By Pepper Parr
October 8th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Another memorable Burlington Public Engagement moment.
After going through a long presentation on the Council Composition and Ward boundary task that the city has entered into – the first of what will end up being many public meetings took place last night.
There were three people that were “public” and four staff people plus the staff from Watson and Associates why are doing the study for the city.
The person on the right is part of the consultant team; the others were interested enough to show up.
One of the three that were attending asked why there was just the one sign outside the building – there are three entrances to the Tansley Woods Community Centre.
Signs outside and inside each door helps.
The study is something the city has to do. More importantly, if there is going to be a council that is truly representative, the city needs to know where the 29,000 new homes are going to be located by 2031 and how big the population of each ward, as they exit now, are likely to be.
The presentation made at City Council on Monday was detailed. The Gazette had yet to publish a report on the event.
So when we learned that a total of three people showed up for the event we were not surprised.
Why the city scheduled the first public meeting the day after the presentation to Council suggests that the Communications people don’t know very much about how to engage a public – but that is a different problem.
The bigger problem is that people in Burlington just don’t participate in civic matters – less than 30% of the eligible voters in the 2022 election bothered to vote.
One of the consulting staff made the point that in 2016 when he was involved in this type of public meeting the room was packed. “Things have changed since the pandemic” – what the change is is something that has yet to be figured out.
There are two more meetings scheduled.
The issue around citizen engagement and participation is that the majority of those who participate are seniors. If you looked at the attendees for the recent budget consultations, or those who regularly attend any of the meetings on development proposals, they are overwhelmingly seniors. Go to any poll on an election day and you’ll see seniors out early waiting to vote. No doubt that seniors may have the time, but more importantly, they also have the interest, understanding and commitment.
So the question becomes: how do you engage the younger populace? How do you instill in them a commitment to get involved politically?
I am utterly shocked at the low level of political awareness and understanding amongst young people. The sad truth is that those of us over 65 aren’t getting any younger. Where are the young people, and why aren’t they stepping up and taking a more active part in politics?
I hate to be the one to tell you that many residents not only have no idea what ward they are living in, but are probably not interested in the changing of the ward boundaries.
Hope to be proven wrong.
The blame for the low election turn out is not purely resting at the public’s door. We are sure you remember the very poor effort made by the City with Kevin Arjoon in charge of the administration of the publicity/election budget that there was an election coming up. We discussed and we sent you a photo of a note pad meant to advertise election day without the election day date on it. It simply said vote 2022. There is not the same money in a Municipal election as there is in a provincial or federal for the mediaa and it does not get the same promotion
When it follows close on a provincial election, as it usually does, people are all electioned out and many, especially new Canadians are unaware there is such a thing as a Municipal election. To be honest we lived in Burlington for 10 years before we understood there was anything other than a provincial or federal election, Curt Benson said we need to do better with Service Burlington which is absolutely true when they have no record of our Internal Auditor’s existence. City hall needs to do much, much better when it comes to elections. However as name recognition is a biggie in Municipal elections a change in little or no understanding of an election occurring is not a high priority with the incumbents.
Editor’s note: I could not disagree more with this comment. Citizens both rights and responsibilities and the most important responsibility is to hold their government accountable for what they do and insist that they be transparent.
The hand holding suggested in this comment amounts to enabling poor governance