By Pepper Parr
September 14th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
The 4th Annual Food for Feedback went very well the weather was fine and the attendance was good.
The layout of the tables and booths was very good – an improvement over previous years. There was a lot of room for people to mill around, think about where they wanted to put their dots on large poster boards and just mill about talking to neighbours.
Tablets were set up for people to register – all electronic.
If you ever wondered just how diversified a city Burlington is – you had only to see the racial mixes.
The Food Trucks did a very brisk trade – the line ups were half an hour at most of the trucks. One attendee thought it was almost too good a deal. The meal would have cost me $20 at the Sound of Music.
There were tables set out for people to east at away from the crowds. There were play stations for kids that needed a place to sit for a while.
Councillor Bentivegna pulled popcorn stand duty.
The Mayor had a booth set up – Councillors Sharman and Bentivegna were seen; Sharman talking up any number of people – Bentivegna pulled popcorn stand duty.
There was a senior staff person assigned to move staff around; if there was a booth that had a line up he or she would move staff from table to table.
The BurlingtonGreen teams were on hand taking care of the waste that included someone walking around the grounds with stick picking of pieces of paper.
There was data galore being collected. We didn’t hear anyone complaining about a specific concern. If the different coloured dots are added up the city should have a pretty good indication as to how people feel about different services and the delivery of those service.
Transportation data – was the facial expression communicating a point of view ?
Heritage often a contentious subject in Burlington. No black dots on this one.
I suspect that what made this years’ event the success it was is due to the several people who planned the event and then were on site to ensure the bumps that may have cropped up were quickly and efficiently handled.
Figuring out what the sign means?
That is not where the pop corn was supposed to go.
It is going to take a bit of time to pull the numbers together and do an analysis – and maybe even tell the public what it all cost.
As for that $20 price mentioned – I didn’t get a burger – I was there to cover the event and report on what took place.
On the way home I stopped into Wendy’s, had a Double Dave with fries and two half pints of milk – came to pennies over $15. The city would have done better than that.
There were five food truck – line ups at some were close to half an hour.
There was plenty of food; the choices were good as well.
One observer noted that “the food trucks ran spewing diesel fumes while the city asked for our input on how to reduce greenhouse gasses.”
Director of Burlington Transit
Transportation was an issue that caught a lot of attention. There was one of the brand new buses parked behind the booth where Director of Transit Catherine Baldelli put together one of the cardboard models of a bus.
Do the green dots mean top priority and the red’s bottom priority with yellow and blue somewhere in the middle? I’m interested because our home is within the proposed heritage district and one of the images is about heritage, ‘What is most important to you in preserving Burlington heritage’ I just wanted to make sure I’m budgeting my resources into what people want, and yes I can provide an understandable budget through to 2026 with zero cost to the good citizens of this city. You’re welcome.
The dots all have the same meaning, I vote for this …
Where you placed the dots had meaning.
Not very scientific, is it, I see on the ‘transport priorities’ it says, ‘Please choose up to 3 topics that reflect your priorities.’ did that apply to all the boards? Aside from people’s wants regarding preserving heritage buildings, why was only the business area heritage study cancelled?
It was a PR stunt. Great for more selfies for council members.
Asking people to fill out a survey or stick stickers on a board saying they want free transit – it isn’t free – or want services increased without telling them how much that costs, what it means for our taxes, what things they would cut to achieve it, is pointless and irresponsible.
But hey, sticking a sticker on a chart gets a free food sticker – it’s not free either – and so regardless if you came over from Hamilton or Oakville or wherever, you too could have a lot of food paid for by Burlington taxpayers.
How much did this event cost us? The huge amount of food from multiple food trucks, the tent rentals – 40 or 50 tents?, the swag they handed out like candy, the personalized MMW tent, all the signs, all the advertisements, the staff overtime, the staff time to plan all this, the police – really? – and does anyone actually believe anything will come of any feedback that doesn’t align with what the council already plans to do?
The staff members I spoke with were all very nice and personable and I had lots of good conversations with them, and several laughs together too. And they let me express criticism and question some things and responded in a manner which was polite and professional and respectful, and led to actual conversation – so different from how the elected officials often react.