By Pepper Parr
August 11, 2014
BURLINGTON, ON.
She just might be a dark horse in ward 4 where candidates are running against Jack Dennison, a well-entrenched incumbent.
Focused, fresh eyes – and a lot to learn in the next 75 days, If she can get her message out – and that is going to be a challenge ward 4 voters just might take to her and decide incumbent Jack Dennison’s political career can come to an end.
John Sweeney apparently came to the realization that he could not afford to take on the job of city Councillor. He felt all the meetings should take place in the evenings or on weekends. It was evident Sweeney didn’t understand or appreciate what the job of being a city councillor actually is. Despite Jack Dennison saying the job can be done half time – it is a full time job for which these men and woman should be paid more than they are getting.
Steve Kempf doesn’t live in the ward and not much has been heard from him.
That leaves Dan Davidson, who we have yet to interview and Carol Gottlob running against Dennison.
The Gottlob fleet is a two bike one car operation.
Gottlob was an immigrant herself; her parents were German and made Scarborough their home. Speaking with a bit of an accent set her apart from the other students. She was an only child with parents that both worked.
The Gottlob household didn’t have TV; the family was frugal, disciplined – lived all the stereotypes that one attributes to Germans.
Gottlob has an adventuresome streak to her. She decided one summer to drive across Canada to Whitehorse in the Yukon to teach English as a second language. Her two boys were close to grown up and could take care of themselves.
She is an environmentalist with two bikes and a car; she won one of the bikes through a Tim Hortons draw. While she isn’t a “techie” she does have a good grasp of technology. She bought an object called a “square” which you plug into your telephone and people can transfer funds from their account into her campaign donations account.
That campaign is slow to start but Gottlob has taken a leave of absence from her job to go full tilt on the campaign.
While certainly not “up to date” on everything Gottlob looks at an issue and takes a factual data approach. The Pier, it wasn’t a project she was keen on in the beginning, she thinks we paid far too much for what we got – but “given that we now have the thing let’s make the best of it” , she said.
She says she brings “no baggage” to the job which she defines as – “how can I help you?”
She said she has no assumptions and will develop her thinking mindfully and watch out for the hidden agendas.
Gottlob tends to be a perfectionist but sees whatever she does as something she wants to have fun at.
“We’ve got the pier” – “paid too much for it” but lets move on.
What one does see in Gottlob is a streak of European exotic – she thinks North America and Burlington in particular could use some of the depth and charm that exists in European cities.
When you listen to Gottlob you hear a person who thinks young, is self-sufficient, kind – almost to a fault with a sold belief in – we are here to help each other. There are numerous small initiatives she takes on – but doesn’t want published. “These were little jobs I took on because people needed help – they weren’t done for political recognition – so let’s leave them at that”, she said.
When her boys were young she founded a school council and stayed with it until they left the school.
If Gottlob can get her campaign active – and that is going to be a challenge, ward 4 will see someone with fresh eyes and a need to be effective.
Just because the BEDC exists does not automatically qualify it for a continued existence. This antiquated entity has done nothing for the past 20 years and is a waste of funding. It needs no further support.
A stay at home mom wishing to make a self improvement initiative by seeking a seat would know nothing about this municipal economic development group and how its mandate would be fulfilled; what is the BEDC mandate by the way?
We dont need any more time to see “if it needs to be modified to some extent”. That is exactly what has been going on for the last two terms. The BEDC is obsolete, and Gottlob is skating around her lack of knowledge about the BEDC. This is typical of people seeking office to talk circles about nothing, but, also seek to be the new leadership; pretty tough to be new leadership if you dont know what to do next, other than state we need change.
Service based budgeting is a fancy term for a modified budget spreadsheet that may better explain how the budget gets allocated. How do you make a business case for cutting trees down after an ice storm? This is one of those concepts that reorganizes a spreadsheet and that will only cost more to administer.
There are no savings from such an approach, and capital required for infrastructure is not becoming a priority; it already has been a priority for many years if not decades, so what is Gottlob saying again? nothing. What infrastructure is Gottlob talking about exactly?
I dont want to vote for somebody who talks a lot about nothing specific. I want to vote for somebody who says something specific and meaningful.
Ok Gottlob, you want to offer a new perspective in response to not agreeing with what is going on? Tell us, what is it specifically you dont agree with what is going on? At least start there.
I understand where you are coming from, Mr. Sweeney, and I don’t think we disagree with a need for change. An election is just that, a chance for the electorate to say “I don’t agree with what is going on” and seek new leadership. What I am offering is a new perspective. I’ve done the stay-at-home routine and raised my kids, returned to school in mid-life and embarked on a meaningful career. What I am looking for now is an opportunity to serve my community from a mature and informed stance. As to the BEDC, it exists, therefore, it deserves the support it needs. I think it is very forward-thinking on the part of the city, and I see its mandate being fulfilled. Time will tell if it needs to be modified to some extent. Serviced Based Budgeting raises concern that some services risk being cut if demand is not high. However, if savings can be derived from this approach, then we have some capital to put into infrastructure, which I think we all agree is becoming a priority.
I would have responded sooner, but I was spending a few days in a remote part of the province, at once coaxing a wood stove fire and getting my Apple i-Phone Hotspot to connect me to the Internet. I am happy to report I succeeded at both. I am nothing if not resourceful! I am also back in the city.
A school bus driver and ESL teacher; that’s the kind of experience we need when this city is facing intensification and tax increase pressures. Stay home and raise your kids.
Ms Gottlob,
Firstly, your weekly total of 42.5 hours of work is likely less than the average full time working individual so don’t think this is an interesting point.
In terms of “self-service” and “workflows”, there are 26,000 people living in Ward 4 alone, over 175,000 in the city as a whole. With 6 Councillors and 1 Mayor that is a lot of people to serve personally.
What I am suggesting is that there needs to be a simple and straightforward way to communicate with the City and to have a close looped system. How is a regular citizen supposed to know who to call about specific issues? I assume you are not suggesting that they call their Councillor about everything. That would create quite a lot of work and quite a bottleneck to getting anything done.
Instead, if there was a single number to call for any city matter/question/concern that includes the ability to “log” those inquiries to ensure that we are responding to the residents effectively. A call centre that could provide direction through the complex services and organization to get the most effective answer. Further, if this was monitored and reported on it would provide “real” data that could be used to review and improve the operation of the city. This is a real person that can provide direction but there is also an option for people to use self service which is truly available 24/7. Once these more formal channels have been leveraged and can be tracked, if the issue is not resolved then it would be appropriate to “escalate” to their City Councilor (or another, if theirs is not responsive) and the Councilor has some data to use as they work to resolve the issue.
I am not suggesting that people don’t go to their Councilor, only that there are better ways to provide service that increase the responsiveness and can be used for measurement and continual improvement.
Understand, that while I am disagreeing with you on this issue, one of the reasons that it is important is since our current Ward 4 Councillor does not effectively represent us. I am looking for the best alternative and I believe that some change will help us to get the broadest opportunity for new and better candidates.
I am interested in hearing more about your specific platform regarding Economic Development. What do you think of the “new” BEDC? What about “Service based Budgeting”? How do you see that operating? Thoughts on the execution of the City, given the number of changes at Senior Levels? Council code of ethics?
Please change the system so that someone who wants to take the city to “court” (aka Mr Dennison) because he doesn’t agree with the city that he represents is still allowed to participate in the running of that city. Mr Dennison has every right as a citizen to appeal the decision. However, he should resign as a Councilor as this is clearly a conflict of interest.
Please help! Anyone but another term with Mr Dennison!
I am afraid I must disagree with the “self-service”, “workflows” approach to customer service. In light of recent events in our ward, people need a real person to turn to, be it for help, or to vent their frustration. The job of councilor, to me, is a 24/7 job. As I go around and talk to people in my run-up to the campaign, I often hear about councilors and mayors they remember, precisely because those elected people were approachable when they needed them.
In my current work, teaching English and French to adult immigrants, I spend 27.5 hours/week in front of the class, and about another 15 planning, marking, preparing and researching. There is hidden work in every job.
In order to run my campaign, I will be reducing my teaching hours in September/October to 17.5 hours/week, to allow me to go to each and every home in the ward encourage people to get out and vote. If elected, I will be taking a leave of my instructional duties to fully dedicate myself to the learning process and to the constituents I will be representing.
Our world is already highly automated. If we want constituents to come out and vote, we have to be prepared to respond to them in person when they need us.
I am prepared to do just that.
To the Editor,
I read your recent article about Carol Gottlob and wanted to clarify the comments regarding my decision around running for City Council.
I believe that I do “understand and appreciate” the job of being a city councillor which is why I felt that I needed to withdraw from the race. I think that the current job of a city councillor is a “full-time” part-time job. Especially given the amount of hours that are currently scheduled during the traditional work week. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to hold a “full-time” job and be a city councillor in the current situation. It is interesting to note that the current “salary” for councillors although some might consider it significant it is insufficient to allow for a significant portion of the population to participate in this important process.
It is my belief that the role of City Councillor (not including the Mayor) is similar to a Board of Directors(BOD) to a corporation. This role provides oversight and guidance to the business of the corporation and includes participation on a number of committees to address specific areas of the business. The Mayor is like the Chairman of the Board and therefore has a different role that does require a full-time commitment, as is often is the case where the CEO is also the COB. The BOD is generally made up of individuals who are experienced in areas to effectively represent the shareholders and provide oversight and direction to the corporation. As a result they are often, although not always, individuals who also have full-time careers in addition to the BOD role. As a result of this, their role is more focused and the associated compensation is commensurate with an oversight role.
There are clearly differences between the current implementation of the Councillor role in most municipalities and a BOD model. However, I believe that we should challenge the status quo and consider modifying the existing approach to broaden the possible candidates and focus on a more oversight role. If this where the case, then the vast majority of meetings with the Council would be scheduled outside of traditional business hours, which would also increase the ability of general public to attend. Further, although the Councillor’s represent specific constituents (as traditional Directors often represent blocks of shareholders), their role is focused on the broader City business. The specific focus on constituent issues would be more on an “exception basis” after other more traditional direct channels had been leveraged. The overall concept is to move the Council to a more strategic role and as a result this could reduce some of the effort required. This would allow the compensation for these individuals to actually be “reduced” to reflect the different (more oversight and directional) level of effort. Let’s focus on getting the “high value” input from the Council members.
One other thing that would be required as part of this would be a more consistent and closed loop process at the City to deal with constituents questions, concerns and (yes they exist) complaints. There are Customer Service tools that are available to automate much of this providing “self-service”, “workflows” to improve services, and metrics to leverage for evaluation and continuous improvement. Wouldn’t it be great to leverage a consistent process to interact with your City, similar to the Regions “311” service however with more accountability built in to the system.
I understand that this may be a significant shift from the current model however I believe at its core it drives more accountability within the City and will provide more details to measure the effectiveness of the delivery and scope of Municipal services.
It’s a change in thinking but perhaps it is time for the change.