By Pepper Parr
January 16th, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
The Parks, Recreation and Culture department is in the process of bringing in a new Director. Chris Glen who served in that role for close to a decade before choosing retirement: He is still working for the city on other assignments.
At a recent Council meeting a letter from the Burlington Eagles hockey team (the letter was not made public) expressed concern over how the city facilities were allocated.
Beard: “Parks, Recreation and Culture is a complex business.”
Denise Beard, Manager of Community Development Services responded to questions from ward 6 Councillor Angelo Bentivegna on the delivery of services by the Parks, Recreation and Culture department which Beard said “ is a complex business.”
Touching on the delegation, Beard said the concern was about the engagement section: they felt that they weren’t engaged in the conversation and wanted to know what the process is that gets reports from staff about engagement from these participants?
“These are partners that we have throughout the city. There are different levels of programs for the children; with respect to engagement in this report, we were really not bringing forward any recommendations at this point. It’s really an overview just letting you know and letting the public know about the project that we’re about to embark on in this review” explained Beard.
“They’ll definitely be consultation as we go throughout. Our approach is engagement. I feel like we are usually pretty good at this – we typically go to our partners and let them know of items coming up that are of interest to them.
“In this case. I did not engage because the document was more of an overview report. Hopefully that answers your question.”
Bentivegna: “It does, I just want to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to participate in terms of the discussion and whatever that form may take. How it comes back to us is important. So that the information that we’re receiving is brought in from the users of whatever that sport may be. ” Adding – “the question for me- do we take into account the age group, when we are determining who gets what ice time? Is that taken into account presently?”
Denise Beard: “We do and we don’t.”
“We do and we don’t said Beard who added that “we did a lot of consultation on the framework when it was implemented. All the user groups were engaged, and they were all part of the conversation. It’s been about a five year process to get to that point and then council approved it in the spring of 2019, just before the pandemic.
“Council was also engaged in that because we talked about some of these situations. We talked about this, some of these situations where we were focused on fundamental skill level development.
“The vast majority of people learn the basic physical literacy skills and or arts and culture skills, to have general recreation and we felt when we approved the framework that general tax supported entity should support the greater context a greater number of people through fundamental skill development, and that was the opportunity there.
Beard: “Whether you are an older adult or youth, a baby, it doesn’t matter”
“So whether you are an older adult or youth, a baby, it doesn’t matter – if you’re just learning a new skill, you should be able to do that in a tax supported facility. As we go up the skill level, we then say we’ll offer whatever space we have available – for whoever – youth or adult, it’s all about the skill level it wasn’t necessarily about the age.
“There was a big flip that was made during that framework discussion where we talked about fundamental skills versus your physical age.”
Bentivegna: “I can speak for hockey.”
Bentivegna responds: “I appreciate what you have said about the skill level process. Each of these organizations whether it be swimming, baseball, soccer, or hockey, the skill level starts at a very early age.
“I can speak for hockey – at three or four or five years old, they have programs where they just sort of have learned to skate, learn to play hockey.
“There are no leagues; the private sector organizes that. Once they know what to do, in terms of skating skills they then become part of a program, governed by another body that gives them guidelines as to what time they should be playing ;that’s where some of the unknowns are.
“How will we see some of that in the report that we’re going to see later on ?”
Bentivegna: “Again when are we going to get that report ?”
Beard – “In the report on space allocation, you’ll see that information but it is not on the table right now, not on this agenda.”
Bentivegna: “Again when are we going to get that report ? Before June?”
Beard, “Definitely before June.”
