By Pepper Parr
November 4th, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
Wendy Fletcher is a reasonable, decent person.
I’ve yet to meet her but I want to take a minute and tell you a little about how her world has turned this past couple of weeks.
When she learned that the city was actually talking about a tax increase of more than 7% – that did it for her.
She wanted to say something so she put together a petition and set it up on a web site. It’s still there but voting has closed. There were 1950 votes.
To her surprise the responses began to roll in – she was at more than 1500 and decided she should delegate to City Council and let them know what a lot of people were unhappy about.
That’s when the bureaucracy began to make Ms Fletcher’s life confusing.
She wanted to speak to Council before they got too far along with the new budget process but the Clerk’s Office (they manage what gets to Council) was told that she couldn’t delegate on the 30th but she could delegate on the November 7th or the 14th.
That didn’t make a lot of sense to Ms Fletcher so she pushed some more and on November 2nd, when the Mayor formally introduced her budget the City Clerk read out the salient point, fast than you could say Jack Rabbit.
You won people said. No I didn’t – my Petition isn’t on the city web site – and indeed it wasn’t.
A friend of Ms Fletcher’s reached out to City hall – not certain if that call made the different but the Wendy Fletcher Petition is now part of the record – where anyone and everyone can see it.
What may be Ms Fletcher’s final comment was: “It shouldn’t be this hard”
Indeed it shouldn’t but this is not the first time the City Clerk has gotten in the way of ensuring that a citizen is given the opportunity to address City Council.
During the 2022 municipal election Keith Demoe had registered to delegate and was told that he would not be accepted as a delegate.
Related news story.
Candidate told he could not delegate.
City Clerk denies a candidate the opportunity to delegate
My understanding is that the entire amount is not funded by grant money with city taxpayers still paying out 1.32 m. The feds are kicking in 1.98 m the province 1.65 m. But instead of putting that 1.32 m towards the 500m asset replacement deficit theyre crying the blues about its a pretty project. Because hey, you can always tap the taxpayer for more. There is very little that can be taken at face value from this mayor and council. Bottom line, Mayors office could care less about taxpayers. Evidenced by scrubbing budget survey results. Another tax increase of 6% is planned for next year. At what point are burlington residents going to get fed up enough to start showing up at these public tax input meetings and say enough? Mayor has a call in from residents about the proposed tax increase Nov 7, 7-83 pm. Everyone should be calling in
I had the Illustrious Marianne robo-call me today to tell my I was invited to the Town Hall on Tuesday and that I would be getting a call to join the meeting.
I wonder if there will be any real engagement. By which I mean a chance to ask a question, get an answer (not a talking point) and then ask a follow up question.
Sadly I suspect that what we’ll get is more fulsome engagement like the Draft Bateman Engagement Plan.
Notice she didn’t call us Jim LOL
I got the call, I picked up but all that was there a dial tone☹
Did anyone get through and hear the mayor’s town hall?
Eric some of us ranted about it here 😉 https://burlingtongazette.ca/stop-the-proposed-2024-property-tax-petition-keeps-growing/
We really needed an article on it specifically so we could all meet and vent!
“Editor’s note: The Civic Square project is being paid for through a federal government grant.”
Joe’s Note: And where does the government grant money come from? Taxpayers. All levels of government pay for everything (grants included) with our after-tax money and we are getting “SICK” (see RBC survey) and tired of how it is being justified and then spent. Sure we can tune up Civic Square, but timing is of the essence and now is NOT the time.
RBC Wellbeing Survey – Fall 2023 Edition.
Compared to 40% of all Canadian adults surveyed,
Gen Y (Millennials) are the most likely to have a difficult time sleeping because they are worried about their finances (53%),
followed by Gen Z (48%) and Gen X (43%).
And while just under half (48%) of all respondents reported their mental health is also being negatively affected, this was true for a much larger proportion of Gen Y and Gen Z (63% each) and Gen X (54%).
Furthermore, 59% of Gen Y, 53% of Gen Z, and 47% of Gen X report having “a significant amount of stress” in their personal relationships related to their finances, compared to the national average of 43%. And a big majority in all three generations agree they would be happier if they had more confidence in their financial future (88% Gen Z, 86% Gen Y, 80% Gen X).
“We know personal wellbeing is closely tied to financial wellbeing, particularly for Canadians who are essentially living paycheque to paycheque or are uncertain about what the future holds,” says Neil McLaughlin, group head, Personal & Commercial Banking, RBC. “Many Canadians deal with a lack of confidence when it comes to understanding their finances, which affects their ability to make sound financial decisions.”
https://www.rbc.com/newsroom/news/article.html?article=125844
Joe,
If they already have the grant. It’s use it or lose it.
The optics being terrible won’t stop the photo ops.
I fully agree with your sentiment.
The Taxes, be they, Federal, Provincial, Halton Region, School Board, or Burlington all come from the pockets of of the residents of Burlington.
Right Joe. Originally it eas being paid for by provincial monies BUT this newly elected lot said the Civic Square fix was underwhelming and sent it back to the drawing Board at the beginning of the Tim Commisso era. We did a little digging on the funding put forward to meet an over-run on budget and Council were told
either use it or lose it. . We found out the funding, which we believe was used for Lakeshore rainbow crossing was for rural downtowns.
We could not get answers from either city hall or ministry as to when Burlington down town became classified as rural!!! The safety and acessibility issues discussed in person, Kearns was a no show, with Bentivegna, still remain but we are promised a wonderful Civic Square at a much larger cost. Fed, prov, reg, or municipal it all comes from our pockets as do the payouts for falls precipitated by Civic Square known safety issues,
Question to Editors Note:
Could this “Federal Government Grant” be used on something more useful and needed in Burlington than redesigning The Civic Square??
Or, was this project solely chosen by our City Council?
Editor’s Note: The federal government created a program that municipalities could apply to for funding. Burlington asked for money to revitalize Civic Square and got it.
The City applied for a grant to build the Skyway Arena – didn’t get the grant but decided to build the Skyway Area anyway and threw in some additional money for public art.
The people of Burlington won’t stand for an increase in taxes. Perhaps projects like the revamping of the public square need to be put on the back burner.
A 7% increase is unreasonable.
Editor’s note: The Civic Square project is being paid for through a federal government grant.