By Vince Fiorito
January 13th, 2016
BURLINGTON, ON
At the beginning of each new term, the City of Burlington Council develops a strategic plan, which reflects Council’s vision and strategic priorities for its term of office and beyond. A strategic plan is a document that provides a framework for future City of Burlington decision making and resource allocation. The result should be a document with specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound objectives and key performance indicators.
Strategic Plans are usually four year plans prepared by a city council.
The process to develop the City of Burlington’s 9th Strategic Plan started in December 2014 and should have been completed by December 2015.
This document should take less than a year to consult all stakeholders for input, develop a draft version for consultation and feedback, before City Council ratifies the final version.
Here we are in 2016, and the city still has a few more public consultations to complete and a significant amount of stakeholder input to process before a final version can be put to a vote before city council. I suppose better late than never.
If you plan to attend one of the public sessions, don’t expect to have much time to add your ideas. The format is to divide the audience up into five groups and rotate through five stations, each with a topic to discuss and a communication facilitator. New ideas are welcome, but you will have to compete for time with other participants. I recommend being prepared to submit your ideas to the session moderator in a written format at the end of the session in case time constraints restrict your ability to share your ideas.
As much as I would like to feel warm and fuzzy about how good the City of Burlington is, we do not having a strategy to address invasive species, pollution, climate change and other problems which threaten our natural heritage system.
Trash dumped into creek ravines.
The City of Burlington has about 20 urban creek valleys which run through the heart of our city. These areas are currently neglected, overrun with invasive species, littered with hundreds of tons of trash and contaminated with fertilizer and road salt residue.
Fish from Sheldon creek
Despite these serious problems, Burlington’s urban creek system act as wildlife corridors and support a wide diversity of native species including trout, salmon, mink and great blue heron.
Clearly the city could add the Green Belt objectives and our urban creeks to the Strategic Plan, but, for whatever reason, has chosen to continue to neglect these urban green spaces within walking distance of most city residents.
Conservation Halton made Vince Fiorito a watershed steward – Sheldon Creek is his territory.
I live on Sheldon Creek and founded the Friends of Sheldon Creek Stewardship organization. Ideally I’d like every resident and business adjacent to one of Burlington’s urban creeks to be considered waterfront property. I am disappointed that the strategic plan has no plan to protect, conserve and restore these natural areas. It’s not like I haven’t tried to raise awareness. I’ve submitted the above information as a delegation to city council and to the Sustainable Development Committee. What does that say about Burlington as an Engaging City?
Another missing component in the Strategic Plan is Climate Change and a plan to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions. The strategic plan states that by 2040 the “city’s operations are net carbon neutral”.
The hydro plans to increase micro-generation of electricity using natural gas, would increase the city’s greenhouse gas emissions.
However, the strategic plan lacks anything on how to achieve that objective. In fact, the city’s plans to increase micro-generation of electricity using natural gas, would increase the city’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Overall the draft of Burlington 2015-2040 Strategic report gets a C- in my opinion with an F on the environment.
The final public sessions for input to the Strategic Plan are:
Strategic Plan Open House
Jan 18, 2016 07:00 PM – 09:00 PM
LaSalle Park Pavillion
Strategic Plan Open House
Jan 18, 2016 07:00 PM – 09:00 PM
Mountainside Recreation Centre
Burlington’s urban creek system is often used as a stormwater sewer.
Remember the August 2014 flood included the overflowing creeks. Concrete and asphalt urbanization created too much runoff.
There is a long and costly list in City Engineering of such city creeks that are in need of remedial works, as they were never designed by nature to take all the runoff the city directs to them.
Some are privately owned with easements for the pipes to the SW outfall into the creek.
My experience tells me they don’t want to bring attention to the creeks in the manner Vince suggests.
They are looked at as cheap storm sewers so that’s that.
Unfortunately in today’s world we do not have any viable sustainable alternatives for reliable energy at this time. The more we deviate from, gas, hydro, and nuclear, the more the cost of electricity goes up, and its sky high right now with no end is sight. Ignoring Canada’s immense gas reserves will continue to hurt the poor and middle class, lowering standards of living even more.
Guess Rick Craven is getting in his photo ops during his last term!!