By Eric Stern
December 4th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Five precious minutes, that’s it, that’s all the time a taxpayer is allowed at a council meeting. I spoke to Council on November 25th, 2024. Following the meeting, Counsellor Nisan posted this on the LinkedIn social media platform.
Ward 3 Councillor Rory Nisan
“A lot of frankly unacceptable comments were made today by a delegation, disrespecting our excellent City of Burlington staff. Not only were they unfair but also misinformed. At the time I was focused on the written submission and should have spoken up.”
During my time I raised three issues.
1 – What is the tax increase
I was disheartened when Hassan Basit presented the “overall” tax increase as 4.97% on November 4th, when the police services budget had been released on October 30th, and the “overall” tax increase was known to be at least 5.76%. I wondered aloud if Mr. Basit had misrepresented the truth. If I had been talking to friends about Basit’s statement I would have used words other than misrepresent.
I did not misrepresent any of these numbers or dates.
The Burlington budget book states facts such as the “Net City Tax Levy” is increasing by 8.3% and Burlington taxes on existing homeowners will increase by 7.51%.
An honest presentation of the tax increase would say that Burlington is increasing its portion of your tax bill by 7.51% and total taxation by 8.3%. I maintain that the numbers the city shares, the 4.97% or 5.76% increase numbers, misrepresent the facts but I don’t work for the city and I’m not Councillor Nisan.
If someone wants to tell me that the 8.3% increase in tax revenue, shown on page 17 in the 2025 budget is wrong I am happy to listen
Eric Stern – BRAG spokesperson
After I delegated Councillor Nisan asked the CFO, Craig Millar, what the tax increase was and, using a word salad, Millar answered with something like 3.76%. Nisan accepted his answer without question. Delegates are not allowed to ask questions so that’s it. The culture at city hall has devolved to the point where if the “CFO said 3.76%” it must be true. Who cares what’s on page 17 of the budget book.
2 – City of Burlington website statistics
On November 18th Leah Bortolotti spoke, in council chambers and on video, about 6.7 million people visiting the website annually. The 2025 Burlington budget states, on page 48, “our website—with its 1.5 million annual users”.
I stated that only 200,000 people live in Burlington. I may have misrepresented the population of the city. The population is difficult to track, it’s not like a website where software keeps track of visitors, users, and IP addresses for you. I publicly apologize for any misrepresentation of the population number.
Using Ms. Bortolotti’s number, if 6.7 million people are visiting the website maybe we can collect $1 a year from those millions of people, who must live outside of the city, to offset costs.
Another idea is that staff tell city councillors and the public how many residents visit the website, and how often. The 6.7 million number is being used to justify a web marketing SEO position. In the context of hiring another full-time staff member at a cost of at least $148,000 a year, residents should be told how many people use the website to book recreation, pay parking tickets, or look for information. Council Bentivegna was the only council to question the 6.7 million number but staff did not provide any additional details.
Eric Stern at the lectern in Council Chambers
3 – I spoke about our mayor’s story of bus drivers quitting for higher pay and how this was not reflected in the turnover numbers that staff presented to the council and the public on November 18th as being 5.3%, with over 3% of those people leaving due to retirements. I stated that this is lower than comparative private-sector numbers and “This indicates the city has the right mix of salary, benefits and working conditions. An average, across-the-board, salary increase of 4.58% when inflation is 2.5% sounds high.” Inflation is difficult to predict so I may have misrepresented the inflation number. I wanted to say a normal reaction to bus drivers leaving to work in other cities is to increase the wages or salaries of bus drivers. I did not say that because there was not enough time and I apologize if I misrepresented a common private sector approach to this problem.
Considering the somewhat glaring errors the BRAG team found in the budget, the 14 pages of issues we submitted for follow-up, and the confusing information from the city on tax increases, website users, and pay raises. Nisan’s comment that I was “disrespecting our excellent City of Burlington staff” rings hollow. It is time for Council and staff to start respecting residents and taxpayers.
Eric Stern is one of the founders of BRAG – Burlington Ratepayers’ Action Group
This unwarranted attack on Eric is just a deflection to avoid talking about the 14 real issues that he raised and that they promised IN THAT SAME MEETING to address.
The public deserves answers, not unwarranted attacks in response to a “question” (not a statement) that the Mayor and Councillor Nissan apparently did not like.
Yes contact me anytime I am willing to stop a property tax hike this is BS taxes need to stop going up people don’t earn money that fast no holes on our pay no hikes on property tax Let’s go!!! I am in fight!!!
I have commented on Councilor Nisan’s actions here as controlling speech and demonizing the messenger. What is more troubling, subtle and insidious is the cultivation of a “deep state”. This perhaps sounds conspiratorial, however when politicians stand up for the bureaucracy over that of citizens, the bureaucracy begins to align beliefs and ideologies with politicians rather than maintaining neutrality – its human nature. (This is best illustrated when one looks at voting trends of government employees.)
Politicians work for the citizens, the bureaucracy works for the citizens, politicians hold the bureaucracy accountable and provide direction. It seems some have forgotten or failed to understand this relationship.
Time and time again it is shown that Burlington city council and mayor do not respect the excellent citizens, especially those who choose to delegate in front of them. The folk that delegate, work so diligently to present information that can often be uncomfortable for councillors and the mayor to hear. I make the distinction of hear as opposed to listen, because to my mind the two are entirely different; hearing is just that, the words come in and that’s it. Listening is the words coming in and the person takes time to comprehend and think about the words, hopefully even parsing what was said at a later time. I believe that it’s high time that the council and mayor engage in listening and not just hearing what the excellent citizens of Burlington have to say.
Nissan will use his “cloak” to hide from this embarrassment. He and other Councillors deserve this negative feedback.
I hope BRAG will research the city’s rules or bylaws on accountability and transparency. There may be formal procedures for addressing misconduct or incompetence in budget management, and the city may have a review process for correcting these types of errors.
If not, Nissan could use “our” time to put these practises in place …… then resign !
I am again disappointed in the manner in which delegates are treated in their scant time to offer opinions, questions and requests for clear and accurate data by staff previously delivered in either verbal or written form. These requests appear made in good faith and hinge on accuracy or possibly mistaken information.
For delegates to be reprimanded for trying to get the true answers is an affront to openness, transparency and the right to know by citizens. No matter whether it is staff or Council member, citizens should be respected when they question published information, not treated as if they have no right to ask.
Readers should understand how many hours of research must be squeezed into a compact 5 or 10 minute delegation and any question asked by a delegator does not have to be responded at all, much to the detriment of open government. Is it any wonder I and others seldom delegate anymore?
Sadly not respecting residents, particularly those who appear at the lectern to disagree with Council, and worse still COBnresidents best interests, goes back decades. Thank goodness for those like Eric and BRAG supporters who are not going to go away. It is difficult to keep denying truth and getting away with it regardless if you have a CAO who aligns himself with an untenable position or not. Something will give and it will not be Eric Stern’ s very sound position when it comes to the facts.
Keep up the good work Mr.Stern.We have so few ways of keeping these local politicians in check without the Investigative Press that has disappeared in the last Decade.
Here is what you the taxpayer are up against if you wish to weigh in on the budget. The budget document has grown from around 400 pages to 600 pages. You have 5 or 10 minutes to make your case. Council depending on their knowledge base may not ask any questions of you the taxpayer. The taxpayer is prohibited from asking questions even if it were to seek deeper understanding of a line item. The rules of engagement while intended to prohibit abusive behaviour, has frankly stripped any emotion from the process making council deliberations an experience akin to speaking to a mirror. Council rely on staff to pull the budget together. The taxpayer can spend tens of hours to go through and understand the budget. In my estimation Councillor Nisan owes taxpayers an apology. Many thanks to BRAG for all their democratic based efforts to ensure we hold our elected officials accountable.