By Jack Brittle, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
On March 3, Burlington City Council held their monthly Committee of the Whole meeting and discussed items relevant to the city and its residents.
An item relating to remuneration and expenses paid to council and appointees for 2024 was pulled from the consent agenda by Lisa Kearns, Ward 2 councillor, and was voted on separately.
Kearns asked a question about whether or not reserve funds can be moved into the tax-stabilization reserve, and whether or not that would require a reconsideration vote.
Craig Millar, chief financial officer, said that council could pass a motion to direct staff to reallocate the funds.
Rory Nisan, Ward 3 councillor, mentioned that Millar is working on a status report due in a few months about the reserve funds and that that might be a good opportunity to discuss such rebalancing.
Millar agreed and clarified that all reserves would be on the table for that review in terms of consolidation.
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward asked if a reconsideration vote would be necessary at all in regards to amending this motion in the future, given that it is a “receive and file” information report.
The city’s financial clerk clarified that no such reconsideration vote would be needed.
Kearns elaborated on some of the things that the money in her reserve fund has gone towards in her ward.
“Some of it has gone into community activations and supportive activation for the downtown tree lighting ceremony,” Kearns said. “It’s also for funding the urban farm insurance to continue to deliver up to 5000 pounds of hyper-local, organically grown produce to our food security partners.”
“It includes tools that I use to shore up some resources around communications like Jasper [a generative AI platform] and Canva, and a big bulk of the expenses were towards community events and meetings, like the Safety Community Forum, the Community Cares Forum, and the environmental forum coming up in the next year’s budget,” Kearns continued. “Nothing has been sponsored, so all of this has been through the council-approved budget. That’s just some insight because you’ll see that mine is high because I’m trying to use up that reserve.”
Nisan then spoke about what he used his funds for.
“I chose to do an emergency newsletter to my residents after the flooding in July,” Nisan said. “So there was an extra cost attached to doing that newsletter on an emergency basis.”
Shawna Stolte, Ward 4 councillor, spoke about why some discrepancies may appear in terms of the amount of reserve money spent by each councillor.
“I think it’s important for the community, no matter what ward you live in, just to understand that we do all have different demographics in our wards,” Stolte said. “In Ward 4, having an older demographic, I like to send out additional mailouts. And with Canada Post, despite the fact that we’re mailing them out with the bulk mail, it costs about $2,000 each time just to do the ward.”
Stolte also clarified the fact that there was no additional income earned by councillors when they took on their portfolios as deputy mayors.
Meed Ward spoke about the upcoming review for reserve funds.
“We are about to embark on the task group to look at council staffing and expenses,” Meed Ward said. “We do that once a term. That’s an opportunity for us to look at whether the expense accounts provided to members of council to do their work are sufficient.”
“It will give us some data to have that conversation with,” Meed Ward said. “I don’t think it’s been increased in a very long time. It doesn’t grow with inflation, population or development.”
Meed Ward said that the review will also take into account the added cost of each councillor having a deputy mayor portfolio.
After a lengthy discussion about council’s Buy Canadian Resolution, Nisan commented on his dissatisfaction with the way that the resolution was prepared, using the strong mayor’s powers.
“The use of the strong mayor powers avoids the scrutiny of ourselves and of the public,” Nisan said. “And on this issue, in several respects, not all, we’re being downgraded to spectators.”
“A task force has now been created without our approval as council,” Nisan continued. “Staff were directed to undertake research and provide advice to the head of council, and attend mayor task force meetings as required, again, with no approval from council.”
Nisan also referenced directing staff to create the report and the Buy Canadian webpage.
“This was all done on February 6,” Nisan said. “The committee was just four days away, and a special council could have easily been convened as well. So, I think this report would have come at the same time either way. I’m not talking about whether these are good ideas. Those decisions have already been taken, so we can’t even talk about them.”
Nisan said that not much has changed regarding how the city’s interests are being represented by the federal government and other organizations, but highlighted what, in his opinion, has.
“What has changed is this norm where the mayor doesn’t need council to make these decisions, and we just get declarations up on the website,” Nisan said. “That undermines transparency and public input. If we don’t discuss these decisions before they’re taken, the public can’t say, ‘Oh, we don’t think you should spend time on the Buy Canadian web page,’ or maybe they like that idea. Same thing with the task force, they can’t tell us if they like that.”
“The decision has been taken, we just have to take it now,” Nisan continued. “But that’s not what I was elected to do, so I’m going to keep saying that this isn’t right. It’s not the right thing to do.”
Angelo Bentivegna, Ward 6 councillor, weighed in on the discussion.
“I don’t want to pick sides here, I like to go down the middle,” Bentivegna said. “I do want to remind all of us that this resolution was brought forward at this table. We had discussions, there were some yeas and some nays. I respect everybody’s decision and position, but at the end of the day, we all agreed. The mayor did not force this on us.”
Meed Ward took issue with Nisan’s claim that this process undermined transparency.
“All decisions are publicly reported and posted,” Meed Ward said. “They’re on a website and clearly available, as is this report. This is fully public and fully transparent.”
Nisan said that while he agrees that the decision is public, his objection is to the lack of transparency in the decision-making process.
“In my mind, it is transparent to bring issues forward before a decision is made,” Nisan said. “Normally the transparency would happen in this form that we are in right now.”
Kearns said that she also felt left out of the decision-making process.
“I didn’t feel engaged or that I had any opportunity to contribute to the conversation related to this mayoral decision,” Kearns said. “I think we could have had a much more robust conversation. I’ve often heard the phrase, ‘Every crisis is an opportunity.’ Well, I think we need to ask, an opportunity for what? Is it an opportunity to show strong-handed leadership, or is it an opportunity to pull in the voice of the community and the community experts that we have available to us?”
“I didn’t hear any delegations on the matter,” Kearns continued. “I didn’t hear any opportunity for people to come forward to say what they would like to see as an outcome. We will probably continue to receive information reports, put on our desks without any opportunity for additional conversation or dialogue.”
Stolte said that while she isn’t necessarily in favour of the strong mayor powers, she does think it is appropriate in certain situations.
“I think one of the reasons why this did come into force as quickly as it did on February 6 is that we’ve had the threat of tariffs put upon us multiple times, at multiple dates,” Stolte said. “And I believe that we need to be in a position to respond to the best of our ability as soon as we possibly can, so I actually don’t have a huge issue with the way this one was tackled.”
Kelvin Galbraith, Ward 1 councillor, agreed with Stolte.
“I think the reason for the mayoral direction was to get ahead of the game and not wait for committee, and then council approval,” Galbraith said. “This sped up that process, so I’m generally in support of it.”
