Did the Mayors 'lap dog' just bite her?

By Pepper Parr

October 17^th, 2023

BURLINGTON, ON

OPINION

Editors note: Several of the comments were attributed to the wrong person.  Corrections have been made.

Turning now to the food truck festival said the Mayor.

We have two clauses to vote on here. We will take them separately.

The first is to direct the city manager of and the manager of festival and events to decline future food truck festival applications in Spencer Smith Park, effective 2024.

The second clause will be to encourage the event organizers to work with staff to find a suitable location in Burlington

The discussion and debate that took place on these two clauses was revealing in several ways.

First, we saw for the first time, ward 3 Councillor Rory Nisan (Rory lives in ward 2) disagreeing very directly with Mayor Meed Ward on how the city should decide whether or not to let the Food Truck Festival continue to take place in Spencer Smith Park.  That has never been Nisan’s style up until now.

Stolte:  We all hope that we can figure it out with this particular event organizer.

We know that the citizens of the city would like to continue to enjoy that type of event of event. Is there anything stopping us from reaching out to other organizations in our community or service clubs and supporting them to perhaps look at creating a food truck festival so that the at least the event can continue in Burlington in some capacity.

Staffer:  So there would be nothing preventing us from doing so. We usually just wait until applications come in to the festivals and events office from event organizers is typically our process. I hope that answers the question.

Stolte:  A point of clarity – if a person such as myself, were to have contacts within a service club, and I had a conversation with them and they wanted to reach out to the city as far as looking at that then we could explore that alternative?

Nissan It’s been a challenging issue. I think. I think the fact is that we have a provider here now who listened to what we asked our committee and did his due diligence and even found a potential alternative location, but it’s completely offline at Burloak.There will be two years of construction. There’s just no other place to put this other than Spencer Smith Park. So I just don’t agree with any assertion that this decision is anybody’s but ours. The fact is that this event brings as much as $11 million dollars of business into the city. 40,000 people enjoying themselves in the city down that Spencer Smith Park has been for seven years

There haven’t been complaints brought to city council. It’s a fantastic event enjoyed by residents across the city and supporting businesses other than the restaurants that are complaining. There are many other businesses that are being supported. This is a case where we need to go back to our first principles here as council members and do what’s best for the city as a whole.

And you know, I want to be part of the city that supports fun that supports leisure and good times and not a city that pushes events out to meet the interests of a small number of people. So I honestly ask my fellow councillors to please reconsider. If you need more time to think this through ask for deferral. But please do reconsider your position and allow this festival to stay in Burlington. I mean, what a shame if this went to Oakville or Hamilton or Milton and and we lost it in Burlington. It would be an absolute shame and make no mistake; this is our decision. The provider has done his due diligence, and it’s our decision on whether to have a food truck festival in Burlington or not.

Mayor  I don’t think I’ve ever seen our staff or counsel for that matter. Give options to this many options to any provider who wants to create an event in our city and I want to acknowledge and thank staff and council for working with the food truck organization to at least look for other other venues.

Specifically, the reason we can’t or we decided to go through the process that we’re going through is because the local BIA and the associations are restaurants in in the downtown area and I’d have to say the other areas have some effect as well. indirectly. They pay the freight each and every day. They’re the ones that create the employment each and every day. They pay their fair share and contribute to the tax base each and every day. We need to support our community. Every day. I will do that. Always.

So those are basically the highlights that I want to make sure everybody understands. I would love to see a food truck festival in other parts of the city, and we have had them privately in private locations that were very successful in the past, and we will have it again I’m sure someone will come up with a program that will fit the needs of our city. This aligns with my own thinking on this that our role as council members with our city wide heart is to look at all of the interests that come before us and there are competing interests.

Mayor: Second time speaker back to you, Councillor Nissan.

Thank you Your Worship, but I appreciate the comments and listened intently to everyone’s and recognize them in the minority. According to the comments anyway. So you know, the BIA is more than the restaurants. There’s hotels that benefited there’s a $11 million of economic activity that’s been brought to the city so if we want to feel if we want to help the if we want to help the BIA and help the downtown I think we can help them by bringing 40,000 people into our downtown.

So that’s my opinion about about the BIA and what’s good for the BIA but I think we’ve had a great we missed a great opportunity here to have a premiere event in the park. I think it casts a chill on other potential event organizers. And it’s gonna make it we talked about other people going into the park while they have to go through what Ben has had to go through in order to maintain his festival. I think they’re gonna think twice about it. He did his job. He looked around. He looked everywhere.

If we don’t want to have a food truck festival fine, but let’s not pretend that there’s another Canada food truck festivals waiting in the wings. Just to open up in a location to be determined that has already been found to not be feasible. There’s no other there is no other food truck Canada food truck festival. Perhaps something can be organized but it won’t be in any way on the scale and opportunity here I bet has businesses you know a business or has that as well the food trucks, their small businesses, they’re the smallest the small businesses are also they did nothing wrong. And now they’re going to lose a weekend of business and our residents are going to lose out on a lot of good fun for this. So I’m sorry, this is the end of the food truck festival in Burlington. I don’t see anybody else coming forward. And I’m just I’m just very sorry that we’re that we’re sort of taking the fun out of Burlington.

Mayor: So with all of that not seeing any more hands on the board a vote on the first clause:

Direct the city manager of and the manager of festival and events to decline future food truck festival applications in Spencer Smith Park, effective 2024.

who?. Thank you turning to the second clause to encourage the event organizers to continue to work with staff to find a suitable location in Burlington. Councillor Nissan, did you wish to comment on this clause?

Nisan: This is moot. At this point it’s clear that the organizer has done everything he could – he will be doing and will be moving his food truck festival to a neighbouring municipality.

So this has moved to this point. I would suggest that his is as this is no longer relevant. The the first item was fulfilled through the committee direction – he did his due diligence and there’s no more encouraging to be done.  Nisan saw going forward as moot

Mayor: I can declare this moot, but I’m not going to

I think I’ll put it to the vote. Certainly I’m only speaking for myself. I think that this is the sentiment that a number of us feel that we would like to encourage event organizers to work with staff so I’ll leave it on the board unless all of you tell me to take it off. I’m happy to  vote on that.

And I see hands going up now. Councillor Kearns, go ahead.

Kearns: I’m absolutely looking to take this vote . This was a massive modification from the initial staff direction that I’ve worked very closely with staff and stakeholders on to have to signal the goodwill that our city our staff have continue to leverage to this operator and so I don’t find it complete and done by way of a delegation piece of information. I thought I, I will keep it open because we were very vocal on working with this particular operator and if it is the operators decision, you can come back by way of a memo through staff to let us know that they’ve made a decision outside of that I’m I’m not supporting a withdrawal of this and I don’t find it closed.

Councillor Bentivegna: I concur with what counselor Kearns said, I would like to leave this open as well.

Councillor Nissan speaking a second and last time to this clause.

I’m sorry. I’ll defer to you Mayor for your first time  I’ll hold my comments until after you speak.

Mayor: Go ahead.

Nisan: Okay, thanks. Look, let’s get our feet on the ground here. This is not happening, the food truck festival is dead in Burlington. So let’s not pretend that there’s still an opportunity. It’s over.

Mayor: Okay, I’m not seeing any other hands on the board. I don’t share your pessimism Counsellor. I believe that votes can be clarifying for folks and it can encourage them should they wish to make use of our audience here and Burlington, which are good food truck festival goers and they’ll find it wherever it’s located. So I don’t I don’t share your concern. And I do believe that what we heard from the festival organizer prior to a vote wanting to say that he’ll withdraw it to get us to vote a particular way.

So now that we’re going to say no, no to this part, but yes to somewhere else, I think that will provide some clarity to the organizer to work their magic, which they can and if they wish to stay in Burlington and have access to our facilities and our audience of good Burlington, paying residents who will go to a food truck festival, so I’m not going to sell our community short and I’m not going to sell our stuff short, they can find solutions and this vote will help to encourage that. Seeing no further.

There’s no single point of order. Go ahead.

Nisan: I just don’t think it’s fair your worship to ascribe motivation to the delegates that that he was attempting to force our hands so I just want to raise that point. I don’t think that’s fair.

Mayor – Thank you. Your opinions been noted? I don’t share it, but thank you.

A recorded vote was taken. 4-1 with Councillor Nisan voting against.

Kearns, Nisan, Stolte, Bentivegna and the Mayor voting.

Councillor Sharman had sent his regrets, we didn’t see or hear Councillor Galbraith.

We have never seen a spat like that between the Mayor and Councillor Nisan who has been described by a number of people as the ‘Mayor’s lap dog’  – who on this occasion bit her.

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.