By Pepper Parr
September 9th, 2019
BURLINGTON, ON
He is in the process of becoming a media star, the “go to guy” if you want a comment on how municipalities are going to handle the demand for housing.
Mayor’s 2015 Christmas card picture.
The Mayor was on CBC twice this week- once with Anna Maria Tremonti on The Current, where we learned that the Mayor was one of the Regional Council members who voted for a program that would have the Region paying for a large part of the cost of a back flow valve, that prevents water from your home’s sewer line from flowing back into the plumbing when there is heavy rains. On August 4th 2014 there were heavy rains.
The Mayor told Tremonti that he as one of the Regional Council members who put his hand up and voted yes.
Unfortunately for the Mayor he was not one of the people who took advantage of that opportunity and when the city was severely flood on August 4th, 2014 he got five feet of water in his basement while his next door neighbour, who had a back flow valve was reported to have been dry.
Having told the The Current audience (the program is broadcast nationally) the Mayor was then heard on CBC’s Metro Morning with Matt Galloway where he explained what the city manager meant when he said Burlington was not going to be able to build any more single family dwellings because the city has run out of land.
Land use in Burlington is made up of 50% rural, 34% traditional suburban housing, 11% employment lands and the 5% of the city that is not going to have any high rise structures.
The Mayor told the world that a decision was made in 2006 to protect the escarpment and not allow the creation of sub-divisions north of the Hwy 407 – Dundas roadways.
The full interview is HERE
During his conversation with Galloway the Mayor said there was a range of views on the change that is taking place in the city. He used the phrase “bubble wrapped” to describe those who did not want to see any change in the structure of the city.
Interesting interview – worth listening to. You can arrive at your own conclusions as to whether this Mayor reflects your view of your city.
In one of his tweets the Mayor appears to be telling his followers that he is going to run for mayor in 2018. Why else would he put quote marks around the word “running”
The Mayor is clearly upping his game and doing everything he can to get a bit of a leg up on the race for the Office of Mayor that will be decided in October of 2018. Expect at least two people to run against him.
Sometime ago he wanted the citizens of the city to know that he was a transit advocate and once rode the bus to work – and posted a selfie so that people would know he was actually on the bus.
The releasing of this picture to the public is something the Mayor might have run by his communications adviser.
Interesting that the mayor (allegedly) rides the bus. I can’t ride the bus anymore since my local routes have been cut back. The bus no longer goes where I need to be. Thanks, Mayor Goldring!
City hall has their own ideas and the residents have theirs. The 2 are tota opposites. We have the advantage in that we decide who stays in power!
I think the mayor is right. Sprawl must end, and we will have to accept that multi-storey condos are the way to go. It is also true that the downtown sprawl we have right now where transit is barely noticeable has to change in a drastic fashion. With that in mind, the three mobility hubs make sense to me. I don’t get involved in the city’s politics, but when people tell me the mayor is electioneering just because he is being open about Burlington’s reality, then I feel I need to speak up. Burlington has no choice but to change, while at the same time protect green spaces for families to enjoy, and single family home neighborhoods are also preserved.
Desperate people do desperate things. However, as T.S. Barnum once said: “You can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time”. The same is true of voters.
The 5% of the city noted in this story as not going to have any high rise structures is getting it backwards.
The city planners, and the Mayor himself, has been telling us the opposite – that only about 5% of the city will see the planned mobility Hubs, and other specified locations, slated for intensification with high rise.