By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON February 27, 2013 A city hall staff report recently advised that the Pump House on Lakeshore Road might have a new tenant and a local paper reported on the news quoting Ward 1 Councillor Rick Craven extensively.
The city is close to making a decision on who the operator of the pump house will be for a seasonal purpose – could be operational as early as June of this year – maybe before the pier.
What was interesting was that Councillor Craven did not once mention that the initiative to do something with the Pump House came out of the now sunset Waterfront Access Protection Advisory Committee (WAPAC) of which he was a member.
WAPAC had its problems and there has been considerable controversy over the decision to shut it down but it did make some useful decisions and put a couple of serious matters on the table.
From the left: Nick Leblovic, chair of WAPAC, Michael O’Sullivan, Ken Harris, Jeff Martin, Donna Ankrett and Gary Scobie. The Pump House will get used by the public because of these people.
There are members of WAPAC who deserve a lot of credit for pushing and pushing hard to have WAPAC do something. Their success in getting the Pump House recommendation to the point where it was ready to go to a council committee – taken there by Councillor Craven, deserves some recognition by Craven.
When the WAPAC people did their tour of the Pump House councillor Craven suggested it might serve as an official residence for the Ward 1 Councillor.
It is a mistake to climb the heights on the shoulders of others without remembering who it was who helped you get there.
Jeff Martin, Ken Harris, Michael O’Sullivan, Les Armstrong, Gary Scobie and Donna Ankrett deserve much of the credit for getting this issue to council.
It is unfair and inconsiderate for Councillor Craven to take all the credit in the newspaper interview. He did mention that WAPAC was the group that got this to the Council table at a committee meeting this evening. Hopefully Craven will now push for some serious action on the part of the city to move the Windows on the Lake file and resolve some of the issues that surround just where people can walk along the edge of the lake. There are parts of the waterfront that are public property, supposedly accessible by any citizen, that is effectively blocked by private property owners who don’t want the public wandering anywhere near their lakefront land.
Time for the city to get on with this file – Councillor Craven might be just the person to do this.
Councillor Meed Ward who has her own rump group that is called Burlington Waterfront Committee has this item on their agenda. Fat chance of her and Councillor Craven working together on this one.
