Opinion.
Marianne Meed Ward is edging toward re-election as mayor of Burlington — and why not? She is a Burlington celebrity. She has a kind of sparkle; a type of magnetism that draws in folks who are fed up with government and demand quick solutions to complex problems.
She panders to these people with aspirational rhetoric about what could and should be accomplished. She spins things in such a way that people believe she is the superhero who can make it all happen.
The problem is that she seldom points out the political, financial, legal or jurisdictional challenges and, when things don’t go her way, she simply blames the province or the former mayor.
Meed Ward’s campaign to beguile the public is reinforced by her influence over the City Hall Communications Department along with her savvy use of social media. She embraces any occasion on the calendar, any cause, campaign, crusade or special interest group to justify a tweet or post that includes her name.
“Meed Ward is not shy about seeking publicity,”once wrote columnist and former Alderman Joan Little.
Meed Ward’s efforts to charm the public are aided by the subtle compliance of the local news media. She has them wrapped around her finger. Reporters almost never challenge her or investigate her claims. Program hosts simply introduce a topic and let her run with it. She gets to say whatever she wants and, not surprisingly, it always reflects well on her. With these “soft ball” interviews the news media has become her ally.
“Mayor Meed Ward gets in front of the Cogeco cameras as well as the CHCH cameras on a regular basis. They are seen by the mayor as friendly folk — not the kind of people who ask her tough questions. …She favours situations, such as her perch at CHML, where she is never pressed on serious issues,” wrote columnist Pepper Parr.
The bottom line here is that Meed Ward has the communication skills, contacts, resources and charisma to distract observers from the fact that she simply overpromises and under-delivers.
It’s like that popular song.
Give ‘em the old razzle dazzle
(Musical — Chicago)
Razzle Dazzle ‘em
Give ‘em an act with lots of flash in it
And the reaction will be passionate
Give ‘em the old hocus pocus
Bead and feather ‘em
Bead and feather ‘em
How can they see with sequins in their eyes?
One could be easily fooled by Meed Ward’s never-ending public relations campaign. Her message is clear. Everything will be okay as long as she is in charge. The past four years, however, have betrayed her superhero image.
Consider the downtown planning debacle, the tall building chaos and the vilification of the development community.
“Did Mayor Meed Ward not understand the implications of council decisions that she worked for, or did she simply want to avoid inconvenient facts?” wrote former mayor Rick Goldring.
Long-time Meed Ward supporter Gary Scobie shared the disappointment about her efforts to control tall buildings in the downtown. “We were betrayed.”
To be clear, nobody blames Meed Ward for the tall buildings. They are a natural part of a growing city. She does, however, deserve blame for telling constituents that she could manage them better than the last guy. She was warned by the former city manager that a lot of tall buildings would be constructed while she was mayor. She fired him.
Beyond her extravagant promises about tall buildings, we can’t forget the cost and chaos that resulted from Meed Ward’s private tree bylaw. Then, there’s the clumsy way in which she handled the rainbow sidewalk issue. Let’s not forget the dabbling in reserve funds, the seemingly endless confidential meetings, the growth in the Infrastructure Renewal Gap, etcetera, but, put her in front of a camera and you’ll hear that everything is okay.
Meed Ward’s spin campaign included claims that, under her leadership, this city council is more cohesive that the last, but that idea was washed away when Councillor Shawna Stolte publicly accused her of “another political circus for your own selfish gains and I think you should be ashamed of yourself.”
Others, like Roland Tanner of the 905er podcast, also question her claims of team unity. “She loses friends at a hell of a rate. People who have supported her, like you wouldn’t believe in the earlier parts of her career, are now upset with her for various reasons…we’re starting to see Marianne Meed Ward, warts and all.”
Here in Ward 1, voters may wish to look past Meed Ward’s fancy rhetoric and reflect on whether her carefully constructed image has met the test of reality. Consider these examples.
Meed Ward is directly responsible for the fiasco at 2100 Brant Street. She told neighbours during the 2018 election that she would “seek to scale back” a proposed townhouse development. The project had in fact been approved by the last council, but shortly after she was elected mayor, Meed Ward rescinded the approval, something almost unheard of and certainly contrary to staff’s advice. In the end, the city had to settle for essentially the same proposal as originally approved with only slight changes. Meed Ward admitted defeat when she declared that the city could not find a professional planner to support her and the neighbours’ opposition to the development.
But that wasn’t the end of it! The Local Planning Appeals Tribunal (LPAT) awarded $17,088.97 in damages to the developer as a consequence of the rescinding of the original approval. LPAT called the city’s action “clearly unreasonable.” Meed Ward blew off the cost and embarrassment to the city with the comment that it was “money well spent.”
Tyandaga resident John Calvert, who had believed Meed Ward’s promise to do something about the development and supported her for mayor, suddenly realized he had backed the wrong horse.
“I regret having believed that you would actually fulfill your two main campaign promises — to oppose over-development and improve public engagement,” wrote Calvert after the settlement.
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Meed Ward also misled Tyandaga residents about her ability to mitigate the impact of the Meridian Quarry expansion. She promised to “Push for provincial review of North Aldershot Quarry Expansion, and air quality studies of quarry dust,” according to her campaign literature.
After her election, she attempted to get the province involved and was rejected. She tried to use the tree bylaw against the quarry but found it that it didn’t apply. She tried to bring in a health protection bylaw to monitor emissions from the quarry and found out that she could not. She spent $35,000 in taxpayers’ money to get an independent expert opinion, which was never revealed in public.
In the end, when it became clear that she wasn’t making any progress, and the neighbours started publicly expressing their disappointment, she took the discussions with the neighbours behind closed doors. (This, despite years of her demands for more transparency in local government.) So far, these ongoing private discussions have apparently produced nothing. Quarry plant manager John Laurence reports that little is being achieved. “We get to hear more complaints, but it’s more of a forum for them to vent than anything else.”
The point is that she never should have misled the neighbours into believing that she could influence the situation when she knew, based on expert opinion from city and Halton Region staff dating back to 2017, that she could not. She had been told, as were all members of council, that the quarry expansion was legal, that it was a provincial matter and that nothing could be done to stop it.
She consciously told neighbours what they wanted to hear in 2018 rather than what they needed to know, simply because it fit her election strategy.
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Still in Tyandaga, Meed Ward told concerned residents that she could not comment publicly on a controversial proposal to build a retirement home until she received a formal staff report. She did not want to be pinned down. This was never her position when she was the downtown councillor, rallying opposition to new building proposals at the earliest possible opportunity.
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In the Maple community, Meed Ward’s chaotic interim control bylaw for the downtown spilled over to the Brant Court Co-op buildings on North Shore Boulevard in Ward 1. Her fight against developers resulted in a delay to the final approval of a new 17-storey retirement home on the site. As a result, she seriously disrupted the pending plans of a vulnerable group of homeowners who wanted to complete their deals with the developer. They were forced to put their sales and relocation plans on hold, resulting in anxiety and uncertainty. Two years later, the city exempted the project from the interim control bylaw, settled with the developer, and succeeded in reducing the height of the proposed building by only one storey.
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In Aldershot, Meed Ward kept her campaign promise to keep Clearview, Queen Mary, and St. Matthew’s avenues outside the Major Transit Station Area (MTSA) boundary. The problem is that she was never honest with those residents about the consequences. The latest plan calls for those tiny streets to be surrounded on three sides by tall buildings.
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Finally, doesn’t the mayor, who repeatedly promised more transparency in government, owe the people of Aldershot an explanation as to how a 12-storey proposal for the Solid Gold property became an 18-storey building, all negotiated behind closed doors with no public input?
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There’s much more that could be discussed and I realize these opinions are subject to much debate, but my message to readers is simple. The time has come to look past Marianne Meed Ward’s spin machine and consider the facts. I know that her fans think she is current and hip, but in reality, she reinforces the classic image of an old-fashioned populist who over-promises and under-delivers.
