How ward boundaries and the size of city council might change

By Pepper Parr

October 12^th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Jack Ammendolia, Managing Partner with Watson and Associates did his presentation and said I “want  to provide a little bit of context and education to Council today. Throughout this review, we’re trying to answer some key questions, both through the consultant team, for council and for the public. Ultimately, we’re trying to answer a very big question:

“How does the existing electoral arrangement in Burlington serve both Council and the public?

“Right now, there’s a principle in the City of Burlington, that all local councillors are also regional councillors. Is that a principle council and public wants to maintain, or is that something that we want to see a change?

“Fast forward 2021 population of about 187,000 still the same number of wards as 2005: that’s the question that we’re trying to answer: does that still make sense?

We have looked at some significant changes in terms of future growth, and again, we’re trying to understand, does this still make sense?

“There is a big public component to this” said Ammendolia.  “There’s a research component, there are experiences that the consultant team has had from work done in other places. There are things that we hear from Council and staff. We now want to hear from the public.

“There’s also a big online engagement component.

“Informational videos, things like discussion papers that are split into small chunks, so that if you don’t want to know everything about Ward boundaries, but only maybe Council size, or maybe only the guiding principles, you can go and find that information. There are quizzes, there are surveys. So we’re really trying to make sure that the engagement that we’re doing is accessible in different mediums, accessible to different people across the city, accessible to different age groups across the city.”

Public engagement didn’t get off to a very strong start.  A meeting was scheduled for the evening of the presentation to Council.  Someone doesn’t know very much about how the people of Burlington responds to meeting opportunities.

Three people attended the first meeting.

Ammendolia, added: “Some of the particulars with regard to some of our preliminary observations on the City of Burlington, but maybe a little bit of high level context to how we do these engage or how we do these Council composition and Ward boundary reviews.

“The legislation is vague. There’s not a lot in the municipal act that directs the council how to do award boundary review or when to do a board boundary review. It’s pretty vague. Really.

“What the municipal Act says is that councils have to be a minimum size of five. One of those five has to be the mayor elected at large, and then outside of that, council has a lot of purview and what they want their council to look like.

“You can go as big as you want, within reason;  we know what happened in Toronto when they went big. The provincial government stepped in and reduced it.

“There is nothing in the legislation. There are no criteria. There are no guidelines that say, if you have a population of x, this is how big your council should be.

“It can be by wards like Burlington is or it could be at large. It could be a combination of at large and at wards. Again, it’s really to the purview of Council, what you want that to look like.

“An important component here is size and composition of Council. That is not something that’s appealable. So whatever Council, again, outside of the government stepping in, the decision Council makes is not appealable.

“When you get into actually deciding if you have a ward system and what those wards look like, then that is something that is appealable to the Ontario Land Tribunal; that’s an important distinction between the other components of what we’re looking at.

“The wards are appealable really quickly.

“A couple of last points on the municipal Act. Something that is consistent for every municipality in Ontario is when you have the day the election, that date has been set and set for all municipalities the term of office. Every Council has a maximum term of office, and that’s the same again across Ontario. Who is eligible to run is the same across Ontario, and how your city and your clerks count the ballots, that’s the same across Ontario.

“The next election is October 26, 2026: any decision that Council makes with regard to composition, size or award boundaries, has to be made before December, 31 2025 –  it has to be made before the end of the year.

“We try to get these things done before June to allow any room for appeal.

“Representation by population; wards should have an equal number of residents, Councillors should have an equal number of constituents in their ward.

“The other big one is respecting communities of interest. So not only is it a population exercise or a technical exercise, but we want to ensure that communities of interest that wards have connected communities like minded interests within that ward.

“The other one is we want to make sure that the ward boundaries are coherent. So as much as we can use natural features, large arterial arterial roads, man made features, rail lines, those types of things that helps with recognition, recognition of the word.

“The population according to the 2021 census, about 187,000 seen about 6% population growth over that last decade.

“If we look at the two maps shown below, anywhere that you see green, those wards have a greater population than 35,000, the yellow is less than 27 and a half 1000. The bluish colors between 27 and 30 so you can see that already, depending on geography, really, on what side of the city you’re at, you have some wards are much greater in population, some less.

“And we’ll look at this in more detail in a second. The map on the right just shows the growth that’s occurred over the last 10 years as well. What we really don’t want to see is wards that are already overpopulation and continuing to grow, like Ward six on the map.

“It highlights some of those points I just made the legend at the bottom. Anywhere you see a green you’re within 5% of the ideal population of a ward. So that’s your population divided by six. Anywhere you see that pink color, you’re within the acceptable 15% range, knowing that we it’s very tough to get perfect parity while balancing the other principles, and anywhere you see the dark red that is outside of that population range, so you have three wards that are currently outside that acceptable 15% population range.

“To us, that’s an issue that we have to try to rectify through this review, we go to the last, or next couple of slides.

“The other big component of this that I mentioned is composition, and looking at the size of Council. Right now you have six councilors acting as both local councilors as well as regional councilors.

“This table shows the different populations different geographic areas, but it shows you the total number of councilors in each of those places. And if you look at Burlington, you have about 27,000 people per councilor right now, or per Ward population. That compares to the average of the four municipalities around 15,000 so much higher. Milton and Oakville are right around the same, at about a little over 14,000 Halton Hills, quite a bit lower, at just under 5000 so again, we have to ask that question, does that number still make sense for Burlington today, considering your population and community change?

“Is Burlington’s Council unique? It’s not unique in the sense that it’s the only one, but it’s unique that there aren’t a lot of examples like this, where you have six councilors plus the mayor that are one governing body for the city. You have six councilors plus the mayor that are the entire governing body. The mayor has also assigned responsibilities to all the councilors through a deputy mayor portfolio and councilor members also serve on many local and regional agencies, committees and boards.

“That’s a summary of where we’re at in terms of a quick look.  We spent the summer and early fall researching, starting to talk to staff and some council members as well.  We will embark on the first round of public engagement over the fall of 2024  – that’s really our focus; listening, gathering feedback, and then coming up with alternatives.

“We’ll come back to council late winter of 2024 before the end of the year, with some perspectives and recommendations on composition. Our recommendations , along with the feedback that we receive is what we will use as we embark on the last phase of the study in the in the New Year.

“I’ll stop there and see if there are any questions.”

That is when things got interesting. Tomorrow we will report on the to and fro members of Council went through – some of the statements were mind-boggling.

Next public meetings:

Tuesday, Oct. 15 – 7 to 8:30 p.m., virtual public meeting

Wednesday, Oct. 23 – 7 to 8:30 p.m., Haber Community Centre, 3040 Tim Dobbie Dr.