By Pepper Parr
January 16th, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
Mapping out the year we are now into. What can the citizens of the City expect during 2025?
Chaos? Prosperity?
2025 is the year before the current Council has to seek re-election. The 2026 budget will be a lot different than what we saw in 2025. Both staff and Council are fully aware of BRAG and the impact they had on the 2025.
Eric Stern, spokes person for BRAG with a copy of the Proposed 2025 budget.
What were those impacts? There will be a budget book much earlier in the year and the words “budget impact” may be forgotten.
The Bateman Community Centre is expected to open in 2025 – nothing is ever certain with this site – when it does open expect a significant change in how the City and Brock University make use of the site.
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward has made free transit a priority – a more robust response from Council is going to be needed to bring the public around.
Transit will require time, money and a lot of hard thinking. The recent $14 million grant from the federal government (paid out over a ten-year time frame) will certainly help.
Traffic congestion is more than an issue and it isn’t going to get any better. The current Burlington population isn’t buying into the “use transit” idea – even if it is made free; they aren’t all that keen on the idea of taxpayers paying for free transit.
At some point, some really hard thinking is going to have to be done by consultants who have experience and depth in this sector. Some way has to be found to figure out how to get people out of their cars – when they don’t want to do that. They are married to cars be it internal combustion or electric.
The current city council isn’t ready to show the needed leadership; to make the point Councillors would have to give up their parking spots at city hall and begin taking the bus.
Mayor Meed Ward has been the spearcarrier on this file – a more robust participation from her colleagues is needed at this point.
2025 could be the year that the Regional government might begin its evolution. Planning is no longer a Regional responsibility – it has been moved to the municipal level.
The Region is going to have to take over transit at some point – all the municipal transit systems could be merged into a single service. York Region has already made that move. The transit people have to adjust to the shift from diesel to electric – at a significant cost that the municipalities just cannot afford.
The pressure to give the municipal sector more in the way of taxing authority – moving some of what the province collects to the municipal level has been a challenge. The province tends to download services to the municipalities but not sending any funding needed to implement the changes. Municipal politicians make mention of a municipal-level sales tax – which doesn’t go all that well with an already over taxed society.
Tonnes are being spent on recreation hubs – Bateman and the Skyway site will come online during 2025; there is more work to be done at the MTSA sites – the Aldershot, Burlington and Appleby GO station sites where there will be big changes in the population.
The eastern end of the city will open the Skyview Community Centre; Bateman, with all its political baggage will open – the western end of the city has basically nothing that is anywhere near the scale of the other two – the Station West development managed to get through the planning process without including a decent community centre.
For the next couple of decades, a lot of money is going to have to be spent on recreational services for the seniors’ sector – ways to give their lives direction and purpose. The baby boomer demographic has come full circle. How we handle this issue will define us as a society.
This council, first elected in 2018, has never managed to pull together in a meaningful way. It needs some newer faces, more talented people. A challenge for Burlington.
The public is looking for better representation politically – at every level: federal, provincial and municipality. Burlington has to find men and women with stronger visions for the city; people who have the respect and experience needed. They exist – the population just hasn’t figured out how to get these people to come forward.
At some point, not in the 2026 election, the city will need a bigger council because there will be a much larger population – as much as 40% more people. The seven-member council struggles with the job they have to do now.
Because there is a limit to the number of seats Burlington has on Regional Council – assuming the Regional level of government is still in place in 2030, there will be members of City Council who are just city councillors and members who are city Councillors as well as Regional Councillors.
What happens if the province decides that Regional governments are no longer needed and sets up stand-alone organizations that handle things like water, waste management, and social services? We aren’t seeing any thinking at this level at the municipal level.
Social Services priorities at the Regional level
We aren’t seeing much in the way of progressive thinking at the Regional level either. The general public knows little about what the Region does and how it works. In terms of Regional leadership – you have to look hard to find it.
One glimpse of how the Regional government reacts to important issues was evident when they debated the police budget – there was a significant split in the vote on what level of policing Regional Councillors wanted. At the time the police budget, which gets included in the Regional budget, was 13% higher than the year before. As tough as that was to swallow the Regional Councillors bumped it up to 14.1%
The changes taking place right in front of our eyes is something that does not seem to have registered with the average household. Expect them to howl when they realize what has taken place. That seems to be part of the Burlington DNA – don’t pay attention and then squawk when it is too late.
The less than 30% turnout at the municipal elections is not something one would expect from a city that is described as the best mid-sized city in the country.
Salt with Pepper is an opinion column reflecting the observations and musings of the publisher of the Gazette, an on-line newspaper that is in its 12th year as a news source in Burlington and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.
Connor Fraser. Many people liked what he had to say at the Conservative nomination event; I didn’t get to hear him personally, and I wonder if he would consider running for Mayor. There’s a lot of Conservative cash waiting for someone willing to run.