By Pepper Parr
January 27th, 2022
BURLINGTON, ON
Delivering the Annual State of the City address is an opportunity for the Mayor to tell the citizens of the city what has been achieved and to set out how the year went from her perspective.
It’s a significant event – serious and quite political and very polite.
But this year there was some fun as well.
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward delivering her 4th State of the City address wearing the Chain of Office – something she didn’t wear previously.
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward mentioned how the address would go and added: “They’ve given me about 40 minutes and I’ll try to stick to that. We have a lot to talk about and a lot to share. And you won’t want to miss the rapid fire q&a. That’s all questions. I have no idea what they’re going to ask me what Tim’s gonna ask me is always got a few curveballs in there. So stick around for that too”.
At the close of the 45 minute address Tim Caddigan, Senior Director, YourTV and Community Relations took over the podium. He had a bunch of questions from the audience that was virtual (which we will follow up on). The fun part was the rapid fire session.
Read how it went.
Tim now for the rapid fire so no okay is your favorite so I’ve 20 questions for you run through them fairly quickly. What was the last film you saw?
Mayor: Oh, wow. Come back to me on that one.
Tim: Okay. When the sound of music comes roaring back, what band would you like to see featured?
Mayor: Well, I know Suzy nail is going to be there. And I know finger 11 is going to be there to have our awesome Burlington band. So I’m very excited about that.
Tim: What is the first social event you look forward to post pandemic
Mayor: getting together with my team more often? And you know, oysters and martinis at my favorite restaurants. But that’ll happen on Monday. Actually, we were 50% capacity, which is awesome.
Tim: If you could travel to any point in time, what period would that be?
Mayor: March 2019 and 2020 and no pandemic? That’s what I would do.
Tim: This is a double barreled question: what bores you.
Mayor: Well, people who are rude,
Tim: what excites you?
Mayor: The people in our community who do amazing things.
Tim: If you could we’re here at the BPAC pack. If you could bring one app to the Burlington Performing Arts Center, what would it be?
Mayor: Walk off their choice?
Tim: Have you taken up any new activities during the pandemic?
Mayor: Not that I can mention. I’m doing well. I’m doing a lot more hiking outside which is awesome and and that’s actually how I get some of my social interaction in my team and my friends and I we go for hikes so it’s safe.
Tim: If you could accomplish one thing for Burlington this year. What would it be?
Mayor: Getting affordable housing so people can continue to live here.
Tim: What is the first app that you access on any given day?
Mayor: Oh boy is Wordle and up. I get that every morning with my son it’s a great way to get my brain going. Better, you know Instacart kept my groceries delivered.
Tim: Toughest thing you accomplished or faced in 2021.
Mayor: Getting the urban growth center in the major transit station area moved we had many behind the scenes meeting with ministry staff, the minister himself our MPP it was touch and go for a very long time and and we finally brought it home which was great.
Tim: What’s one thing you would like? To improve upon?
Mayor: Well, you know what, just being better at getting our businesses to yes faster. We have work to do there.
Tim: On a scale of one to 10 How much do you like rapid fire questions? tag on a scale of one to 10 how fonder you have zoom meetings?
Mayor: Well, they’re, they’re handy, but I really do prefer in person meetings if you’ve got back to back and you need to get a lot done, but nothing replaces being face to face. There is something about spending your weekend sweatpants however, wearing nice shoes today.
Tim: What do you think will be the greatest biggest change for Burlington, five years from now?
Mayor: How we’re going to accommodate growth? You know, I given our experience of blowing past our numbers for 2031 12 years early. That could happen with 2051 We need to manage it. Well. We need to make sure everyone’s welcome. We need affordable housing strategy, which we’re working on. And we need to make sure that the parks and the community amenities the social infrastructure keeps up because that’s what that’s what creates the angst if we don’t have that and we have population growth where we’re not serving our community. I
Tim: think of all politicians who have had to step up during the pandemic. Is there one Ontario mayor that you’ve admired throughout the pandemic?
Mayor: Oh, there are many, many I may want to get one off to give a shout out to: Jeff Lehmann in Barry who’s the chair of our Ontario Big City Mayor’s caucus. He’s been just outstanding in our advocacy and hurting 29 mayor’s which is like herding cats but getting us on the same page with some of our advocacy has been awesome. If
Tim: you’re a fan of Wordle this might be appropriate. What’s your favorite word?
Mayor: Kindness
Tim: that doesn’t go with five letters. Yesterday’s word was whack. I don’t know. It was a lucky guess for me is there are certain word you start with every day.
Mayor: Oh, we my son and I do it together. So we pick very off color words to start with. It seems to be a good strategy though.
Tim: What’s your favorite month and why?
Mayor: October because that’s when I got married to my awesome husband who is watching I know from our couch. We celebrated 28 years of marriage which makes me feel super old. Our kids are in their 20s and I love my life. I love the people in my life and I love what I do.
Tim: Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you for doing that.
Mayor: Thank you. Yeah, that was okay. If I remember the movie that I don’t know the name. I’m sorry. I just remember for you to check out I think it’s called the Perseids Canadian production and it’s about – it has Christopher Walker in it. Just discovered it out of the blue a couple of weeks ago. Great movie and Canadian. Wow, actually North Country. That’s the name I wanted – Charlie’s there on about women fighting for their rights to be recognized and no harassment. So a bit of a theme there.
