By Pepper Parr
October 17th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Earlier this week we wrote a short article attributing a statement made to Councillor Paul Sharman when in fact it was Jim Thompson who made the comment while delegating about the way the city was handling citizen engagement.
Sharman said: “I appreciate your your comments Jim. I will be sending out messages on Facebook and through my newsletter today with respect to the meeting in Ward five.
Jim Thomson – expect to see a lot of this T-shirt
The practice in Burlington is not to permit discussion between a delegation and a member of council so when the words: ” but why hasn’t the city sent out any notification of the changes? You’ve got a professional communication staff that’s failing to communicate” were said we thought it was Sharman continuing a sentence.
This was brought to our attention by Leah Bartolini who is now the Head of Corporate Affairs who thought it was important for the Gazette to make a correction and to apologize the Councillor Sharman.
And we do apologize to Councillor Sharman. The original article has been deleted from the Gazette
We see the error as minor and focus on the words that were used: “You’ve got a professional communication staff that’s failing to communicate” . Who said it isn’t really all that important – it is what was said that mattered.
My wife and I were two of the three people who showed up at the first engagement meeting on Ward Boundaries. Jim was the third. There may be more than a failure to communicate the dates and times of the meetings. Communication is a two-way street. Is there a failure, on the part of the city, to listen to what people say?
What is really important is whether the city listened and will respond appropriately to Jim’s statement as they should if public engagement means a darn thing. Don’t hold your breathe. We have been awaiting appropriate actions from three separate administrations thus far with absolutely no response except one administration did ban us from participating in the council’s delegation system or setting foot inside city hall without the necessary bylaws to do so.
Even with the correct bylaw in place they have freely admitted with the reappearance of Jim Thomson at he lectern that there was no justification for prohibiting him delegating at the lectern. Wonder if Jim got an apology for a much more serious error than crediting Sharman with Jim’s words. Probably not.