By Pepper Parr
June 17th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
City Manager (also referred to as the CAO Chief Administrative Officer) Hassaan Basit
Some of the changes City Manager (also referred to as the CAO Chief Administrative Officer) Hassaan Basit is introducing relates to the titles Senior Staff will use. They will be referred to as Commissioners.
It isn’t clear yet if the title of Executive Director will remain. We are following up on that.
The City is still on a hiring spree. Some taxpayers want the City to put a halt to the hiring; City Council argues that the growth that is going to take place will need a significantly different staff compliment.
The budget that the Mayor expects to have in place before the end of the year will tell what to expect in terms of what the spending is going to amount to.
Those opposed to the spending expect to play a bigger role in the creating of that budget. You might want to think of that as a bit of a pipe-dream.
The term pipe-dream dates from the 1870s, and it originally referred to the strange, hallucinatory dreams that opium smokers had.
The first instance we saw was an advertisement that is on the City website.
New bob titles typically just allow increases in salary not necessarily based on merit
We need to get rid of the 6 Deputy Mayor titles now that we have Commissioners What a waste of resources
Thank you Pepper for that tidbit of Victorian England esoterica (no,Pepper not erotica). You might also like to know that the popular Victorian pain reliever, laudanum, was a strong opiate and was popular for everything from tooth aches to migrains to menstrual pains. One of the most popular books of the period was Thomas De Quincey’s “Confessions of an English Opium Eater” and, I believe, that it was his expression or that of his Chinese procurers that the use of opium, the “pipe dream”, was “biting the clouds”. At any rate, why the ‘blather’? Well, just that I believe that many Burlington citizens have been “biting the clouds” for some time and have now started to experience the horrible realities of withdrawal. Good – time to wake up folks.
Editor’s note: Are the titles you refer to available at a branch of the Burlington Library system?
Nice? salary – $200k to $250k
Is this really necessary! And how many Employees does the COB really need? More Employees and Title changes will bring higher costs and tax increases. Our City Council and the new City Manager are not listening to their Tax Payers who are paying their salaries!!
Time for us to Vote this Mayor and Council out of office in October 2026 and bring in new people who will listen to and respect what their constituents want and deserve.
Such a political thing to do. Changing the titles of staff will not change the way the City of Burlington will run.
A change in operations starts at the top.
Sort of like the Commissioner of Baseball or Hockey?
Go to all the big games and hand out penalties for bad behaviour.