the purpose of engagement put forth by numerous experts, one finds common criteria.  This from Citizen Lab puts it well: “The idea behind community engagement is that community members should have some power over the decisions that affect their lives.  Community engagement requires an active, intentional dialogue between residents and public decision-makers.  Its nature is formal: cities provide citizens with the necessary tools to get involved in decision-making.  Its main challenges are identifying what is important for citizens, convincing them to engage, and offering them all the necessary information to make well-founded decisions.”

Today’s meeting focuses on the budget, so I will speak to the engagement surrounding that.  It is indicative of the problems which I believe continue to repeat themselves in Burlington with respect to all engagement with citizens.

1. The City released their proposed 2025 budget on Friday, October 25. Residents pay the property taxes and have a right to clear explanations of where that money goes. Getting a 615-page document a few short weeks before the budget is voted on does not allow for true engagement.  This is an issue both for residents and council members. The councillors got the budget when we did, how can they effectively represent us with such a short time to review it and get our feedback? This does not “provide us with the necessary tools to get involved in decision-making” when it is almost impossible to do so in such a short time-frame.

 

2. Speaking of not having the necessary tools: how can any reliable feedback be given in any manner including the much-touted (and, in the opinion of many, deeply skewed) city surveys, when we are not given the accurate numbers of what the proposed spending increase and tax increases even are?  We also are missing the Flood Report and the post-2024 Transit Master Plan, which won’t be issued until after the budget is passed.

Fact:  City spending will increase by 8.3%; Burlington property taxes will increase by 7.5%. And yet, the number we hear over and over again from the city and the mayor is 4.97%.  The city has calculated this number by blending in the education and regional taxes.  I suspect that if blending in other entities’ tax rates caused the Burlington rate to be higher, no such blending would occur.  Asking residents if they agree with a 4.97% increase and to base their comments on that when the true increase is 8.3% completely skews any feedback.

If I went to the grocery store and filled my cart, adding up the costs of my purchases as I went, and then discovered at check-out that in fact the total is much higher because the price tags were labelled too low, I would realize that I would have made different choices along the way had I known.  I would then be removing several things from my cart.

Additionally, since the Halton Region Police Service is looking for a 13.8% budget increase, which will “impact” the Halton Region increase by about 2%, this makes the continued presentation of the 4.97% number to council and the public, including at the November 4 Committee of the Whole meeting, even more misrepresentative.  Your blended number, which you repeatedly reference as the “impact,”  will be inaccurate and too low if this is approved at Halton Region.

It would be more prudent and transparent to time the Burlington budget process to occur after the Halton Region tax rate has been set and after all reports and data necessary for budget planning have been released.  Under the Strong Mayor Powers legislation, the proposed budget doesn’t have to be released until February 1.

3. What else skews the feedback? Being asked to provide most of it before we even had access to the proposed budget, and therefore, zero idea how much any of our responses would actually cost in real terms, both in dollars and in changes to other services or items.

To ask citizens to give feedback at the Food for Feedback Event without us having any context of what the implications would be if we “voted” with stickers for increases or decreases on various broadly-worded items is quite simply a flawed and cynical approach.  To do so with no numbers attached is pointless.  I’m shocked that anyone thinks putting stickers on a poster in this manner counts as anything.  You have no idea who even attended:  surely not everyone who dropped by for “free” food even lives in Burlington.  Some sticker-happy souls were children.  You have no idea how many people stuck all their stickers on one box.  And regardless, they certainly didn’t have “all the necessary information to make well-founded decisions.”  And yet we are to believe that the mayor and staff used this at least partly as a basis for preparing the proposed budget.

4. Lastly, we had the mayor’s budget meetings held in each ward, again, before the proposed budget was released. Therefore, the necessary tools — the needed data and the context — were missing.   And time and again when residents did try to engage – to give suggestions and opinions on asking for cuts and reductions, this feedback was met with excuses about why these would not be heeded.  Stephen White and Jim Barnett spoke at the November 4 Committee of the Whole meeting about the lack of true engagement at those sessions.

I urge council and staff to look at Sherry Arnstein’s “Ladder of Citizen Participation”.  Arnstein wrote in 1969 in the U.S. about citizen involvement and described this ladder.  It has been described since as: “a guide to seeing who has power when important decisions are being made.  It has survived for so long because people continue to confront processes that refuse to consider anything beyond the bottom rungs.”

The bottom two rungs of the ladder are labeled as examples of “Non-Participation;” the middle three as “Tokenism” and the top two as “Citizen Control.”  I would like to quote from descriptions made by David Wilcox in describing the rungs for a UK publication (www.partnerships.org.uk/part/arn.htm:).  These are the rungs of the ladder that I believe we are stuck on in Burlington:

Bottom two rungs:

1 Manipulation and 2 Therapy.  The aim is to cure or educate the participants. The proposed plan is best and the job of participation is to achieve public support through public relations.

The middle three “Tokenism” rungs:

3 Informing. Too frequently the emphasis is on a one way flow of information.

4 Consultation. A legitimate step … but Arnstein still feels this is just a window dressing ritual.

5 Placation. For example, co-option of hand-picked ‘worthies’ onto committees.  It allows citizens to advise or plan ad infinitum but retains for powerholders the right to judge the legitimacy or feasibility of the advice.

I’d like to end by repeating the idea of engagement which I cited at the beginning:  “that community members should have some power over the decisions that affect their lives.”

I speak for friends and neighbours, for members of the Burlington Residents’ Action Group as well as numerous other residents who have delegated or commented on various forums when I say that we do not feel that we have any power over the decisions being made with respect to the budget on how OUR money is being spent.  This is NOT a community budget.  True engagement must go beyond the sheer number of events termed to be “engagement”; the type and worthiness of the engagement is what matters.  Let’s try to get to the top of the ladder on engagement, not stay on the Manipulation and Tokenism rungs.