By Jack Brittle, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
On December 2, Burlington City Council held their monthly Committee of the Whole meeting and discussed many items relevant to the city’s future, including an interim report about the composition of council and the ward boundary review, which is still underway.
Blake Hurley, the commissioner of legal and legislative services and the city solicitor, introduced the presentation.
“This report is the next step in the city’s consultation reporting back to council on the ward boundary review process,” Hurley said. “We’ve got staff from Watson Associates here today, Jack Ammendolia and his colleagues, to provide a presentation to council and answer any questions you may have. As you’ll see in the report, staff is looking for some direction today, in terms of proceeding with the next steps of the project.”
Ammendolia spoke about the five guiding principles that the consulting team uses to evaluate the existing ward system and “any alternatives that we may come up with in phase two.”
The five principles are representation by population; projected demographic trends; geographic representation; communities of interest; and ensuring effective representation. Watson Associates found that the current ward system only meets three of these principles (the last three), and only two are largely successful, while the last guideline is only partially successful at its fulfillment.
Ammendolia said that the city is not currently achieving population parity and that with the incoming population increase that the city is expecting, this disparity will not be fixed.
The results of a survey conducted by Watson Associates that asked residents various questions about their ward were then described.
Of the 216 survey responses, 67% of residents said that their ward did capture their entire community, while 33% said that it was divided across more than one ward.
Some strengths that were listed were “the communities and neighbourhoods in the ward are similar and connected,” “it has the right number of residents,” and “it’s the right size.” The weaknesses listed were “communities and neighbourhoods are spread out over multiple wards,” “the ward’s area is too large,” and “it has too many residents for one councillor to cover.”
Only 45% of respondents said that the current six-ward system, with six councillors and one mayor, was adequate when each ward consists of approximately 31,000 people; 34% said there are too few councillors, while 7% said there are too many.
Some respondents also felt that the fact that councillors serve not only on the city council but also the regional one puts too much of a strain on their ability to govern either adequately.
Ammendolia gave the council two key questions for them to answer to help guide Watson in figuring out what direction the consultation should go next. The first question posed to council was “Should all local councillors also be regional councillors?” If the answer to this question is yes, then the city could either maintain the status quo or add a deputy mayor position who would not be a regional or local councillor and would increase the council size by one.
If the answer is no, then the second question presented is, “Do regional councillors need to be elected by wards?” If the answer to this question is no, then council could potentially draw new ward boundaries and create new wards. If the answer is yes, then the council could either double their size, creating six new regional council positions, add a deputy mayor position on top of this, or have an uneven number of local and regional wards.
Ward 4 Councillor Shawna Stolte asked Ammendolia how a council with an even number of councillors would work, taking into consideration the possibility of tied votes.
Ammendolia said that in the group’s analysis of ward composition across the province, tied votes very rarely come up and that “we haven’t heard it to be a significant roadblock for any even-number councils.”
He also confirmed the time frame that the city has to work with in regards to making these kinds of changes. “The council has until December 31 of 2025 to make any decisions that would take effect for the 2026 election,” Ammendolia said. “If you decide to do something after that date, it would not take effect until the 2030 election.”
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward then put forth a motion to “direct the consultant to investigate and recommend council composition and ward boundary options where all councillors are local and regional councillors.”
Ward 2 Councillor Lisa Kearns said that she likes the fact that Burlington city councillors are also regional councillors.
“When you’re making decisions and responding to constituents, you get a full 360 view of what’s happening across all those different portfolios.”
Kearns also said that Burlington is at an appropriate council size of seven, saying that the geographical differences between wards will balance themselves out, and if they don’t, council can redraw wards to make them more equal. In terms of agencies, boards, and commissions, Kearns said, “That’s where we can make the most amount of movement. I would like to see in the future a shift away from those obligations put on to councillors and more so on council.”
Meed Ward echoed Kearns’ comments about councillors sitting on both the municipal and regional boards, saying, “It would be a disadvantage to any local councillor not to have a seat, a voice and awareness at the regional table.”
Ward 1 Councillor Kelvin Galbraith agreed as well: “In Burlington, we all need to be regional councillors. There’s so many things that are affected by the region. All of our garbage, recycling pickup, it’s all kind of intertwined. We have regional roads that dissect our city. I know some things are changing, there’s some down-loading happening and the city’s going to be taking over some of the functions that were historically at the regional level, but I was hoping we would go in this direction of more status quo and look at some ward boundary options.”
Stolte had a different perspective.
“I am really eager to have the most flexibility possible,” Stolte said.
She cited expected population increase as a reason to be more flexible, saying, “[We’re going to need to] add more city councillors, or redo those boundaries yet again, so this way if we separate the two, it means that the regional councillor roster can remain stable and the city councillor roster can fluctuate as needed over the coming years.”
Ward 5 Councillor Paul Sharman said he prefers things the way they are.
“The fragmentation of work is not something I’m excited about,” Sharman said. He said that there is a possibility of local and regional councillors not getting along, duplicating work, and not coordinating with each other.
“It can be a real mess,” Sharman said.
The motion passed with only Stolte voting against it.
