By Pepper Parr
July 24th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Bromley Road resident Heather A send us an email asking why we were not publishing the notices sent out by all the Members of City Council
We had published much of what Councillor Kearns sent out because it had the most useful information.
Except for Councillor Stolte – we didn’t see anything from the other members of Council.
Mayor Meed Ward has forgotten we exist – except for the occasion she wanted to file a complaint and then she spent hours writing out an 11 page document that wasn’t submitted on time and was filled with errors. A graduate of Carleton University where she studied journalism and describes herself as a journalist who put forward a Motion at City Council affirming the rights of media – Meed Ward doesn’t walk her talk.
Heather sent us a list of the emails that were sent out by each Council member saying: “I am on the mailing list for all Councillors and the Mayor. Perhaps you would be interested in the newsletters sent out since July 15, 2024:
Shawna Stolte July 15 at 4:32pm
Paul Sharman July 16 at 5:11 am
Councillor Kearns is the best Councillor at keeping people informed; Councillor Sharman is a little iffy at times.
Mayor July 16 at 5:02 pm
Paul Sharman July 16 at 6:04 pm
Paul Sharman July 17 at 2:00 pm
Lisa Kearns July 18 at 11:43 am
Paul Sharman July 18 at 12:09 pm
Shawna Stolte July 18 at 2.07
Nothing on this list from Galbraith, Nisan or Bentivegna.
We sent our email address to every member of Council, including the Mayor. Sometimes we get something – more often what the public gets doesn’t seem to get to us.
Material from Kearns, Stolte and sometimes Sharman do get through. We’ve not seen anything from Galbraith, Nisan and Bentivegna.
Somebody somewhere is playing with the names on the list. The most recent issue was the notice Stephen White got from Councillor Sharman – we didn’t get that. Link to that story is HERE. When we published that story we were not aware that Sharman did not include the Gazette in the list of people he distributed the information to.
That the members of the current council feel they can get away with this is intolerable. They seem to have taken the view that shooting the messenger will work for them – that if the Gazette doesn’t know they, the municipal politicians, are safe.
The reason is they got away with illegally banning a publisher and a couple of advocates who Effie publicly describes as strong voices for their community for several years total without any authority to do so. They believe this will blow over.. Its called the Titanic syndrome. We believe they have already hit the symbolic iceberg thanks to those like Eric Stern, Blair Smith, Lynn Crosby, Penny Hersh, Joe Gaeten , Stephen White, Jim Thomson and many, many more who are allowed to tell it as it is in the comments section of your newspaper. Its just a matter of time and once the brickwork at civic square is fixed, there will likely be a very loud celebration.