The idea came out of a book, Lance Secretan’s The Spark, The Flame, and the Torch, the Mayor read during his 2012 vacation. The book inspired Goldring who put in a call to Secretan and brought him into town to lead a select group through a weekend exercise that was to come up with THE dream for the city.
It got off to an awkward start when the Mayor at first didn’t want to say who his fellow dreamers were and then didn’t want to say just where the $50,000 it took to hold the event came from.
He ticked off his fellow Council members by insisting that if they could not attend both days of the two-day event then they could not attend at all. You can imagine how that went over. The decision was quickly changed.
What we were seeing was a situation, that had not been thought through well enough, was now being changed in an almost ad hoc fashion.
When all the people were finally in a single room with Secretan roaming around prodding them into coming up with their best dream – well it got out of hand. Jane McKenna, then still very much a neophyte MPP, took a verbal swing at Post Editor Jill Davies, who was one of the dreamers. It went downhill from there.
It took an intervention from former Mayor Walter Mulkewich to get the event back on track.
The Dream never saw the light of day – there was never a report. The names of the participants were released and there was mention of a report at some time in the future but that was as far as it got.
The One Dream experience pretty well sums up the way the mayor has conducted himself since elected.
Rick Goldring puts the city before himself – he wants what he thinks it is to remain the same and at the same time would like to see good growth.
He ran for office because he couldn’t put up with the way Cam Jackson was running the city. For Goldring this was personal; Burlington is a city Goldring cares about passionately. While there was no vision; there were a number of well-developed papers with some good ideas. Goldring didn’t write those papers – they were written by the man who became his Chief of Staff once Goldring took possession of the chain of office; something he has never worn very comfortably. He has yet to get the feel of his office.
Cam Jackson was very comfortable with that decorative chain around his neck – you sensed that he believed it was supposed to be there; whereas Rick Goldring would give up the jewelry in a heartbeat.
Goldring believes he has a council that runs smoothly – which has some truth to it. He appears to have decided to treat Meed Ward with more respect after his disgraceful public put down of a council member who gives the city better value than many other member. She asks the awkward questions; she isn’t afraid to be wrong and while she doesn’t “get it” at times she is honestly motivated. The evening our Mayor chose to blind side and humiliate her was not the man at his best. Meed Ward said she was humiliated and that no one had ever said a word to her about the amount of time she chose to speak.
Rick Goldring is a pure product of Burlington; he is a prime example of what this city produces. Born and raised here; a product of the public education system and then a student at McMaster he went into financial services and stayed there.
He didn’t bring any significant executive experience to the job. His people management skills are self-taught. His ego doesn’t rule his life and from time to time his emotions get the best of him. Of the council he leads – and he doesn’t see himself as the leader of Council but rather one of seven who is quite prepared to give way to a fellow Council member if they have an issue they are passionate about.
The Mayor believes the city’s relationship with the Joseph Brant Hospital is good – hard to tell, the public doesn’t hear from the hospital – other than the billboards it puts up and the advertisements it runs in the newspaper. What the public does see is a line on their tax bill setting out the individual household’s portion of the $60 million the city has to put up.
Communication with the hospital is a one way business managed by people who have no interest in involving the public. Burlington’s Mayor is just happy he was able to get the deal he got which has the city paying for specific pieces of equipment, furniture and fixtures and not having to just give the hospital a big cheque and having no idea how it was spent.
Goldring believes the city has made great strides with its community engagement initiative. The reality is that initiative has been smothered by the bureaucracy and has relatively little real citizen participation – it’s a city hall staff program with the woman hired to create the program, Christine Iamonaco, leaving the city in the fall after which the public might see an annual update.
Life for the Mayor is a series of meetings. He gets out to as many as he can – and at times it is difficult to stay focused.
Stephanie, what makes you think he cares? Not a lot of votes in the rural area. Seems he would rather promote the Pier and downtown despite it housing less than 7% of Burlington’s total population.
Seems during his interview and through his sober second thought, Mr. Goldring forgot that he should have taken a deeper, harder look into what non-resident Vince Rossi was doing to the City’s rural greenbelt community – aka: the Burlington Airdump.
Talk about not being prepped enough in advance. Both he and his staff should know better.
Tip – take a media relations class.