By Pepper Parr
May 24th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
A hypothetical look at what Mayor Marianne Meed Ward might find a useful way out of her current predicament.
Assuming Mayor Meed Ward continues to use the Strong Mayor powers that a majority of the Council she leads find offensive, and assume she continues toying with the truth her status as Mayor her best before date becomes October of 2018.
Meed Ward knows what losing an election feels like. Her first run at public office was for the ward 1 council seat where she took on then Councillor Rick Craven; she was trounced.
Marianne Meed Ward made the waterfront her issue – it got her into office – waterfront wasn’t saved.
She and her family moved out of the Tyandaga community and into ward 2 where she took on waterfront issues and challenged Peter Thoem who wasn’t all that hard to beat.
Meed Ward had her eye on being Mayor from the very beginning. When she was first running for the ward 2 seat, then Mayor Cam Jackson could see the writing on the wall. He was convinced that Meed Ward would run against him at some point.
Turns out she didn’t have to – Cam Jackson lost his job as Mayor in that 2010 election.
That wasn’t a problem for Meed Ward; the target had changed but the objective was the same.
Things should have gone up after winning the election. They didn’t
Meed Ward was prepared to run for Mayor in 2014 but decided to spend another term as a ward Councillor while she saw her three children through school and off to university.
She had built credibility, improved her profile while the city began to come to terms with significant growth downtown and an even more significant population growth that was ahead.
Meed Ward assured the public that she could save the Burlington most people loved and wanted to stay just as it was.
She became the person leading the drive against development that was too high. Downtown was not going to become another Toronto with 30 plus storey towers all over the place.
That oval shaped property held some promise for a unique location. It will now be the location of at least five high rise structures.
There was a focus in the football, that land between Old Lakeshore Road and Lakeshore Road from Elizabeth on the west and Martha on the east that many hoped would be developed and become another destination close to the lake.
That didn’t happen either. The plans currently are for at least five high rise towers, one that will keep the Carriage House restaurant. Emmas Back Porch bit the dust when the owner realized that Covid was going to wipe out much of the hospitality sector in the city. That sector is still struggling.
The Porch still stands but not as a place people can visit; you can rent it for events.
This is the development picture in 2018 – it has grown considerably since then – and we have only seen the beginning.
The feeling is that the chance to develop responsibly and have the city planners make the decisions on what could be built where had been lost. The city had yet to learn how to hire the kind of legal talent that could win at Ontario Land Tribunal hearings.
There doesn’t appear to be the sense that the current population is going to spend the rest of their days in a city they want – all people hear is that there is going to be huge growth and that we have to prepare for it.
It was hard to find anyone who would say they really felt the Mayor had a grip on what was happening. She sure doesn’t have much of a grip or a working relationship with a majority of her council. They refused to ensure that she would have the staffing she needed for the Speaker series she had planned. There was nothing wrong with the Speaker Series – it was just the way it came to be.
And, if recent data is reliable, most of the people who worked on the 2018 election aren’t going to be working for her for the 2026 election.
What do you do when the ship is taking on water? You look for a different ship.
I’ll comment on that in a follow up piece.
Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.
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How close to a coup de tete was it?
Don,
For the record Roland Tanner was with me when we went to see Jane McKenna. My comment above is 100% correct.
When the City was getting the New Offical Plan and Zoning Amendments (2020), approved by the Region and Province, (informative) to replace the 1997 version (in force and effect) with what the City wanted, the developers, literally in mass of about 45 in number together, took advantage of the right to appeal, all the amendments, to the entire plan to the OLT.
I am Participant in this appeal, and on the first meaningful CMC, it was determined that the appeal as submitted was much too large to be to be held in a single Hearing. In subsequent meetings the Appeal was divided into several different parts consisting of related topics. The appeal topics are being held one at a time, in full Procedural Order each. r
This Hearing process has been going on for years, and is likely to continue. It can be found as described in the development pages of Burlington City.
My point here is the developers not only have this line of appealing the entire OP revision of amendments, together as a whole, or as Parties to chosen parts, but also they can appeal City PLanning application “refusals” of individual applications. In this manner, they have been able to hold the City at ransom, or hostage, or whatever word you want to use, for a significant time now, and have used these powers for several applications. As a participant I asked Blake Hurley about this and he told me this appeal situation basically tied the City hands.
With the Province supporting them with OLT deciding the NOPA as a whole substantially, and still having the traditional appeal route for individual applications, the developers couldn’t lose, and this is a significant part pushing the mess development is in with delays, intensification first, height, mass, and so on.
It’s not simple blaming. Don’t blame planning staff – their witness testimony is hard to write. It’s politics demanding, and getting in the way.
This interference, and slow to start is, what gets you dead. Look at the conversation here on sinking ships – it happens, and is happening here.
It’s developers who take full advantage of the OLT power of appeals, and ever-increasing Growth Plan housing growth numbers. They go after this in individual application appeals, and the appeal of the entire NOPA policy framework, piece by piece – that gives them double at least.
For one current example, the Water Front Hotel appeal just concluded. Vranko development took 5 appeals to get to where they are. I know there are some applications that go 2 or 3, suspect there are others, but I don’t know how many.
So, there is a lot of blame in the politics here.
It doesn’t surprise me that opinions can still vary so widely on Meed Ward. That, arguably, is the type of leader that she is; she polarizes, she’s divisive. Just look at the fractured Council that exists under her. But what does surprise and sadden me is that a statement like “she may have promised to ‘fix the problem’ in her Mayoral election campaign when much of the ‘water was under the bridge’, but what else would you realistically expect a politician to say?” is the norm these days. In other words (mine not Don’s), practiced and deliberate deception is condoned because the arena is politics and the burden of truth is relaxed. I’m not sure that we felt the same way under Pearson or with Stanfield, Turner and Clark or, closer to home, with Bill Davis, David Peterson or Bob Rae. Where have the likes of David Lewis gone? Sad.
I meant less cynically would anyone realistically expect MMW to say “We’re doomed. I’m powerless to help. Vote for me!”
We could go back and forth on this forever Don and we would both have a point. My expectations are that politicians ‘should’ provide an honest appraisal of the issues facing them, not adopt populist mantras that they know, or are in a position to know, have no force or realistic chance of success. Marianne’s poster of the evil 30 storey tower vs the virtuous 8 or 10 storey building is a case in point. She took that particular piece of propaganda everywhere during the 2018 campaign.
Deliberate deceit has been a part (albeit small but with significant consequences) of the modus operandi of council since at the latest Sept 2014. according to our files. . We could not get hold of the webcasts that proved it until we started conversations with Commisso and Hurley Jan 24th: and the webcasts we were told were legally no more by Arjoon were suddenly made available to us as we always maintained could be. These Transcripts will be part of an Ombudsman Complaint hopefully before the August break. Deceit should have absolutely no place in Council decisions which I am positive our new CAO and Office of the Clerk staff will confirm is their position.
Marianne after being a councillor for 8 years knew very well that there was nothing that could be done as long as the John Street bus terminal was designated as a Major Transit Station.
Through an acquaintance who worked at Metrolinx I was told that in 2017 all municipalities that were in the process of changing their official plan had 1 year to un designate ( in our case) the John Street bus terminal as a major transit station.
At the time ( 2018) I asked Marianne about this and she told me that she knew about this. I was told that the council at the time did nothing as they did not see the Downtown Urban Growth Centre with the John Street Bus Terminal as a problem.
It was ECoB who went to Jane McKenna’s office prior to the election to ask if it would be possible to move the Downtown Urban Growth Center and to un-designate the John Street Bus Terminal as a Major transit station.
We were told at that meeting that this had never been suggested previously and they would look into it. It was then that Jane McKenna, in a resident newsletter, just prior to the election indicated that this could be asked for and could possibly be approved.
The council by not acting on this allowed the outdated official plan to become the basis for developers to go to the Land Tribunals and get increased height and density in the downtown core.
Remember “the windows to the lake”, and “grow bold” that was the mantra at that time.
Sounds about right as well Penny. Too bad the collective memory banks of the community are not privy to this info at election time.
I have a problem laying the blame for over-intensification downtown on Marianne Meed Ward. As Ward 2 Councillor, she routinely cast the lone dissenting vote against many of the applications (i.e. Nautique & The Gallery) at Council, until then Mayor (“I’m just one vote”) Goldring would join her, when it didn’t matter? Who allowed the John Street bus terminal to be egregiously miscategorized as a Major Transit Station Area, a deciding factor in several pro-developer OLT decisions? It wasn’t MMW, that’s for sure. She may have promised to ‘fix the problem’ in her Mayoral election campaign when much of the ‘water was under the bridge’, but what else would you realistically expect a politician to say?
Don, Meed Ward was in power in 2018 when McKenna and the Province provided the means to move the UGC and deal with a wrongly designated bus stop very early in her reign. We along with many others at a 2019 Public Meeting urged her to act; she delayed acting for unexplained reasons for far too long.
She also delayed the much needed new LTC beds for far too long eventually agreeing with what we and others asked her to do early 2019. It cost us dearly, not only economically but in terms of poor decision making given the original request was eventually agreed to. Blake Hurley was the city Solicitor on that who listened to the incoming Mayor rather than city needs and basic common sense in terms of the Interim Control Bylaw.
Agree Don, fair is fair and facts count.
Actually Joe, if “facts count” then they are far closer to Penny’s version than Don’s. There were a group of her advisors (former) who recommended relocation of the UBC and delegated on it. Indeed, the Province really didn’t care where the UBC was, as long as there was one and the intensification quotas were met. The same was true for the MTSA mis-designations. All addressed in early days of 2019 and ignored. MMW wears a good portion of the result – the on then off then on again Interim Control Bylaw and the long line of failures at the OLT. Our take at the time, City staff didn’t remotely know what they were doing and the Mayor refused to tie herself to the coat tails of Jane McKenna.
Apologies for the instance of execrable grammar – shame on me and on you if you can’t find it.
Agree and if my memory serves me correctly Gary Scobie hammered on this as well. I am waiting for the book, song and movie about this saga.
I totally agree that facts count, Blair. I was there; I delegated forcefully on changing the UGC/MTSA designations downtown on 12/15/19 re: Re-exam of Adopted OP & again on 1/14/20 re: PL-10-10 (incl. ICBL), and authored most of the letter to MMW & Council urging action, issued by ECoB (with PLAN B & We Love Burlington (incl you)). I was not there at Penny’s referenced discussions with her Metrolinx acquaintance or MMW, and assume neither were you. It is my opinion that it’s our individual interpretations of the facts and what we choose to think or do with them that diverge here, not the facts.
Right on Blair and webcasts are now available to prove such.
FYI Emma’s has undergone a complete Reno inside and out.not sure when it will open.