By Pepper Parr
July 18th, 2022
BURLINGTON, ON
The Gazette will keep going back to that 14 minutes of self-destruction when Mayor Marianne Meed Ward let people see a side of her that is not all that pretty.
Check it out yourself click HERE
Not the smartest thing to do during the months before an election takes place.
The Gazette ran a poll asking our readers if they thought the Mayor should apologize to Stolte for the way she attempted to manipulate a fellow member of Council.
Of the 247 responses 86% said Yes
To recap – the Mayor attempted to force Ward 4 Councillor Shawna Stolte to read out an apology at the beginning of a council meeting when Stolte had already advised the Mayor that she would reading the apology at the end of the Council meeting when comments are made – those comments are not debatable.
Anything said during a Council meeting can be debated by any Council member who chooses to do so. And in the past two council members have filed complaints with the Integrity Commissioner
The relationship between the Mayor, ward 1 Councillor Kelvin Galbraith and ward 3 Councillor Rory Nisan and the rest of Council have reached a level of toxicity that is dangerous.
During the June Council meeting Mayor Meed Ward used the request made by Georgie Gartside that the apology Councillor Stolte was more than willing to make be made at the beginning of the meeting as the reason for revising the agenda.
Has the Mayor produced any of the communication between herself and Gartside in which the request was made?
That evidence has never been produced – Could the Mayor produce it at this time and put this matter to rest?
Related news stories;
The interview with Stolte about the staffing problem.
As to the statement, “The sooner we get a Head of Council/Mayor who will return the power to the elected council, and thus the people who get out and elect them, by going through the Procedural By-laws and having them compliant with the appropriate section of the Municipal Act, the better.”
Having bylaws that are compliant with the appropriate section of the Municipal Act is not a choice. They must be compliant. Statute law includes bylaws which are passed by elected municipal councils. As a result, compliance requirements must be included in the bylaw itself. A bylaw is valid only if the Provincial statute(s) granting municipalities the power to pass bylaws states that the Municipality may pass bylaws of a given nature. With respect to this procedural bylaw, does the procedure bylaw in question meet the compliance standards? If not, it is probably null and void.
Given the kerfuffle that has come about because of the bylaw, whether it is lawful or not. It is probably worthy of a second look
Joe, Thank you for this thoughtful comment. There are two major issues with the current Procedure By-law:
1. The transfer of decision-making power to individuals e.g. Mayor, Clerk, individual councillors as Chair of a Standing Committee that sets aside the Municipal Act that puts the decision making power in the hands of a democratically elected council. We have been raising this red flag for years now.
It began when a small group headed by MMW presented multiple changes to the by-law outside of the usual notice and process. The change that raised the ire of the electorate the most, being reduced delegation time at Committee. That change never made it through, however it took the attention away from other important issues that Council refused to address when we raised them and so began what has resulted in the Head of Council or Chair of Committee according to the Procedure By-law being allowed to change the order of the agenda and then rule on a point of order that objects to such with very good reason.
2. The second issue is lack of compliance with the by-law by those who have a duty to ensure compliance i.e. all elected members of Council. The June 8, 2022 Audit Committee minutes illustrate this point perfectly. A quorum 5 of 8 members, was not present on June 8, 2022. A lack of quorum was not discussed and business as usual occurred. June 21, 2022 Council approved the Audit Committee minutes despite them screaming from the present and regrets list of non-compliance with the Procedure By-law where a quorum is defined as a majority of members. The members of this Committee being confirmed as 8 in minutes Jan – July, 2022 and, therefore, a quorum for this committee is 5 members.
This sees all members of Council neglecting to give attention to the fact that the Committee responsible for the compliance with numerous pieces of legislation, by-laws and policies and procedures and is the only committee that deals with fraud, is operating outside of the by-laws approved by them – latest amendment 2019.
This occurred under the watchful eye of the city auditor, Clerk and others.
Surely there can be no greater indicator, an audit term used in Anne’s days of responsibilities associated with a large corporation’s audit programme, of lack of due diligence and/or competency of those who we as taxpayers pay $111,000 – $185,000 per annum to ensure we are compliant at all times with the Municipal Act and other numerous pieces of municipal governance legislation!
If the last lot we elected can’t understand their responsibilities associated with the Procedure By-law definition of Quorum we can all be assured, there are a lot more of these issues that began festering since they received the Burlington taxpayers blessing to get on with allocating a huge chunk of change to meet the needs of Burlington families and businesses.
Let’s encourage those like you Joe, Tom Muir and others who we know have the wherewithal to get our city back on track to put their names forward to serve for the upcoming four year term so we can get out city back on track in terms of meeting the needs of its residents and businesses as they should. Standing for City Council should not be seen as a step in a career path or a means to put candidates’ kids through university – there are too many who rely on Council decisions to meet the daily needs of their lives.
Thank you Joe for the statistical analysis showing exactly what was needed and that the survey is a valid estimate, with confidence, of what people thought.
I doubt that it will change Mary’s style or argument without evidence. But she can look at a statistics book,and and with Joe’s data contribution, learn how to replicate his numbers and clean out some of her often ignorance based criticism of others.
What proportion of the target population would we need to get results representative of the target population with the level of confidence that we would be willing to accept, is a question worth pondering? A response of 212 yeahs (86% of the 247responses) in a city that has a voting population of 99,631 would yield a confidence level of about 95% with about a 7% margin of error, and nothing to sneeze at.
Editor’s note: Thank you Joe – you now qualify for membership as a “Tame Gazette Reader” hereinafter referred to as a TGR
Editor – thank you.
quid est demonstrandum
“Flogging a dead horse Mary!” really. Did not know there were any “tame anti-mayor readers”. There are, however, thousands of Burlington families and businesses who are negatively impacted when a Mayor is involved (as she was in 2017) along with Councillor Sharman in changing a procedural by-law from one that takes a majority of council vote to change the order of business to one that gives this power to an individual. (mayor, clerk, or council member). According to the Municipal Act our full elected Council is responsible for governance decisions not individuals. The sooner we get a Head of Council/Mayor who will return the power to the elected council, and thus the people who get out and elect them, by going through the Procedural By-laws and having them compliant with the appropriate section of the Municipal Act, the better. If elected it will be my first job to meet with Council and get their approval to put things back as they should be at our very first council meeting after November 15, 2022. The businesses and families of Burlington should expect and deserve nothing less. I will make sure that by October 24, 2022 everything is ready to go once we have Council approval. Anne Marsden the Candidate for Mayor who will put the people and businesses back in city decisions.
Marsden, did MMW & Sharman change the bylaw unilaterally or was there a council vote where a majority of councilors supported the change? If a majority voted for the change, what are you witteribg on about.
In your comment, and as you often do you champion compliance with procedures set. And yet you supported Councilor Stolte in her breaking confidentiality as set in the City’s Code of Good Governance. Why is that. You cannot have it both ways. One must comply with the procedures and regulations. If you don’t like them, change them through the democratic process.
Where is the relevance of your comment to Mary’s?
There has to be communication in writing to be able to provide it.
What took place at this meeting and at the meeting that discussed the Integrity Commissioner Report was an indication of just how divided this council is. Especially upsetting was the fact that most of the councillors sat mute and watched how a fellow councillor was being treated.
I hope we are not going to have to deal with 4 more years of this if all the current players are re-elected in October.
Mary Hill,
You go too far sometimes and lose credibility saying things you know nothing about – this time about statistics.
On June 27 on this topic I commented here;
Tom Muir
June 27, 2022 at 11:28 am · Reply
Joe has a good point in his first sentence as it has implications for judging the result of the poll.
“It’s called “selection bias”. People who choose not to comment bias the result as a good representation of what the population thinks.
However, at 86% to 14% out of 198 votes at my reading right now, this sample size is probably large enough to have acceptable validity absent any other bias.”
Mary, you can’t just dismiss the poll based on your own personal bias which is based on no statistical argument support at all.
It’s not just irrelevant,but has a simple yes/no difference statistical significance level that can be calculated with a little knowledge. Try to figure it out, and maybe you will learn something.
Unfortunately, most commentators here are equally ignorant when they make similar dismissive statements based on no statistical basis at all.
Do they really expect everyone to believe them? Do you? Surely, with all the comments you make, you can do better.
Mr. Muir, you too can certainly do better. You are as dismissive as those you accuse of being dismissive. Do you have any academic qualifications in the area of opinion polling or are you as unqualified as the rest of us?
198 responses from what appears to be a predominantly anti MMW readership base is a nonsense of a broad based opinion pole. You might as well poll supporters of the so-called truckers for their views on the Liberal government’s general performance for all its relevance to a broad based poll.
Qualified I am, as is Joe. But you once again display your gross ignorance in the face of facts on the statistics of the survey. And speak for yourself in your own opinions which you of course are entitled to, unqualified in stating certain things as facts, or not. You are indeed overboard in your own nonsense.
I am not anti MMW, and where is your insight of the readership to say it is predominantly anti MMW, poll or otherwise? A one person dictate? A sad know it all Mary Hill on display. You really don’t know what you are talking about here. It’s 247 people in the sample now, and that does matter in statistics of surveys.
A survey of 250 people by the Toronto Sun would get a totally different result than the same survey taken by the Toronto Star. Even someone as overly qualified as yourself has to know that Tom.
The Gazette is flogging a dead horse here. The Gazette poll is irrelevant due to its veey small and so unrepresentative sampling size. The Gazette likely polled its tame anti-mayor readers.
The Gazette thinks this is its Watergate moment.
Move on to issues that matter.
Editor’s note: The Gazette had no control over who responded – they only control we had was being able to see the numbers and prevent anyone from the same IP address from responding more than once.
It was a small sample but not an irrelevant sample. In order to respond you had to have read the storu because the poll was inside the story.
And – if this had happened to Mary Hill you would have been able to hear her hollering in Timbuktu