By Pepper Parr
October 7th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
The Gazette seldom actually attends meetings of City Council. We see the room as somewhat odious.
More than that – we make heavy use of photographs which we couldn’t take if we were in the Council Chamber – further we use a transcription service that allows us to capture what people say – we couldn’t do that if we were actually at City Hall.
This morning there were two people we wanted pictures of: Curt Benson, a City Commissioner and Jack Ammendolia Managing Partner from Watson who was reporting to Council on the ward boundaries and size of council matter.
We also like to keep our photograph data base of Councillors -up to date.
Curt Benson – Commissioner of Development and Growth Management
We were able to get several good screen shots of Curt Benson – this man is going to have a very significant impact on how development rolls out from a city perspective. Benson came from the Halton Region – knows the file particularly well. The city was lucky to get him
Jack Ammendolia, Managing Partner, Watson & Associates Economists Ltd.
Same went for Jack Ammendolia, Managing Partner, Watson & Associates Economists Ltd. We were also able to get pictures of Samantha Yew, City Clerk who does solid behind the scenes work.
The image on the Thomson T-shirt.
We can’t say the same about Jim Thompson. He delegated in person at Committee of the Whole, and as usual he was right on the mark with his comment. Thomson has been consistently correct when he points out the errors council makes on procedural matters.
His delegation appears below. What doesn’t appear are any pictures of Jim Thomson sporting a new T-shirt.
It takes less than a second for me to push the Print Screen key – I didn’t have that much time. The image was gone in a flash and never appeared again until the very end – and again it disappeared in a second.
The Audio-Visual team controls what appears on the screen for people who are watching a web cast – they are like the camera directors.
Jim Thomson delegating at Council
Traditionally they keep the camera on the person speaking – they made an exception for Jim Thomson this morning – and that was not an accident. Someone told them not to show Jim Thomson wearing his expressive T-shirt.
Mayor Meed Ward read out her usual remarks related to how people behaved when they are in Council Chambers. I’ve never seen any other Council in the Region issue statements on behaviour the way the Burlington Mayor does.
“We ask everyone to be respectful of others when they are speaking, listen as you would want to be listened to, and a reminder to our committee members to adhere to the procedure by law and limit your questions to two at a time. Further, our members may ask questions only for the purpose of obtaining facts that are relevant to the matter under discussion and necessary for a clear understanding of the matter. All questions are stated succinctly and should not be used as a means to make statements, assertions or engage in debate.
Thomson was in Council for the first time in many many months.
When Thomson had finished his delegation – no one asked a single camera – they couldn’t get him off stage fast enough.
This is really childish, immature behaviour.
Replace them all at the next election. Odious lot.
Mayor Meed Ward introduced Thompson, “who is joining us in person to speak to the approval of the 2025 meeting calendar.
“You have a presentation; We’ll ask our audio visual specialists to bring that up, and you can start whenever you are ready.”
Thomson begins:
“Staff Direction (SD) 1723 directed staff to include a public engagement component into the by law review.”
Jim Thomson: I don’t find the staff position surprising,
Staff put up a survey on the Get Involved Burlington website, but failed to incorporate any feedback from that survey into the proposed bylaw.
“The survey results were not included as part of the report on the bylaw review. Staff claimed that the questions were outside the scope of the bylaw review. I have a hard time understanding how the timing of meetings is outside the scope of the bylaw review. The public need to know the time of meetings and should have input.
“Staff eventually released the data from the survey, but didn’t include it in the urgent business section with the rest of the bylaw information. It was a separate memo under receiving file, and at least one councillor hadn’t read it.
“The survey data showed that 39% of respondents find a meeting schedule inconvenient or very inconvenient, while only 17% actually find the time to be convenient or very convenient.
“The survey also contained many comments that indicate the daytime meeting is challenging for people due to work commitments. It Should be noted that the change in start times to 9:30 happened in December 2022 without proper public notification of a change to the bylaw and with no public engagement.
“The staff direction was a belated attempt to get public input into the bylaw review. Staff were supposed to report in Q3 2023 but they failed to do so, and it wasn’t until September 2024 that they came back with the report that failed to include the public engagement they had been directed to provide.
Jim Thomson – self portrait – in T shirt someone made sure the public never got to see.
“It’s really galling that in this report, the staff have a section titled options considered. There aren’t any. No options were actually presented, let alone considered. There is just a bald statement the staff are not recommending changes.
“Staff apparently believe that if someone wishes to delegate, they have in person, online or telephone available, that, of course, assumes the person can get time off work to use any of those options.
“I don’t find the staff position surprising, as Mary Ann has stated at Council, that we give people their evenings back to spend their time with their families and go to ball games and have their personal time.
“The question I have for Mary Ann is, who asked for the readings back? Was it the public or was it staff rearranging things to their own benefit? Thank you for your time. Are there any questions?”
Mayor Meed Ward: Thank you for your delegation. I don’t see any questions on the board.
Later in the Council meeting the Mayor spoke at length on the data that Thomson mention – her comments seemed like an attempt to justify the decision to do away with evening meetings.
We will report on that in a separate article.
It seems somehow apt that it was decided that a t-shirt supporting community engagement was considered offensive in the council chamber.