By Pepper Parr.
April 24th, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
The staff from the Communications and Engagement department showed up at a Standing Committee recently with a long report that set out everything they’d done since their last report – one list was 15 pages long.
Kwab Ako-Adjei Director, Corporate Communications & Engagement
Kwab Ako-Adjei Director, Corporate Communications & Engagement and his team spoke of the “extraordinary amount of engagement that was done by the city which includes council as well” and then went on to take council through what had been done since their last annual report.
We are a “ very data driven department” and we will start sharing a lot of that with counsel in the near future”, said Kwab
The phrase “giving people a choice for their voice” was the way Communications explained the decision to continue in person or online engagement or a combination of both.
The question Kwab may have wished he didn’t ask was: “What is the will of council for having the Food for Feedback event as an annual event? And what about the locations?
He and his team were before Council to get reaction on various city communications issues, however the Food for Feedback initiative quickly became the focus of the meeting – that and the desire on the part of every member of council for access to all the data collected and a plea that the event be held in their ward at some point.
The Food for Feedback idea was you got a ticket to get something to eat from a Food Truck that was parked nearby – but you had to “engage” with city staff at one of the booth set up in the Band Shell park next to the Library.
It was a popular event – two Food for Feedback events were held – Covid did get in the way of their longer term plans, but it worked and that was the premise behind the report.
Kwab wasn’t prepared for the reaction. He explained that these events were expensive.
Council didn’t seem to care – what they were interested in was doing more of the Food for Feedback events and asking if they could be held more often and in their ward would be nice.
Councillor Sharman explained that it would cost next to nothing to do a Food for Feedback event in his ward and tied it into events that were already scheduled – his annual Appleby Line Street Festival was his angle.
The first Food for Feedback event drew 1000 people. What the Gazette doesn’t recall learning was – what did the city get in the way of feedback – and what did the event cost ?
The first event was held in 2019, 1000 people were reported to have attended. COVID knocked out 2020 and 2021. An event was held in 2022 at Brant Hills where 640 people are reported to have attended.
The criteria for these events was put together by the communications department – their recommendation was to hold the event at Central Park band shell because it met all of the criteria.
That criteria became an issue – first because Councillors didn’t think it was accurate and second – they didn’t like the criteria.
Kwab said “… we know you have questions – we have a lot of documentation about how we came up with this criteria, adding that not all wards actually have a suitable location based on this criteria.”
That’s where the differences of opinion began to become evident – almost every member of Council was able to explain how the event could be run in their ward.
Ward 3 Councillor Rory Nisan did his best to make sure the Food for Feedback was held in his ward as often as possible.
First up was Councillor Nisan who said “great work, expecting less and you more than exceeded expectations adding that he was “ basically really happy with everything else but was having a sports field as a criteria is a good thing or a bad thing ?”
Kwab: “We often cannot use a sports field – some other group may have booked the space but not the rest of a park area.
The staff member who had worked in the Events depart with the city for 10 years, explained “we are not permitted to have events on sports fields. We can be in a park but not use the sports fields that are adjacent to and within a park.”
Nisan, no fool when it comes to bringing opportunities to his ward, offered to have the Food For Feedback event at Brant Hills every second year asking “Is there a willingness to rotate – have it at Brant Hills … do you have any issues with doing so?
Kwab responds: “Our first choice would be Central Band Shell however, we are obviously open to the will of council to have north- south alternate every year and our suggestion would be Brant Hills would be the North location because it does meet all of the criteria.
Mayor Meed Ward followed Nisan saying she had few questions – mostly comments and asked if “You have social stats for other channels; there’s the City of Burlington and then there’s the rec one. Are there other city channels out there that we can get data on ? The only other data source I can think of off the top of my head is transit; I am very interested, if you gather those stats, to see any other city channels that are out there.
Kwab: “Recreation has a number of accounts as well as Instagram accounts – we do work with them with to make sure that they are properly engaging with the community. We could share the stats and data on that.”
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward – she wanted data.
Mayor: “That’d be awesome. And I assume that there’s some sort of technology tool that you possibly pay for to get all these stats. Can you run it for council channels, so we can see what our own engagement levels are? Other than just you know, looking at them?
Kwab: I’d have to go back and chat with Kevin (City Clerk) about that. There would be an additional cost, because it’s Sprout Social that we use and they are limited in the accounts. But we can see if there is a way to do it. I mean, it does do comparisons to neighbouring municipalities and as you can see, generally speaking in terms of engagement or impressions, we are well above the industry so it does do those sorts of comparisons but to pull specific Councillor data; I’d have to check on that and get back to you on what the potential cost of would be.
Mayor Meed Ward: “We can talk about that offline. I’d be really interested to look into Sprout.
Shawna Stolte, ward 4 Councillor who is currently on a two month leave of absence.
Councillor Stolte noted that the event held in September 2022 had a total of 640 people attending and was told that approximately 1000 people attended at Central Park in 2019?
“When I attended the one at Brand Hills I asked if they were feeling there was representation from across the city and asked: “ Did you take any stats on where people were hailing from when they came out? I certainly got the impression that most of the attendees of 640 were from the north ward 3 area.
Kwab: “Some might have asked but as a whole we didn’t ask – but that’s something we can definitely implement for the future.”
Councillor Kearns: “Can we think about or bring back something to have a more thorough discussion on regarding Food for Feedback during the election year? There was quite a lot of conversation out there around the appropriateness of sitting councillors and or candidates attending – wondering if we can have a further discussion on that at some point.
Kearns also wanted to know more about the social media – “wondering if you can provide some additional insight on how does the information garnered through social media get back to council or help with decision making?”
Kwab – Do you mean the kind of feedback that we get?
Stolte piped in with: “ I don’t think I’ve ever received something from social media through the city to help with decision making, whether that be in a report or anything to that effect goes out, or how it comes back in?
Michelle Dyer, part of the Communications department team, who does more than analyze data.
Michelle Dyer, part of the Communications department team: “ We know we do want to make sure we’re sharing more information with counsel in terms of our social media, posts and content. So stay tuned – we’re developing a toolkit that will point to some of the information that we share on social media that will be coming to council very soon.
“In terms of feedback. I mean, we get a lot of comments on social media, a tonnes of comments. I mean, if we compile it all there would be reams and reams of pages. Kevin (City Clerk) and Victoria do a great job of going through those comments. And if they do pertain to a particular department or anything like that we do share it with them. If there’s anything specific to council I think you need to see I’m fairly certain that’s something that we would share directly with members of council but there are many instances that we share the feedback that we get from social directly with staff, which couldn’t make its way into reports or memos or any of that information. They’re also very looped into our social media channels and what we’re doing but if there’s anything specific, I think that counsel needs to be aware of we would definitely share with you directly.
Ward 6 Councillor Angelo Bentivegna wanted more detail on the criteria that was used to choose locations for the Food for Feedback events. He pointed out that the ward 6 Arlene Park and Millcroft Park;, two fairly large parks in his ward “but the criteria says no in terms of parking and I don’t understand that.”
Kwab: ” In regards to the two parks in your ward, the reason it was no is because based on the other amenities that are in the park and the attendance that we expect for the event we don’t believe there would be enough parking for the event to occur as well as the regular Park activities. So that’s why we put no just to kind of prevent any potential parking issues.”
Ward 6 Councillor had to update the Communications on the number of parks in his ward.
Bentivegna:. “We’ve got parking lots including two massive parking lots next door to each other. My other question would be choosing the location and the question about which wards they come from. I agree with Councillor Stolte I think people sometimes assume okay, it’s in central that means it’s downtown stuff. I know food trucks costs money but you know, maybe we don’t do the food trucks. I think the neighborhoods would walk. I mean, if you’re having it in Alton Village, they’re going to walk to play in the Doug Wright park. I do believe the criteria as to where and why people go to these events is very, very important.
Kwab: “I think if we just step back for a second, we had a clear interest from counsel to make sure that we would move this around. So that’s where we started from knowing that this is what counsel wants. Let’s look at the location. If counsel says they want to have this ongoing feedback every year; my opinion is that they would be in September and as we stand right now, it will be with food trucks, because I know they’re very popular. So we said okay, let’s go and let’s look at where we can actually have this. And when we take all these things into consideration – we could live with moving around; sure we can, but I think we have to consider that there may not be enough parking. If it rains, we may have to move it indoors. We can’t get on the sports field, these are all the things that we need to consider.
This is our recommendation, council wants to move it around. That’s why we presented those options for Council to consider and ultimately direct us to what you what want us to do.
Ward 5 Councillor Paul Sharman – no he wasn’t asleep.
Councillor Sharman : “Thank you very much for the report. Lots of complexity. So with respect to the Orchard, it is probably the urban area furthest away from downtown and Orchard people don’t come downtown very much. Orchard Park has a school right in the middle that has washrooms and has parking. We did a 2000 person event in Orchard Park last summer and there was no problem. My question is it possible that the school board properties can be used?
“This is a Sunday event? no kids in the schools; there’s plenty of space and there’s even public washrooms paid for by the city.”
The Appleby Line Car Free Sunday was better attended than the one on Brant Street several weeks later. Over time the attendance grew to the point where it is now an annual well attended event.
Kwab – “We can certainly work with them, Again, we do have those risk factors to take into consideration .”
Sharman: “The other question I have is Sherwood Forest Park. It has everything Why is it not on our list?”
Kwab: “We tried to kind of pick two locations per ward that have had events in the past. Sherwood is such a well utilized space. We wouldn’t want to take that out of the inventory for the community if there was already bookings there in regards to the different amenities they have.
Galbraith: I’m just gonna jump in here first time. Thanks for the report. Really, really good and congratulations for creating such a great event that every counselor wants it in their ward including myself.
Ward 1 Councillor Kelvin Galbraith – he wanted to see those food trucks at LaSalle Park.
Looking at the two parks available for Ward 1 – Can you explain the no because of parking at LaSalle?
Kwab: “I think we’re hearing what counsel wants. So we can take this away and come back with our recommendations and we’ll move this around, or we can certainly wait for direction at this at this point in time. I mean based on based on the discussion that we’re hearing, – I will certainly leave it to counsel but I think we’re getting the message – loud and clear.
Galbraith: I think if it was moved around the city and then came back to Central it would be even better because everyone got exposure to it.
Stolte: “Back to Food for Feedback – there’s no doubt that having it in a park with green grass is ideal. But the real ideal is getting as many people out as possible and having it at the right location.
“Could we consider other city facilities and I’m thinking in Ward 4 maybe the Mainway arena?” “Can we consider venues other than just parks? If we’re going to look at moving it around?”
Kwab: We didn’t plan it that way initially and we have the indoor space more as a rain area in case there’s inclement weather; if there was too much separation between the booths and the food trucks people may eat but not take part in the purpose of the event – let’s be honest, they’re giving out food, some wouldn’t be doing the feedback.
Stolte: Food trucks could go inside the arena. Would it be the least bit feasible to consider hosting two food for feedback events, whether it be two on the same day, or subsequent Saturday’s holding one in the south and one of the North?
Kwab Ako-Adjei Director, Corporate Communications & Engagement found he was getting a lot of criticism and fed new ideas by members of Council. The upside for him was he is going to be able to go after a bigger budget in future.
Kwab: The short answer: anything is possible. The logistics and the costs would have to be taken into consideration and how you would determine which staff you send North versus the South, which engagement opportunity that you that you had so simultaneous – that would maybe be a challenge.
Ward 3 Councillor Rory Nisan
“Let me reiterate we’ve only done this twice. So we are definitely open to feedback and in terms of how we improve this.
Nisan: “I am open if there’s more questions about Food for Feedback but let me just put it on the table at this point. And then they can have questions and answers. That’s what I would suggest. The motion was to approved the continuation of Food for Ffeedback as an annual engagement event to be rotated between different suitable locations across the city each year.
“I think that gets us landing what we want of this This leads us to essentially a report back
“I would assume staff would come back to us through a CIP which would allow us to, to review and make modifications if we wish, but give them the opportunity to do some more work on it and look at some of the different options that we’ve all raised today.
Certainly would love to have Brant Hills park back again.”
Stolte: Thank you just speaking to this proposed amendment, which I certainly agree with about it being rotated between different suitable locations. Staff. Do you feel the need for us to add in things like and consider two events or a weekend event or anything like that? Or do you feel as though you have enough feedback from the conversation?
Kwab: “We would have to have more resources to look at multiple events.
“The recommendation is to have it in at Central Park for 2023 .”
Ward 5 Councillor Paul Sharman – hold the events at either his Appleby Street Festival or at Sherwood Park – and don’t feel you have a tonne of money.
Sharman: “I really appreciate the hard work that goes into the annual event. That is a big deal. But actually, you don’t need to put a lot of work into doing it in existing events. And it doesn’t need to cost us a lot of money. We don’t need to pay bags of cash for food, because we’ll have people that we can do other incentives.
“I’m also suggesting that we don’t necessarily limit this to an annual event and you don’t need to make it a big deal. Perhaps you could just put that into your thinking, because you can have as many as you want. It may be a booth and it may be some incentive but I think there’s opportunities to do a lot more.
“Last year, we had 14 or 16 booths and I think it was similar in 2019. So I mean, we would have no issue. Our staff if it was just you know, having a booth on engagement and communication, but I think maybe where it might get tricky is is having the number of events if in fact we wanted to have that many booths to garner feedback, that would possibly be the only issue.
“The other thing too is the timing of projects that require feedback, right? It changes throughout the year. So those would be the only some of the cautions that I would add please, for that, you’re gonna have the north end of our Appleby Line Festival – and you can have as many booths as you want.
Now we wait to see how the Communications department reacts. It is clear council wants the Food for Feedback events to happen.
Equally clear is that Communications didn’t appear to have brought much in the way of imagination or innovation to revising the event. All the good ideas came from members of Council with Kwab saying he would “look into that,”
What was all too evident was that the engagement people don’t do engagement very well. But they do collect data – ‘tonnes of it”.
The Mayor’s website deletes negative feedback.
Only unicorns and rainbows allowed.
Fortunately she usually posts the same content to Linkedin.
Linkedin doesn’t allow comments to be deleted.
I try, try, try, to stop commenting and then you post something like this!
Thank you to Lisa Kearns (Deputy Mayor for Engagement) for being the ONLY person who mentioned the controversy of doing the Food for Votes event during the 2022 election campaign period in Ward 3, benefiting the incumbent Nisan. It’s even confirmed here that the majority of people who showed up were Ward 3 people. How laughable that Nisan now says he wants it in his ward every other year. Though wait, maybe now he should be asking for Ward 2 for 2026?
Tim Commisso told me to my face, at the event, along with Blair, that he agreed with us that next time this event won’t happen anywhere during the election campaign period, and in hindsight, it shouldn’t have happened then. We were all over their precious social media which they claim they look at screaming about how this should be cancelled. We contacted the Clerk, I also sent an email to them all (ignored). We spoke to staff at the event itself and reiterated our points. Many people spoke out then in agreement. Calls were made to senior staff by others as well.
How is it possible that this wasn’t raised by anyone here at the meeting – any staff, Kwab, the Clerk, council member, the mayor (except Councillor Kearns)? How is it possible that they talk about hearing from the public and reading comments and they conveniently have all forgotten the uproar from many of us about this? And from non-incumbents, particularly the Ward 3 one.
This absolutely puts the lie to their claims that they listen to feedback in any way. Particularly ironic as they call this “Food for Feedback”!
It’s a fallacy that they “engage” through their social media which they routinely use to tailor the message by deleting comments they don’t like. Engagement is a two-way thing. They claim this is an engagement tool – do they think it is used by the majority of residents to interact with the city? It isn’t. Huge swaths of the public are not on social media and certainly don’t follow City posts. When someone actually does try to engage there, the staff, Clerk, mayor, council member doesn’t ever answer unless the post is nothing but a fluffy photo op with their latest prop, and the comment in question is along the lines of “nice shoes”. Then you may get a reply with a happy face emoji. Engagement? Back and forth? Answering questions? NOPE. This should not be used as stats for anything.
IMO, we don’t do real engagement here – we have pretend engagement by social media and endless spin. It’s all for show. So appropriate how they do their inauguration on a stage and they have scripts they read at meetings. Our coat of arms should be changed to the black and white theatre masks and a spinning top.