By Pepper Parr
November 10th, 2106
BURLINGTON, ON
We know a little bit more about how your city council got to the point where they could approve a Staff recommendation to reduce time for delegations to city Standing Committees to five minutes from ten.
Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward manged to delegate often enough to build a profile and get herself elected to Council where she is reported to be preparing to run for Mayor in 2018. Delegating does have its advantages.
According to Marianne Meed Ward, who was responding to a resident, the Community and Corporate Services committee was considering a staff report to “make changes to the procedural bylaw. The report was produced by staff and a subcommittee of council that included Taylor, Craven and Lancaster.
“One of those changes to the procedure bylaw included in the report was a recommendation to change delegation speaking time from the current 10 minutes to 5 minutes.
“Jack Dennison moved the staff report with a change to the report to keep delegation speaking time at 10 minutes.
“Votes were taken in parts.
“First we voted on this section, to keep speaking time at 10 minutes. That failed 3-3 with one member of council absent.
“Then a vote taken on the entire report, which included the recommendation that delegations be limited to 5 minutes. That passed 5-1 – I did not support” said Meed Ward.
While watching committee debate this report something struck me as very odd, there where no delegates to speak to this.
If having 10 minutes to delegate to committee is important wouldn’t delegating on the time reduction be important?
There is still time for anyone that want’s to delegate on this at council however, they will only have 5 minutes.
There was no notification that this report contained the poison pill to delegation time. It was basically a hidden part of the agenda.
You would have had to read Council package on the web site to find the report, and then read the report to find the relevant sections.
So no surprise there were no delegations.
Your right Tom, that’s where the information is found.
There were two things that caught my attention on the adjenda, Municipal election modernization act and Procedure by-law updates.
The first one did get a delegation and was carried by committee. The second was debated and several amendments were suggested, unfortunately, as you know there was no delegation.
Now the only option for anyone wanting to delegate on this item is at council where 5 minutes is the time frame.
This is not just a disturbing trend in Burlington, it’s a symptom of the low attention span of our society. I would have thought Burlington, of all cities would have an understanding of this and would not fall into the same trap. In any event, short of physically removing a delegate, the reality is, delegations often go overtime and common courtesy and common sense demands that delegates with a message that is clearly incomplete be allowed their time. I’m not proposing civil disobedience, but if you are delegating and your not finished, there is nothing stopping you from asking for more time.
This continues a disturbing trend of the City Hall elites–the mayor & council, bureacrats, advisory (lobby) groups, and consultants, making decisions while devaluing ordinary residents of Burlington. Whether its adopting a self-aggrandizing 25-year plan, closing car lanes on New Street, messing with the Seniors Centre, City Hall has marginalized ordinary tax payers. In 2018, it will be time to “drain the swamp” at City Hall and take back our City–it can’t come fast enough.
Five minutes is really an insufficient time to outline issues, concerns and express opinions on most issues.
The issues Council is dealing with are substantive in nature and often very complex. Regardless of whether the issue is zoning, planning, budgets or transportation five minutes does not allow a delegation to articulate their viewpoint with any degree of depth or insight.
This is not right. It sounds criminal. I blame people in Burlington for continuing to elect the same people over and over.