By Pepper Parr
May 22th, 2022
BURLINGTON, ON
There is just something not quite right about the sale and purchase of the Bateman High School property.
It is monumentally expensive.
The paucity of public information resulted in the sanctioning of a council member based on a complaint by two other Council members.
Councillor Stolte was docked five days’ pay for talking publicly about something that was discussed in a CLOSED session of Council – a no no in the municipal world.
Councillors Nisan and Galbraith filed a complaint to the Integrity Commissioner.
Then there is an announcement that there will be a l and swap – the city would sell the sports field to the west of Central High school – the proceeds of that sale would go towards paying for the Bateman property owned by the public Board of Education.
The city announces that there will be public engagement – before that a short survey.
Short survey has a short life – the cit y pulls the survey and provides some detail on a public meeting.
That gets the social media close to the boiling point. Those networks are going crazy over the Bateman high school and Central High school sports field matter,
Lynne Crosby, a frequent Tweeter, makes a comment – the city picks up on it …
… then ward 5 Councillor Paul Sharman puts in a few words.
So failure is a possibility?
To Dave
If they are both public interests they only have one entity to serve, the public. Let the public in. Maybe the other five councilors and the mayor should have ben docked the five days pay for dereliction of duty to the taxpayers.
You focus on the City Council and not at all on the School Trustees, who equally are ultimately accountable to the resident taxpayers.
The City has a duty to get the best deal for its residents mitigating as much as possible a financial impact to the resident tax payer. The school board which has a Halton wide brief has a duty to get the best deal for all Halton resident tax payers. The City and the Halton District School Board have similar but different interests. So each will negotiate with the other without showing their hands.
Something is wrong in the state of Burlington. Both properties are publicly owned and the future of both should be totally open to a full and open discussion. It will be public money exchanging between public organizations and we the public have a right to know. Councilor Stolte was on the right track when she was bringing sunlight to the back room deliberations.
Both are public entities but are unrelated and have vastly different interests and priorities. The school board is managed by elected trustees. The City by elected councilors. Each is driven to achieve the best deal possible for their stakeholders. The school board comes under the control of and is accountable to the Province, not to the municipality. The school board is Halton Region focused. The City’s focus is much narrower; it’s only focused on Burlington’s interests.
Right on Jim, Councillor Stolte is the only Councillor who could influence our position on this. Definitely not Sharman who as a veteran councillor has significantly let us down in terms of the reason he came to the table i.e. to address what was stated by him and his supporters to be a very toxic council 2006-2010. Our audits and Gazette articles show lack of transparency, truth and trustworthiness got worse as did the toxicity from 2010 on. To the point where the Gazette has challenged the community to start demanding better. Can’t get more toxic than the attack on Stolte for seeking more transparency and integrity than the other six at the table were prepared to give. Further, this has proved to continue to be a huge problem for the bill payers with the LPMA staff report with regard to transparency and integrity not only with Councillors at the Burlington and Halton table but with the most City and Region senior staff!
I will explain why Councillor Sharman started his tweet with SHOULD. In a response to his earlier tweet where he said that the public SHOULD get the figures of the Robert Bateman project prior to the election. I ASKED why SHOULD ? It was important that Council say WILL provide the cost of the project prior to the election, and not the day before the election, but prior to any advance polls.
His response as you can see was SHOULD…..not very convincing is it.
A possibility? Of course there is a possibility. Until a deal is signed off upon there is a potential for a deal not to be done. Just like in selling a house, if you accept a conditional offer to purchase, the deal could fail, if the purchaser cannot, does not want to satisfy the conditions and waive them. So what is the point of this “news” piece. Sharman’s comment had been reported in an earlier Gazette article. Must be a Victoria Day long weekend filler.