By Pepper Parr
November 25th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Eric Stern, the spokesperson for BRAG (Burlington Residents Action Group, delegated to City Council this morning.
In most cases, not all, Council has very little to say in response to a delegation – this morning – it was different.
After saying: Good morning and thank you for your time today, Stern levelled a couple of concerns:
I have to say I was surprised to see Burlington get out early again this year with the fictional “4.97%” overall tax increase.
It was interesting to watch Mr. Basit present a 4.97% on November 4th when the Halton Police budget had been made public on October 30th. Did Mr. Basit knowingly misrepresent the truth?
On November 18th I listened to Leah Bortolotti talk about 6.7 million people visiting the website annually. I did another double-take. For a dose of reality, only 200,000 people live in Burlington. Are we expected to believe that every person in Burlington visits the website an average of 33 times a year? How many of these visits are to book the kids into a swim class? More confusing is that the budget document states on page 48 “our website—with its 1.5 million annual users”.
When he had completed his delegation there were questions and some animated responses:
Councillor Nisan: We have a transit master plan that is currently inactive. Do you not want that transit plan? Or what’s the story?
Councilor Nissan: Your last item in your, we’ll call it a report, or your submission, said that the transit master plan should be released before taxes are increased in relation to transit. We have a transit master plan that is currently inactive. Do you not want that transit plan? Or what’s the story?
Stern: Well, if you’re going to change it, which we would expect with a new master plan, then shouldn’t the budget, wait for the Master Plan, or shouldn’t the master plan be released before the budget? It’s not a necessity to have a budget in place until February 1. We have the flood plan coming out, what later today, and the transit master plan coming out in a few weeks. So you put the car before the horse?
Nisan: I’ll just clarify my question. So our transit master plan goes until 2025 this is the last year of that master plan. Are you suggesting that we finish a new master plan before we approve the budget for what we already approved in the last master plan?
Stern: That is the suggestion that you get the master plan out first and then do the budgeting around it. Y
Councilor Sherman: I want to thank you for your delegation, but also particularly for the correspondence with all the analysis that you and you have done, or I guess a few of you have done, yes, it was very thorough. It had a lot of good analysis in there.
Would you be interested in having some response from the city with respect to the analysis you did?
That offer is close to a first for this Council – a citizen asks for something and gets a positive response.
Stern: Yes, we’re interested. This is an ongoing process, so we’ll just raise the same issues again next year. If the city wants to provide clarity or an explanation, then maybe we won’t have to raise them, or maybe we’ll see it differently than you do.
Sharman: I will ask staff about that later, and I’m sure we’ll get you the answers.
Later in the meeting when questions are put to staff Sharman asked the Chief Financial Officer:
With respect to getting back to the to residents and their feedback – there are a lot of questions in there. Could you just confirm that you will respond to each question in line so that they have an answer to this community group for each of those questions.
So will you be able to do that for this, for the for this input, in particular through
Craig Millar: Through you to the Chair: Yes, that’s that’s our intent, to go through each one of the questions and provide answers.
Chair Bentivegna: We have a question from Councilor Kerns. So looking at this item that’s been provided in your correspondence, which is the list of the of the items that you’d like additional investigation on, and recognizing that this is, in fact, the mayor’s budget. What engagement have you had with the mayor’s office related to these items as they relate to the budget?
There wasn’t really any time in this whole process to do a really deep dive into the data.
Stern: Well, there wasn’t really any time in this whole process, because the budget action reviews were submitted two weeks after the budget was released. It takes a group of us to split it up to roughly 80 pages each. We went and identified things we could xxx
Kearns: You reviewed the budget action items you endorsed, I believe is the correct word, the budget.
Stern: No we haven’t. There’s just no time in this process for residents to meaningfully engage. And I’m really emphasizing the word meaningfully.
Kearns: A follow-up question. What you would like to see then? A draft budget released first, so we don’t have to challenge the clock of the statutory time to turn this around, which is more detailed, in order for people to have more meaningful engagement.
Stern: That’s right, that’s identical I’d like to see what Oakville does happen in Burlington?
Kearns: My second question is this, in the correspondence that you’ve provided, it doesn’t necessarily equate to $1 value in the final column on every single item, is the concern more with accountability, transparency and return on investment and alignment with business plans? Or is it pure hard savings or both?
Stern: The concern largely is with accountability, certainly. Speaking for myself, not for the group. I’ve said this before – the only reason I’m here is because 4.97 is meaningless. 4.99 last year was meaningless. It was 6.58 I think, at the end of the day in 2024 on our tax bills. So you guys come out with this obviously skewed lower number for your own benefit, and then we’re somehow supposed to engage, and then we get a dog and pony show with what a 10-page booklet with no details.
You know, transit is going to cost pulling numbers out of my hat, but it is going to cost $17 million do you agree? How are we supposed to engage with that?
Eric Stern: It’s all about clarity, honesty, fairness.
It’s all about clarity, honesty, fairness. We’re all adults. Nobody’s jumping up and down and screaming that everybody has to be fired at City Hall and things like that. We recognize that Burlington has great services, but we want to understand what’s happening with our money, and it’s becoming a lot of money over the years, right? $500 million.
Kearns: Thank you, Eric. Maybe our themes next year will be clarity, transparency and honesty.
Mayor Meed Ward did not attend the Council meeting – she attended the Premier’s event at Joseph Brant Hospital – where she didn’t get to say a word. Had she been at Council Stern may not have gotten away with some of his comments.
The Complete Stern Delegation
“Stop the 7.5% Burlington Property Tax Increase” petition has been presented to council. Twelve hundred and forty-seven people signed the petition asking for a zero percent tax increase. The multi-year forecast called for 8.9%, by asking for zero we were hoping to meet somewhere in the middle, at 4.4%, oh well.
I have to say I was surprised to see Burlington get out early again this year with the fictional “4.97%” overall tax increase.
It was interesting to watch Mr. Basit present a 4.97% on November 4th when the Halton Police budget had been made public on October 30th. Did Mr. Basit knowingly misrepresent the truth?
On November 18th I listened to Leah Bortolotti talk about 6.7 million people visiting the website annually. I did another double-take. For a dose of reality, only 200,000 people live in Burlington. Are we expected to believe that every person in Burlington visits the website an average of 33 times a year? How many of these visits are to book the kids into a swim class? More confusing is that the budget document states on page 48 “our website—with its 1.5 million annual users”.
You have approved $148,000 for an SEO Marketing position. What is the payback?
Will there be a staff reduction in Service Burlington because people can find information themselves? Will there be KPIs to monitor this or is this just another overhead cost?
What residents need is information, not marketing spin, Google can make that information searchable. Adding a web marketing SEO position will slow down the posting of information making that information less accessible to taxpayers. Do you remember the taxpayers? The people who pay for this.
The mayor talks about training bus drivers and then those drivers take jobs in other cities as a justification for higher pay. This statement is not supported by the 5.3% turnover number presented on November 4th. A rate of 5.3% is lower than any private sector group except for heads of organizations and executives at 3.8%. This indicates the city has the right mix of salary, benefits and working conditions. An average, across-the-board, salary increase of 4.58% when inflation is 2.5% sounds high.
My theme today is clarity. Residents deserve factual information, clearly presented on the city’s website, by staff and the council, without the deft hand of a communications department spinning that information for the benefit of our elected representatives and city staff. I resent being taxed to pay for information to be marketed to me.
Eric Stern wants a draft budget well ahead of Mayor’s budget so the community has an opportunity to comment. BRAG earned the right to that kind of document next year.
Looking ahead to 2026, what considerations are being made for a conservative Federal government and severe cuts to the housing accelerator fund? Much of the expected $21,000,000 may evaporate.
In terms of provincial funding, what happens if the city does not meet its housing targets and no provincial funds are available?
Burlington is building out community centers, transit, etc. for people who may or may not move into the community. What happens if the builders don’t build and the people don’t materialize? Is it time for more prudent cost controls?
The Burlington Residents’ Action Group submitted to this council, in writing, 14 pages of possible cost savings and economies of scale that the city could consider.
I’ve watched many council meetings, people who ask for money often receive money, and people who ask for cuts often receive nothing.
Why are lower tax increases important?
Lower increases leave people with more money for heat pumps and EVs.
Lower increases reduce renovictions by landlords who, through rent control, can only increase rents by 2.5%. This will reduce homelessness and help to “solve the crisis”.
Lower increases leave more money in people’s pockets, reducing food bank visits and crime, and lower the overall cost of policing.
I’ll conclude with, Your Worship, you win, for now, you hold all the cards, residents are not given enough time to review the budget, the budget does not include explanations for the programs, or what the return on the “investment” will be, and requests for details go unanswered.
Congratulations on passing another huge budget increase without the community understanding what the percentage is or what the dollars are for!
Thank you Eric,
I appreciate you standing up to City Hall. Maybe we should fight for a tax decrease instead of a smaller increase.
great work BRAG !!
the mayor’s approval of the budget, combined with her absence at the delegation where concerns about its validity were raised, creates a situation where citizens and hopefully council members question the integrity of the process. Hopefully this creates political, administrative, and public relations consequences, requiring the mayor to take steps to address the concerns and restore public confidence.
Mostly,she is not the Queen of Burlington. She is not above scrutiny. Her recent endeavors suggest a more serious detailed oversight of her performance is required and should be discussed publicly.
I concur with Eric. It’s hard to imagine how a staff of 39 people in the city’s finance department could put together such a hopelessly vague document with meaningless power points including a list of public consultations, without any indication of what was discussed or resolved in those meetings, or surveys conducted by the city regarding its own efforts, which of course came up moderately favourable (we’ll give them points for humbleness). But the absence of any comparative analysis of actual detailed financial statements from prior years leading up to the current budget is telling.
Monday, October 26, 2026 will not come soon enough for me.
I hope that after that day, the Mayor and Council will finally realize that the citizens do have a say against the 36%+ tax increases from 2022-2025. I hope that they will realize that not listening and not meaningfully engaging with the people who pay their paycheque, comes with consequences.
The consequence is that astronomical tax increases contributes to food insecurity for lower income households and fixed income seniors. And, as per many validated studies, there is a direct correlation between cost of living increases and higher crime rates – which we are also currently experiencing in our beautiful city. And, as a result of those higher crime rates, Halton must hire more police officers and our taxes go up even further and so on and so on.
We need to address the cause that is fuelling this vicious cycle.
We, the voters will have our final say on Monday, October 26, 2026. – come what may.
Thank you Eric for speaking so clearly and eloquently and devoting your time to represent like minded citizens.
“Yes, we’re interested. This is an ongoing process, so we’ll just raise the same issues again next year. If the city wants to provide clarity or an explanation, then maybe we won’t have to raise them … ”
Well, I doubt that there will be any critical mass next year Mr. Stern. Last year, there were remarkable delegations by yourself, Lydia Thomas, the Chapmans with an outstanding petition/social media effort by Wendy Fletcher. This year with solid delegations by the Marsdens, Jim Barnett and especially Lynn Crosby the effort was a little underwhelming and fell on completely deaf ears. Did you get any impression that Council even remotely cared or were concerned. As I watched, my feeling was this was a totally comfortable, isolated, entitled group. It was all pretty much Mehh. And the BRAG petition drew only about 1/3 of the names (aka interest) of last year. This is not a “storming of the Bastille” type of fire in the civic belly! And remember please, as we slide into next year’s Strong Mayor annual hyposcrisy, that it will be (as actually noted by our Chief Financial Officer) “an election year”. Expect the budget to be much more responsive and responsible. The only thing more certain is Mr. Basit’s “iron rice bowl”.
Standing ovation for Eric!
Absolutely. We know he is part of a team and we are grateful to them too, but his leadership, dedication, plain language, common sense approach and not being afraid to say it as it is, is a rare commodity these days. THANKYOU ERIC!