By Pepper Parr
January 28th, 2016
BURLINGTON, ON
The Burlington Chamber of Commerce is hosting Mayor Rick Goldring’s State of the City address Thursday morning at the Burlington Convention Centre – 7:30 a.m. Registration and Breakfast; Presentations 8:15 a.m., Closing Remarks 9:15 a.m.; you will be able to get to the office just a tad on the late side.
The original design of the Strategic Plan cover had the document covering a four year council term.
The Mayor is going to explain the theme of the City of Burlington’s 25-year strategic plan – hopefully he will justify all the time and expense in creating a 25 year plan when traditionally a city council sets out its Strategic Plan for its term of office.
Whatever this council wants to spend time and money on developing a plan – it will have no legitimacy for future Council’s who will want to create a plan of their own.
Were Jack Dennison to every become Mayor he would not want to adopt the plan that is currently at the draft stage level; both – Dennison as Mayor and this draft plan being adopted in the future are stretches of the most elastic imagination.
The current working document of the strategic Plan covers a 25 year time frame.
During the several occasions when city council met as a Committee of the Whole there was never a statement made saying that this council had decided it was going to produce a 25 year plan and there was nothing said or set out for the record at a city council meeting. Meeting a Committee of the Whole, one council member said what they were really doing was creating a “25 year plan” – the idea took hold and they all went charging of in this new direction.
The city does get credit for taking the plan to the public – there were at last four public meetings and a lengthy on line questionnaire. But there was never a statement from the Mayor or any member of council explaining that they were creating a document with a longer time frame.
They just went ahead and did it – maybe that’s what they mean by leadership?
There does not appear to be much in the way of public enthusiasm for the document – it is quite long with a lot of declarative statements and promises of delivering on some of the objectives within a specific deadline.
The new Strategic Plan and has four directions: A City that Grows, a City that Moves, a Healthy and Greener City and an Engaging City.
