By Pepper Parr
November 28th, 2016
BURLINGTON, ON
There was a time when the city had three General Managers and three Standing Committees.
That has been slimmed down to one Standing Committee with everything else being stuffed into the Committee of the Whole
Development & Infrastructure will now become Planning and Development Committee.
Reporting to this committee will be Planning & Building department, Transportation department and at the discretion of the City Solicitor the Legal department.
The picture, taken from a webcast seems to be out of focus. The slimming down of how city council reports to its citizens would also appear to be out of focus.
The city communications people explain that City solicitor Nancy Shea Nicol Legal reports generally go to the city’s Committee of the Whole meetings but has the discretion to take reports to the Development and Infrastructure Committee meetings, as required.
Planning & Building generate a number of reports annually as a result of several development applications that require statutory public meetings.
As a result the number of departments has been limited and the proposed schedule includes one additional evening meeting in the week following regular committee meetings to allow for statutory public meetings only.
This additional evening will allow for increased engagement and will provide efficiencies for agenda management. It will only be utilized if the regular Planning & Development meeting is full.
Community & Corporate Services will become Committee of the Whole, all other departments will report to Committee of the Whole. The Committee of the Whole that currently exists for workshops will continue to be scheduled for the purpose of workshops when required but should there be additional time required for addressing items this time can be used for effective meeting management.
Budget meetings – additional meeting times have been scheduled into the calendar for the budget approval process. These are scheduled into the regular non-meeting weeks to ensure there is adequate time to address all of the material. If these meetings are not required for the budget they will be cancelled.
There was a time when the Committee of the Whole was used for more open wide ranging meetings where there was much more interaction and less formality. Some of the best information came out of those meetings
That doesn’t appear to be the way James Ridge wants to run the city.
Lessening the occasions when citizens get to see what city hall is doing and then limiting the time for a citizen to delegate to five minutes from ten is not a step in the direction that produces accountability and transparency.
The Chair and vice chair of each of these committees will become significant as this city council begins the second half of this term of office. The opportunity to shine as a chair will be limited to just two people. Will this city council shut Meed Ward out again? Does Meed Ward have any interest in chairing either of the Standing committees?
Pay attention to what they are doing to you – there is a trend here.
We believe there is another kick of the can for this Procedure By-law, regardless of its approval with some amendments at Council. The approved amended by-law has to go to another Council meeting for enactment and we intend to list in correspondence all the changes that are important in terms of loss of rights etc that we can find that we don’t believe even Council members understand have occurred. It should go to December 19, 2016 Council, but we will see as we believe Council members will not be too happy when they understand that what have been called housekeeping changes and not reported are not indicative of the rights given under the Engagement Charter. . There are many changes incorporated in the amended by-law that are not set out in the report. Unless you spend the number of hours we have on this document comparing it to the current one (a very difficult process the way this has been done, even the clerk who owns the report cannot list the changes that have occurred) you have no idea what rights in existence for many years Burlington residents have lost. The current by- law on the website does not have an index as it is supposed to have so to compare you have to get the hard copy booklet. The responsible Clerk states changes in the amended by-law are simply housekeeping, our review of the changes we have been able to identify shows these are far more than housekeeping changes. We also believe a by-law as important as this should have an amendment process, that includes public input built right the document. Anne and Dave Marsden, Community Health, Safety and Access Advocates
Where is this coming from? Is this the new procedural bylaw that nobody knew about when it went to Committee?
The one with the 5 minutes instead of 10?
Does the public get a chance to look and comment, or is this a done deal?
Such changes are very significant and the public should be given a heads up.
Personally, I don’t get around to looking at every meeting agenda and package to see what’s coming up.
I would hope that the Ward Councilors and Mayor would do this, but I guess I am dreaming.
Recently there has been a serious lack of communication with Burlington citizens, particularly in North Burlington.
We are small in number when it comes to voting time. So our voices are not as important, I understand that.
Shorting time for input certainly does not help, but then perhaps the City is getting too much input?
Yes I agree !!!!! North Burlington taxpayers are considered ” not downtown” thus don’t belong