State of the Town

The following remarks were delivered to Council, staff and residents at the September 20, 2022, Council meeting, where Mayor Rob Burton also presented his Oakville Status Report.

2022 is shaping up as a year of growing recovery and re-engagement with each other.

Community life is growing hearty again.

The pandemic is becoming part of the health landscape. It’s still random in its effects on people:

• It’s still deadly for some.
• It’s the worst flu ever for some.
• And in others, it’s hard to notice

In Oakville we protected each other during the pandemic. Our death toll from the virus is the lowest when we look at our GTA neighbours. The US death toll is six times higher than ours.

The pandemic made us use and value our outdoors spaces more than we ever did. And we have always valued and used our outdoor spaces more than others. This year, Council and I have launched a new goal for a 2000 acre eco-park. Outdoor spaces are precious and the opportunity we see now, may not be there later. For comparison, Central Park in New York is 800 acres and High Park in Toronto is 400 acres. Vancouver’s Stanley Park is 1,001 acres.

Residents tell us that the qualities that make Oakville livable are our trails, parks, our waterfront and our green spaces.

As a part of my update, I’m pleased to announce that we are on track to reaching our goal of a 40 per cent tree canopy.  Our town-wide tree canopy coverage has reached 31.2%. This is more than Edmonton, Vancouver or Victoria, British Columbia. The town’s next Urban Forest Management Plan update will be released in early 2023. It will include recommendations to ensure the growth and sustainability of the town’s urban forest. Residents and local businesses will have a key role to play in reaching our 40% goal by 2057, our 200th anniversary of our town.

Last week, I joined a team from Siemens Canada who planted 300 more trees in our community. Ever since Siemens moved here their employees have turned out as volunteers and have planted thousands of trees to help us with our goals. They are a fine example of a good corporate citizenship and volunteerism. In fact, the town is partnering with Siemens to conduct an energy audit of our transit facility, Siemens’ has saved companies millions of dollars a year in energy efficiency.

Naturally, those who work outdoors for us have earned a deeper appreciation than ever before.

Our town staff showed great dedication to our community throughout the pandemic.  An organization is only as strong as its people and we can be proud in how our great staff care about our community and deliver the services. 

To our emergency responders, trainers and prevention officers in Fire, our municipal enforcement officers, our inspectors, and our staff and our crews in roads and works, parks and open space, and transit, we thank you. As well, thank you to our recreation and culture staff who created new programs that continued to engage our community through the pandemic.

Many staff, like many residents, had to adjust to a remote work model and learn new ways to get things done.

You as residents told us that you were amazed and happy with the service staff delivered. Your compliments meant a lot to our staff and to Council. Town leaf collection, snow clearing, parks maintenance, recreation, road resurfacing, and municipal enforcement when you called for help, were all top of class this year.

These services are among the most important parts of a good place to live.

Now, against all odds and a global pandemic, the past term has been the strongest term of any Council!

Our citizen survey showed 93 per cent of residents are satisfied with Town of Oakville services. The majority of residents said Oakville is a better place to live than other parts of the GTA.  And 8 in 10 residents said they would recommend the Town as a place to live!

For the fourth year in a row, Oakville was listed among the top 20 regions of Canada’s Best Locations to invest by Site Selection Magazine. Our economic development plan and economic recovery plan have resulted in new company arrivals, facility expansions at existing companies, and new jobs created!

The biggest economic news of course is the saving of the Ford Assembly Plant to make electric vehicles for the world.

The Director for International Government Affairs at the Ford Motor Company recently said, and I share this with pride: “The plan to build EVs in Oakville Assembly would not have been possible without Mayor Burton’s support and the support of Council. Thank you, Mayor Burton for your ongoing commitment to see Oakville as a manufacturing hub for the 21st century!”

Success requires us to know who we are and what we’re supposed to do as a Town Council.

We are a municipal service delivery corporation created by the Legislature of Ontario.

The legislation that creates us is very clear about what our lane is.

The Municipal Act says, it is the role of council to,

• Represent the public and to consider the well-being and interests of the municipality;
• Develop and evaluate the policies and programs of the municipality;
• Determine which services the municipality provides;
• Tensure that administrative policies, practices and procedures and controllership policies, practices and procedures are in place to implement the decisions of council;
• Ensure the accountability and transparency of the operations of the municipality, including the activities of the senior management of the municipality;
• Maintain the financial integrity of the municipality; and
• Carry out the duties of council under this or any other Act.

And there, in that last clause, is where the trouble usually rises when councils don’t want to follow those other acts. And, I’ll speak about that later.

Every member of Council is proud of the Town's success at getting debt and taxes under control. We introduced Performance Based Budgeting and our results have grown better and better as we’ve kept at it.

In this term of Council, our introduction of this modern corporate financial tool has really paid dividends. Inflation is totaling almost 14 per cent, so far this four year term of council and our total four year tax increases are less than 6.7 per cent. It averages to 1.67 a year. And the Bank of Canada’s target rate for inflation is 2 per cent a year. Our tax increase was only 1.5 per cent this year.

Debt is limited by the Legislature to only what can be paid off with no more than 25 per cent of our current revenues. Our debt is carried by less than 6 per cent of our revenues.

We carry most of our debt with Dividend Income earned by Town businesses and not paid by property taxes. All Town debt used to be on the property tax.

The town’s external and independent auditor, KPMG, confirmed this year, as they have every year for the last 30 years, in fact, that the town has accurate reporting and that key internal controls are in place and working. The independent auditor’s report was published in our Annual Report. I’ve lived here almost 30 years and I can not remember, nor can the Town Commissioner, seeing the town ever not getting a clean audit opinion, which I think says something about the professional quality of our staff. Council and I are very proud of them.

Each member of Council brings the needs of the ward that they represent to the Council and committee tables.

This year and this term, here are examples of what members have achieved together.

1. Beth Robertson, traffic safety measures for Lakeshore Woods and Colonel Williams Parkway to address key residential concerns were a key goal for her.
2. Sean O’Meara, regional infrastructure, from the waterfront promenade, the Wyecroft bridge, and the Burloak Underpass are big ones for him.
3. Ray Chisholm is pleased with the popularity of Oakville’s first outdoor refrigerated hockey rink. Oakville’s first ever separated on-road bike lane is also located in Ward 2.
4. Cathy Duddeck’s point of local pride is the new EMS station on Woodside Drive. There’s also 14 new assisted rental units for seniors and assisted independent living units for those with community supports.
5. Janet Haslett-Theall appreciates the incredible difference that the downtown revitalization has made in support of our BIA, our business community and our Oakville residents, who have flocked to the new, much more livable, and enjoyable environment there.
6. Dave Gittings is proud that the opening of the Oakville Trafalgar Community Centre has been incredibly well-received. And, in response to safety concerns, Community Safety Zones in Ward 3 have doubled.
7. Peter Longo says he’s most happy with our approval of two mobile Automatic Speed Enforcement photo radar systems for each Ward. 
8. Allan Elgar points to his active role in saving the Glen Abbey Golf Course from development this term gives him a big sense of pride. As a green champion, Councillor Elgar is pleased that the Town is on track to meet and exceed our 2030 climate change targets: 20 per cent reduction in energy use and 30 per cent reduction in carbon emissions, with reductions of 24.7 per cent and 29.3 per cent respectively over our baseline.
9. Marc Grant is a strong proponent of public transit and accessibility, so he is happy that in addition to modernizing and electrifying our transit fleet, 249 bus stops in Oakville will be upgraded to ensure full accessibility for riders, with landing pads, walkways, ramps, and curbs. Kids 12 and under ride free on Oakville Transit and we offer free WiFi for all riders and our transit fare is also free when connecting to or from GO Transit service with a simple tap of a PRESTO card. 2022 also marks Oakville Transit’s 50th anniversary.
10. Jeff Knoll and Ward 5 residents have enjoyed the upgrades at the River Oaks Community Centre, including the replacement of the refrigeration system of Rink B. Oakville Public Library has also expanded services with the addition of OPL Express locations at River Oaks and across town. Oakville Public Library Chair Knoll and staff are also working on the new library in North Oakville that will be completed in 2024 with the new community centre.
11. Natalia Lishchyna singles out our notice to the Province that we will buy the Parkway lands in the Joshua Creek watershed when our lease expires, to continue using them for recreation including for the Crusaders Rugby Club.
12. Tom Adams is proud we got former regional reservoir lands on Trafalgar for a future park to serve the growing Uptown area and existing residents.
13. Jasvinder Sandhu has been an advocate for Ward 7 and will be a huge loss for Council. She led a panel on getting more diversity in local politics at our recent municipal conference in Ottawa. The town’s Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan, will carry on her good work on this important issue.
14. Pavan Parmar is happiest for bringing forward the state of the art community centre on Neyagawa Blvd fully funded and set to open in 2024. The new park will also feature a cricket pitch, two additional lit sports fields, a skateboard park, four lit Tennis Courts, seven lit Pickleball Courts, four lit Sand Volleyball Courts, a splash pad, a children’s playground and more. The community centre will be the seventh serving seven wards, in 2006 when I became mayor, we had three community centres for six wards.

Some of the biggest things we have done and we will do in future are made possible by the accomplished business people who serve on the board of directors of Oakville Enterprises. Big things like making possible our great new hospital by covering 25% of the costs of the hospital's local share funding through dividend income earned by enterprises. Big things like the new performing arts centre, new main library, and galleries that we can afford thanks to them. They also have set us up to do more big things. The dividend income is growing so well that we now can afford the new performing arts centre, the new main library, and the galleries that we have long needed to keep up with our past growth in our picturesque downtown.

We are all excited by the super charged capabilities of OEC. OEC has almost $50 million of new working capital to grow our Dividend Income even faster, thanks to our alliance with Enbridge.

Our model for OEC is to do what the City of Edmonton did with its utility 25 years ago. They put business people to work on creating Dividend Income for Edmonton to reduce pressure on taxes. Last year Edmonton received a dividend of $177 million.

We will be able to keep pressure on taxes down while we use dividend income to grow even more livable. Of course, some livability goals can't and were never meant to be solved by municipalities or the property tax and particularly not acting alone. For example, child poverty. We are all glad the federal government acted to cut in half the poverty rate for children to 4.7% in 2020, down from 9.4% in 2019.

We expect the new national childcare plan will save parents in Oakville $14,800 a year for an infant's care. We feel listened to. We advocated for the creation of accessible, quality, and affordable childcare spaces for Ontario families and encouraged the Federal and Ontario governments to reach an agreement that will now deliver affordable childcare and let more women get into the workforce.

Motions that I moved or seconded on this important issue passed at Town Council, Halton Regional Council and at a meeting of Ontario’s Big City Mayors.

Here in Oakville, we have created the capacity and laid a strong foundation to face the future with confidence in ourselves.

Our future is growing. Literally. Growth is a top-down, provincially-led process with minimum targets set and enforced by the Province of Ontario. The Ontario Growth Plan work was begun under the Mike Harris and Ernie Eves Government, first enacted by the Dalton McGuinty Government, and strengthened by the Kathleen Wynne and Doug Ford Governments. All parties in the Legislature support the Growth Plan. For that matter, all parties support the recommendations of the Housing Affordability Task Force. Some individuals and special-interest groups want to go farther than those recommendations. They are in my view, and I believe in Council’s view, being unnecessarily reckless with recommendations to do away with our stable established neighbourhood protections in our Official Plan.

We have grown consistently for the last 16 years throughout the Ontario Growth Plan without ever saying no to growth. For 16 years, we have shown we know how to grow livable without wrecking the Oakville lifestyle. We have never said no to growth. Sixteen years ago we created the Livable Oakville Plan in order grow more livable than we did before. We know that growth is good if we use it to grow more livable.

Oakville has always grown. After World War Two, when the Ford auto assembly plant was built here, growth really took off. Over the last 16 years, Oakville’s growth plan has fully complied with Provincial population and job targets.

Over the next 30 years, the Province has set even faster growth targets than it set in its original growth plan for the GTA. Our growth will be faster, but not as fast as it was between 1990 and 2006 when Town services and facilities fell so far behind. Nowadays we keep up.

The Province has always set targets for new homes. In this last term, we met those targets for mixed and affordable housing.

Resale values have been rising even when other place’s prices have paused, or sunk. That’s a testimonial to how livable buyers consider Oakville. And for the vast majority of homeowners Oakville, those rising values have been a comfort.

We also beat Provincial targets for job growth – by ten per cent.

This Council has set down a highly livable foundation for our future growth. We have directed growth to our main transit routes and nodes that’s in in accord with the province's plan.

The Province has created a super growth node around the Oakville GO station. They call it the Oakville Urban Growth Centre. The Province’s vision is for tall buildings and very high density there. In the province’s vision, people there will rely less on cars and more on GO Trains and transit. This Provincial vision of towers around GO Stations is baked into the Provincial Growth Plan.

That Growth Plan is an Act of the Legislature. It’s not optional. very GTA municipality has an urban growth centre. We have been publicly working on the planning for this Urban Growth Centre since it was enacted by the Legislature in 2006.

Our goal is to make ours the most livable urban growth centre. We need to get on with it. If we don’t enable the required growth there, the Province has the legislated power and the will power to open up our protected, stable established neighbourhood streets to intensification and still order all of the intensifications that the growth plan calls for in the area around the Oakville GO station. So, we'll still get the high density around the GO station, but we'll lose our stable, established, protected neighbourhoods. This is a big deal. It's a threat. I know the vast majority of Oakville does not want the densification of their stable, established neighbourhood streets.

The enhanced Minister's Zoning Orders used this April in Markham, Richmond Hill, and Vaughan to get development going around transit stations were the wake-up call for the rest of the GTA about foot-dragging.

As I summarize this final year of this term of office, I’m proud that Council and I have laid a great foundation for the work that is in front of our Town.

• We can keep Glen Abbey Golf Course saved. Only if a future Council repeals our bylaws can we lose Glen Abbey.
• We can keep Halton’s remaining farmland as farmland unless a future Councils hold the line
• We have the funding is in place to finish adding to the Sixteen Mile sports fields next year and open the new community centre the year after.

We can have the future we want for our families, our seniors, our businesses, and ourselves. We just have to keep our civic energies dedicated to being Canada’s most livable town.

2022 has been an amazing year of change and growth and hope for the future.

As the entrepreneur who created YTV against the odds, I always face the future with optimism and courage and a spirit of innovation.

Let me close with a quote from Bob Dylan: “If you are not busy being born, you’re busy dying.” That’s why I always say, ‘keep moving forward’.

And that is the English meaning of the Town’s official motto, Avancez!

The spirit of Oakville is that the best is always yet to come. We have only just begun creating the always more livable community that we all want.

Let's resolve to grow Oakville evermore livable by working together to get it right and get on with it.

Thank you very much for your attention to these remarks.

The following remarks were delivered to Council, staff and residents at the October 19, 2021, Council meeting, where Mayor Rob Burton also presented his Oakville Status Report.

210 years ago, Indigenous people here began welcoming settlers from all over the British Empire. Soon, they were helping slaves escaping from the United States to settle here too. Today, our Indigenous founding partners are still here enjoying this land with us. They fish and camp under their treaty-22 rights. Indigenous people in their thousands also live with us as neighbours and friends. Our indigenous white and black settlers created a community with an attractive degree of harmony and prosperity. In 1857, Ontario gave official recognition of Oakville as a town. At Town Hall 160 years later, we fly the flag of the Mississauga’s of the Credit beside the flags of Oakville, Ontario, and Canada. We fly these flags together to acknowledge our origins. People from all over the world are attracted to the livability we’ve created; we offer newcomers a warm-spirited welcome. We offer everyone our founding story, so everyone knows what we are part of. We feel sorrow and distress for acts of racism, hatred, and intolerance that are suffered across Canada and even here at home. We want our future to be equitable and inclusive for everyone.

In this, my 15th State of the Town remarks, let’s explore the question, what is the COVID-19 pandemic doing to us?

What a time to be alive! To stay alive, we have to stay alert, alert to the hidden danger of the COVID-19 virus. Even with the vaccines, we stay alert because the virus has proven to be a dangerous shape-shifting enemy. The virus looks for any gap in our defences and rides new hosts who will spread the virus to other hosts. We stay alive by changing our very way of life. Masks. Physical distancing. Careful socializing.

Our way of life has always included vaccines. Small pox. Polio. Measles. Vaccines are lifesavers. They help us stay alive.

A hundred years ago, there was no vaccine for the Spanish flu. The Spanish flu killed an estimated 50,000 Canadians in a bit more than two years. The COVID-19 death toll is 28,000 after almost 20 months in Canada. The Spanish flu killed an estimated 675,000 Americans. The COVID-19 death toll in the United States is already 725,000. Unfortunately, the United States is becoming a world leader in vaccine refusals, after having been a world leader in helping get vaccines made.

Our infectious disease doctors tell us the virus is dangerous because it can hide in some of us and inflict death and long-lasting damage on others. When we relax our vigilance, it blooms.

This picture of persisting danger is what we should keep in mind as the background image for the portrait I want to paint for you now of the state of our town.

Our Town’s toll from the pandemic has been lighter than our neighbours. Lighter than Ontario’s. Lighter than Canada’s. Much lighter than it has been for our giant trading partner and neighbour to the south.

Speaking of trade, our Town’s largest industry is the Ford Canada Oakville Assembly Plant. Thanks to an extraordinary act of cooperation of all levels of government and an alert Ford Canada management, 12 months ago our Ford plant got a new lease on life as an EV maker.

Canada’s auto assembly plants for GM and Chrysler products also were repurposed and saved from closure. Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau received from me heartfelt thanks on behalf of our entire Town and on behalf of the Auto Mayors, the group I founded 13 years ago in a recession and still lead. Keeping our auto industry alive also requires staying on alert, alert to business conditions globally, not just here at home. There is more work to be done to secure the future of this essential advanced manufacturing industry in Canada. Council and I and the Auto Mayors recognize the value of the industry and the work we need to do to keep it healthy.

The Ford Motor Company of Canada announcement amounted to a historic $1.8 billion investment to transform the Oakville Assembly Complex from an internal combustion car making site to a battery electric vehicle manufacturing facility, starting in 2024. The town successfully advocated for Provincial and Federal funding of $590 million to help Ford upgrade its assembly plant in Oakville. We have had other surprising economic development success during this second year of the pandemic. Given the pandemic, economic conditions have looked very different than in previous years.

We can feel proud of the way Oakville businesses pivoted and innovated throughout the pandemic. Happily, construction continued for new investment, new company arrivals, and expansions.

For a third year in a row, Oakville was named one of Canada’s Best Locations to invest by Site Selection Magazine. Oakville’s innovative companies continue to grow, and we welcome our newest companies and celebrate the businesses that have chosen to continue to invest and expand within our community.

We welcomed BDO Canada, Samuel Son & Co., BMO Financial Group, and Kerr’s Candy to the town.

We saw facility expansions at Habasit Canada Ltd., Media Resources, Virox Technologies Inc., Zeton Inc. and Grundfos Canada Inc. These investments created 1,000 jobs. They supported our town’s local economic recovery and future growth.

Terrestrial Energy marked its 100th hire at Oakville headquarters with plans to add 80 more engineers and scientists over the next 12 months. Spark Power’s new 40,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art head office is set for completion in 2022. 

Innovation and invention grow in Oakville, too. Oakville is home to a cutting edge genomics company called My Next Health. The company is founded on the research of Dr. Mansoor Mohammad. His work has been short-listed for the Nobel Prize on two occasions. The company is led by CEO Dr Richard Heinzl, a Harvard and Oxford-educated specialist in preventive medicine. He was founder of Doctors Without Borders Canada. Doctors Without Borders was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. Rehan Huda, an investment banker and CEO of Green Sky Labs, a leading technology incubation company leads their investment rounds. All three are Oakville residents. The company is pioneering new ways to understand and commercialize genetic insights to advance healthcare worldwide.

My Next Health recently secured a $150 million dollar financing commitment from a hedge fund in New York City. When they secure their necessary investors, they hope to revolutionize medicine with genomic tools for truly individualized diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions.

My Economic Task Force continued to work together to support some of the hardest hit by the pandemic: the small business community. The Task Force was comprised of Oakville Economic Development department, the Oakville Chamber of Commerce, Visit Oakville and the three Oakville Business Improvement Associations: the Downtown BIA, the Kerr Street BIA and Bronte Village BIA. Our Task Force worked with our Provincial and Federal partners to update and extend small business support programs. We advocated for an extended patio program and many initiatives to support local business and encourage residents to shop local. The province listened to us. We also kept our historic, nationally famous Glen Abbey Golf Course alive. Again, it took three levels of government, as well as a historic letter-writing campaign by engaged citizens. The three levels were: the local Town Council of Oakville, the council of the Region of Halton, and the province of Ontario.

At the announcement 12 months ago of the saving of the Ford plant, the Premier allowed me to remind him of his government’s promise to help us protect Glen Abbey. Eight months later, the government of Ontario said it had decided there is a provincial interest in conserving the heritage attributes of the Glen Abbey Golf Course. ClubLink withdrew its applications and abandoned its appeals of the Town’s refusals of its applications.

Instantly, the protective policies ClubLink were appealing came into full force and effect. In effect, a declaration of provincial interest is a far more powerful provincial tool than a Minister’s Zoning Order, the “MZO” we hear so much about in the news.

In the Report that accompanies these remarks, you will read of the many other great things Council and I have delivered during the pandemic.

Let’s turn our attention to perhaps our Town’s greatest advantage in life: our people. We are a town of caring and accomplishment. We on Council are chosen by you to represent you and fulfill your hopes and dreams for our town.

For four terms, almost 16 years, you have chosen people with unique attributes and expectations who know how to work together as a team for you and get results. They know how to listen.

Other mayors tell me they are jealous of how good a council you give me to work with. I thank you for that, every day. You get more than my thanks. You largely get what you want, too.

Even when we may not agree, your council has a wonderful ability to blend positions and find agreement. In groups, some of the most helpful words are, how can we change this idea so you can like it, too? Let me give you some examples of the achievements of Council.

This pandemic has really shown your council how much Oakville residents value our parks, trails and outdoor space which is why our Council decided to advance more community and outdoor infrastructure for all residents to enjoy.

Town Council unanimously approved a refresh to our Strategic Plan that sets out new actions to help achieve Council’s vision for Oakville “to be the most livable town in Canada. Members of Council identified six priority areas for the town to address within this term of Council:

Ensuring that Oakville’s vision for the future is reflected in the Halton Region Official Plan and Livable Oakville Reviews

The development of a recovery plan to manage the pandemic recovery period.

Continue to promote safe and efficient travel on town roads through implementation of traffic calming, reduced speed limits, active transportation infrastructure and automated speed enforcement. I’ll just note here that although last night, Council may have postponed a town-wide speed reduction for a year; when Town Council got done adding community safety zones to the town, a gigantic increase in the part of the town governed by a 40 km/h speed limit became possible.

Implement the Digital Oakville strategy with emphasis on offering services online and continuing to reduce the response time for processing development applications and permits

Enhance communications in order to inform the community about the town’s programs, services and decision-making environment

Continue to identify and implement capital projects that are of interest to the community and that will grow our livability

Ward 2 Councillors Cathy Duddeck and Ray Chisholm gained Council support for the town’s most extensive park and shoreline redevelopment at Tannery Park. The revitalized Tannery Park continues to be a tourist attraction with an attractive view of Lake Ontario. Both Councillors continue to advocate on behalf of the Kerr Street BIA and businesses across their ward.

Ward 3 Councillors Janet Haslett-Theall and Dave Gittings supported the two phases of reconstruction and the transformation of Downtown part of Lakeshore Road East. It is now complete and the road has re-opened to vehicles, cyclists, shoppers and visitors. The Lakeshore Road Reconstruction and Streetscape Project launched in 2019 and was completed over a two-year period. The Town of Oakville received an Excellence in Economic Development award for its Downtown Mitigation Strategy from the Economic Developers Council of Ontario. The project was selected as a best-in-class example for its unique and innovative approach to construction mitigation.

Ward 4 Councillor Peter Longo’s leadership on the Community Energy Plan Task Force has been invaluable in the development of Future Energy Oakville and implementing our Community Energy Plan. His colleague Councillor Allan Elgar has been a champion for our town for years and a Council member for 21. He was an original member of the municipal leaders of the Greenbelt and a recipient of the 2020 Friend of the Greenbelt Award for municipal leadership. His advice and experience are helpful to us all.

Ward 5 Councillors Marc Grant and Jeff Knoll worked with the Parks and Open Space Department to create a capital budget that Council could fund to complete the planned ‘activity court’ area near the intersection of Hays Boulevard and Georgian Drive. This work includes installation of a full-size basketball court, multiple seating elements, games tables and related landscaping.

Councillors Knoll and Elgar, at 21 years on Council, are the deans of council, as they say. The planned acquisition of the surplus Trafalgar Road reservoir site for public parkland, the planned new basketball court at Iroquois Ridge Community Centre and the related conversion of courts at Valleybrook Park to allow pickleball in Ward 6 are examples of Councillors Natalia Lishchyna and Tom Adams’ commitment to enhance outdoor recreational opportunities in their ward.

Councillors Adams, Duddeck, and Grant, at 18 years of service bring valuable experience to the table.

Ward 1 Councillors Beth Robertson and Sean O’Meara represent Oakville’s west end, most of it. They point to the Shore Promenade as a real success for residents. The Promenade was identified as a high priority fix for a bad erosion site following the 2019 record breaking high Lake Ontario water levels. Shoreline protection improvements at Vista Promenade and Water’s Edge Park, bordered by Bronte Heritage Waterfront Park to the west and Water’s Edge Drive to the east are now complete. This fall, the town has already undertook tree planting as part of the project’s remaining restoration work to replace trees that were removed to allow for construction. A detailed design is already underway for the rehabilitation works that consist of improvements to the existing armour stone stacked wall and repairs to the stone steps to improve public access to the water. As pleased as people are with it, I know that they will be even more pleased as next year unfolds.

Councillors Chisholm, Gittings, Lishchyna, O’Meara, make up the middle of our Council’s range of experience. This range gives stability.

Perhaps the greatest achievement for Ward 7 this term will prove to be Councillors Jasvinder Sandhu and Pavan Parmar winning unanimous Council support to advance completion of North Park. As a result, we will see detail design work moving ahead in North Oakville for a Community Centre, library branch, sports fields and other outdoor amenities including: a splash pad, playground, basketball, skateboard and BMX/bike Park, a second artificial turf field, three natural turf soccer fields – two of which will have dual purpose for use as a cricket pitch.

Not bad for first term council members, a group that includes Councillors Janet Haslett-Theall, Beth Robertson, and Peter Longo, all doing well.

Working together across all levels of government is part of the secret of our town’s success. The provincial and federal governments and the town jointly funded 14 projects to modernize our transit system and create a more sustainable community. Projects included the replacement of 57 diesel buses with zero-emission battery-electric buses, plus 16 new electric buses to expand the fleet; as well as upgrades to ensure full accessibility for riders.

Local MPs Pam Damoff and Minister Anand were successfully re-elected, a month ago, because they continue to listen and deliver for Oakville residents and work well with our provincial partners.

Our MPPs Stephen Crawford and Effie Triantafilopoulos kept their word and made our local campaign to save our world-famous golf course come true. They have brought our concerns to Queens Park and Premier Ford’s desk. They have secured new funding for new schools in North Oakville and addressed our long-term care bed deficit with their most recent announcement of two long-term-care facilities that are expected to house 640 residents. I know they will continue to deliver on Midtown Oakville and work with Council to fund more community infrastructure.

Jane Clohecy and our dedicated town staff have kept our economy growing, our pandemic under better control that anyone expected, and our finances in triple-A strength – among other things. Those other things run from the tiny to the mighty, but it’s all in a day’s work in Canada’s most livable town, where appearances and upkeep also matter to our residents.

As we all see in staying alive to enjoy life, some good things take more time than others. One of the resounding successes of this Council is our new old downtown. The broad sidewalks. The traditional street furniture. The happy people.

Just as I started with a question about the impact of the pandemic on our lives, let me close with a question about the future of our downtown.

Everyone asks me when will Town Square be redone? The answer is, we are ready to go. We want to be sure our downtown businesses have recovered from their sacrifices during construction and during the pandemic lockdowns, before starting more construction.

The other question I get a lot is what happened to the rest of the think big visioning for downtown I called you all to be part of. That led to a shared community vision for renewed and right-sized downtown cultural facilities. A new library. A new performing arts centre to fit our town today and tomorrow as we continue to grow our livability. A little theatre. A gallery for our artists. A parking structure with an attraction on top. Because this would be expensive, we empowered Oakville Enterprises Corporation and Oakville Municipal Development Corporation to generate new business dividends that could carry the cost of these projects without new tax revenues.

We thought that might take many years and it has. The talented businesswomen and men on our boards have now achieved the critical mass needed to reliably expect that increase in dividends.

Therefore, I’m calling on the community and you’re Council to begin the process of a final design concept and time table for the Downtown Cultural Hub vision. Let’s agree to take it from vision to the next stage and call it the Downtown Cultural Hub project.

Our motto, “Avancez”, is just a fancy word for “keep moving forward”. We’ve shown that Oakville truly does keep moving forward even in adversity.

The threat of COVID-19 is now reduced thanks to vaccine, but it’s not gone. So we must stay alert to stay alive. Follow public health guidelines. Get your vaccines if you haven’t yet. Encourage and assure those you know who are hesitant. Let’s have no more deaths, no more lockdowns. Let’s all stay alive!

Thank you for your time and attention. Council and I look forward to continuing to serve you. Please keep well, stay safe, and let us know of any chance to be helpful to you and yours with the programs and services of the Region of Halton and the great Town of Oakville.

The first and only item on the agenda, Council, is the Mayor's annual Oakville status report, the “State of the Town” address. I’m very happy to see you all here for it and I have a presentation. The reaction was so positive last year when I used slides for the 2019 Livable Oakville Progress Report, I'm back for 2020 with another slideshow. In this slideshow, just like last year, I'm going to briefly cover the structure of our Town, the services of our Town, the trends we're seeing, the needs that we’re still working on and the vision that guides us.

I'd like to start by reminding everybody that municipalities are created by the province as municipal service delivery corporations. All municipal powers come from the province and the province has a veto over how we use them. So, to a certain degree, being in the municipal sector can feel like playing a game among adults of “Mother may I?” We are one of four local partners of a two-tier cooperative municipal services body. That body is called the Regional Municipality of Halton and that's been in place since 1974.

I mention that because I still meet people who have successfully ignored the existence of the region of Halton as a factor in the municipal scene. I’ve got a schematic that helps you visualize it. You have Oakville, Burlington, Milton and Halton Hills put together back in 1974. Back in 1974 we were all individual towns and cities and now we are this two-tier creature. And what that means is we deliver some municipal services at the local level and the really big ones that benefit from cooperation are delivered at the upper level.

To constitute the Council at the upper level we have twenty-four people, and they ascend from the lower Councils. In Burlington they have seven Councillors locally and those seven serve on the Region. In Milton they have 11 Councillors locally and five of them come to the Region. In

Halton Hills they've got nine, three of whom come to the Region. And in Oakville we have 15, eight of whom come to the Region. And it's worth noting that our council of 15 actually costs less than the Burlington council of seven. And that's because they have a bunch of staff to support those Councillors that we don't have here. To make twenty-four, we elect a Chair throughout the Region during the municipal election.

All municipal powers are exercised only by resolutions by Councils. This is important and the main reason it's important is that some people think the Mayor has more power than the Mayor really has or that a Councillor has more power than a Councillor really has. We all have to work together or at least, put another way, there has to be a majority on each council for anything to start or stop.

Now it is true that the Mayor also has special duties of being the Chief Executive Officer for the town or city, but those CEO duties are the leadership and informing parts of being a CEO, not the executive authority. So as a result I’m proud to say that our Councils seek consensus. I think this has been a hallmark of Oakville and Halton and the other municipalities for almost all the time that we've had this two-tier structure.

Now in Oakville we are divided into seven wards and the first Ward in the Southwest is represented by Beth Robertson and Sean O'Meara, the next Ward is the south central and that's represented by Ray Chisholm and Cathy Duddeck. In the southeast the Councillors are Janet Haslett-Theall and Dave Gittings. In the northwest, we call it Ward 4, we have Peter Longo and Allan Elgar. In the in the centre we have Ward 5, Marc Grant and Jeff Knoll. In what we can agree is the northeast we have Natalia Lishchyna and Tom Adams for Ward 6. And in the new Ward 7 we have Town Councillor Jasvinder Sandhu and Town and Regional Councillor Pavan Parmar. And then I complete council and bring us to 15.

Now let's talk about the services and the state of our services as we look at 2020. Municipal services run from regional to local. So for example the police column says $70 million and that's how much of the police spending comes from Oakville, the rest of the police spending of more than $170 million for that year comes from the other municipalities in Halton. The Halton property tax dollar is of interest when we talk about whether we do something at the Region or at the local level. When you do a service at the regional level, 42 cents of the cost comes out of Oakville. That's because Oakville has more rateable or taxable property than the others have. And what we get for our taxes is, again, money coming out of Oakville. For the almost $200 million from Oakville we get fire, library, parks, recreation, streets and transit.

For the $180 million that we give to the Region we get the emergency services, that's the ambulance, the garbage, the housing corporation, social housing, the police service, the roads and other services such as administering welfare on behalf of the Province. You would think that would be a pass-through from the province but we actually are underfunded in that area and so a contribution comes from the taxpayers. There's also, at the Region, the water service, which is another $360 million dollars.

When you add up all of the municipal services from Halton Hills, Milton, Burlington and Oakville and the Region of Halton it's more than $2 billion and that compares to, say, for the City of Toronto a total of $13 billion. The City of Toronto is 2.7 million residents while the Region of Halton is 600,000 residents, so you can do the math to see that we're, I will say more efficient or more economical. So just to emphasize it's more than $2 billion going on at the Region and at the Town level it's around $300 million when you add in the capital that we spend on infrastructure and maintenance of our infrastructure.

So what are the trends that we're seeing around us? The total property tax increases before we started using performance-based program budgeting or “outcomes management” is displayed on this chart and what it shows is that we had a very spiky experience. From one year to the next it was difficult for homeowners to budget. And you can also see by the trend line that the direction was upward and not on any gradual path.

Since we introduced outcomes management and the associated policies of limiting tax increases at or below inflation, you see a much more manageable experience for the taxpayer in terms of budgeting and you also see the downward trend. In 2020 the Oakville tax increase for all municipal services, that's not just the Town, but the Region, and education was a 2% increase. Burlington was 2.44%, Mississauga was 3.24% and Toronto was 4.24%.

Now, we got a new library and a new recreation centre and a new fire station for our money. In Toronto I would just point out that the municipal land transfer tax gave them another $800 million in tax money that's not really captured by their 4.24% tax increase and when you factor that in it's as if they had a 5.05% tax increase.

The actual full property tax rate in Oakville gets calculated or reset down every year and that's because as the value of property goes up. The law by the province requires us to restate the tax rate so that there's never a windfall profit. I say this every year because there's a lot of people who believe that somehow there's a magic to rising assessment that gives the Town a profit and it is important to dispel that myth. So, that reassessment is announced every year in your tax bill and these taxes fund your local services, your regional services and your schools.

We use seven fiscal tools in order to achieve that downward trend that I've described for you. The first is: the previous government reversed downloads to the municipal sector that the Harris government had introduced back in the ‘90s. The second is that our Council determined 14 years ago, when I became Mayor, to maximize development fees rather than subsidize development. Over the last 14 years there's been discounts and exemptions in the development charge statute of the Province that left us still subsidizing growth to a degree, but not as badly as it as we did before we maximized our development fees. We also reduced our tax-paid debt by 88% and that reduced the amount that we were spending on interest and principal repayment.

We created new non-tax revenue by creating two municipal entities: Oakville Enterprise Corporation and Oakville Municipal Development Corporation. Those two corporations, whose boards are constituted by local business leaders and highly experienced men and women in business, have increased the amount of non-tax revenue to the Town in the form of dividends from the success they’ve had in developing businesses that are related to either the use of surplus Town property or the creation of services businesses along the energy sector.

We also linked user fees to the consumer price index. What I showed Council 14 years ago was that because user fees had been held down, that was contributing to the annual increases in property tax being greater than inflation. So if you squeeze the one you boost the other and that has also helped turn in a better tax performance. PB2, or outcomes management, as I’ve already mentioned. We’ve also adopted regular value and efficiency audits that save $2 and $3 million every two or three years when we do them. They are very disruptive and extensive and hard to do, so you can’t just do them at a snap of a finger.

I want to point out and give credit where credit is due, in this pandemic period of COVID, we’ve had challenges to our finances and the province has paid our COVID cost of about $6 million and that has set us up pretty well for turning in a good performance this year. We will see, as we continue in the rest of this year with our budget, how we’ll do for next year’s budget. I’m optimistic and confident that we’ll keep to our policy of not having tax increases greater than inflation.

Now, another trend that I am very proud of is that for 14 years in a row we are number one in safety in Canada and we are the top town for liveability and 14 years ago we were 30th. I attribute this not only to Council and the many fine policies and very good facilities we built, and the good roads we focused on having. But also, this Town has a unique level of community engagement and that generates a social health that attribute to our many strong places of worship, the many strong civil society organizations ranging from charities and residence associations.

Now, that’s not to say we don’t still have needs; I would like to talk for a moment about how we are meeting our needs.

The good news is that poverty is improving and we've been working hard at that over the last 14 years. We have, unlike other regions in Ontario, continuously added new social housing opportunities to build our supply for those people who need this kind of help. We’ve also seen the benefit from our Community Safety and Well-being Plan, which is the first municipal community safety and well-being plan in the province and guides the work, not just of the police but also the civil society agencies that we work with in order to strengthen the health and safety of our community.

It’s not widely appreciated or known that we administer the Ontario Disability Support payments in the Ontario Works program and because those programs are inadequate for our residents’ needs, we’ve raised those from local taxes. We’ve also created the Halton Community Investment Fund and over 14 years we’ve taken that from $800,000 to $3.3 million. I expect to succeed in getting into next year per year.

Now in addition to that, United Way is a strong force in our community. I believe in the United Way. Every year through my appeals and my fundraising events I raise about $200,000 for that organization. And they've done two things for us in the last couple of years. One is they run a community benefits table, which talks to how to create community benefits out of large infrastructure projects. So for example, job training programs as a part of an infrastructure program would give people who are marginalized the chance at job skills that could turn into a highly portable set of skills that allows them to re-enter or enter the mainstream with regular employment. In addition to that, they’ve been operating the Halton Poverty Roundtable which gives us the benefit of hearing the voices from those with lived experience and I think it's helpful that we make sure their voices are not inadvertently overlooked or ignored. In additional to that, the biggest single thing that is reducing poverty is the increased Canada Child Benefit the Federal Government brought in, to which the experts have attributed a 20% reduction in poverty.

We have some policy needs ahead of us that I’d like to call on everybody to work together with me on developing because these are vital to our success as a community.

We are engaged right now in an obligatory Official Plan Review for the Halton Official Plan, that’s required by the Province every five years or so. Same thing for the Oakville Official Plan and we are doing those in concert with the Region so that we can avoid as much contradiction as possible. I don’t believe you can miss the notices that the Region and the Town have been handing out for the public consultations involved in that and I urge you to be involved. The new rules from the Province around growth are such that I think it is fair to say the Province’s position is the public’s input is only really wanted at the front end and that would be at these official plan review points. After this cake is baked, the slices that come off of it are not subject to a lot of change at, least from the public in the new Ontario system.

We also need a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Plan and this is such a big need, and I mean for the community as a whole, and that I think needs to be done at the Regional level, bringing together all of our local municipalities. We live together, work together and play together across this Region and we all have family and friends across the Region and that’s where this needs to go. I am very proud of the fact that for seven years we’ve had the Halton Equity and Diversity Roundtable and that is the vehicle I think we can use to create this Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Plan.

We also, at the Town level, I believe, need to review and refresh our Strategic Plan. Every four years we do a major look at it and every year we do a quick look at it. But now in the middle of this term, at the two year mark, I think it is time for a bigger than minor review and perhaps less than a major review, but we need to make sure we get this right in order to have the most effective term possible.

We have implemented, or adopted, a Community Energy Strategy but the Community Energy Strategy needs the programs that will implement it, and that’s why I mention that here too.

These five things are the big jobs ahead of us. As we look at the progress on our 10-year plan, we can take pride in the accomplishment of finishing the Southeast Oakville Community Centre, the Bronte Outer Harbour acquisition is complete, the Trafalgar Community and Senior Centre was finished last year, and the Downtown Oakville Village Streetscape Renewal is ending now. Advancing our vital projects to build the Wyecroft Road Bridge, to complete the grade separations for Burloak and Kerr, and the Regional social housing, roads, and waterworks are continuing and the electrification of our transit fleet and building of electric vehicle charging stations is now also underway.

Vital and not yet finished, is the North Park Rec Centre and the Phase 2 playing fields. Not only are these not finished, but not even begun, and in my view a very strongly needed project. We also have the Heritage designated Oakville Trafalgar High School that we need to repurpose and reuse in some adaptive way. When you are a champion of heritage conservation and preservation, like we are, it means you can’t have a heritage designated building boarded up forever and so I am calling on Council to work with me to get that project completed.

We also have ahead of us the need to deal with the Midtown Growth Centre, bridges, roads, and fix to the QEW. The good news is there’s been signs now from the Province that they might agree with us that the block that’s keeping their urban growth centre, which is the 250 acres around the Oakville GO Station, the busiest GO Station in the system, the block that is preventing that Provincial Growth Centre from happening is the Province’s QEW so there may be some progress to look forward to on that.  

We need to continue to work to create downtown waterside attractions and access to the waterfront to increase the reasons for people to go downtown and keep our historic downtown vital and successful.

We also need a second parking structure with a rooftop feature down there. Can you imagine, say a four-storey parking structure, and the rooftop feature would give yet another reason to go down? It would be an attraction. I mean at the very least could you imagine a patio with a lake view from there? It could be very nice.

And longer-term, Council has a unanimously-adopted downtown cultural hub renewal and extension plan and we’re looking to our municipal development corporation and the Oakville Enterprises Corporation to come up with the funding for that.

Now, municipalities have many moving parts, you’ve probably heard me say it before, and our municipal parts are still moving very well. We’ve managed through the pandemic, just as we did through the great recession, with no significant losses and that’s partly because the Province of Ontario and Canada have stepped up to guide us and help fight the pandemic and to help us with the costs.

In addition to that, the Ford Motor Company and the Ontario Government, and Canada, came together in an unprecedented way, to save the Oakville Assembly Plant and the tens of thousands of jobs across Ontario and indeed the rest of Canada in the auto parts industry and in raw materials refining and processing, all of which feeds into the Oakville Assembly Plant and also saves the thousands of direct jobs in that plant. So we owe a great debt of thanks to the leadership, not just of Canada and Ontario, but also to the Ford Motor Company in the United States who decided, after a very, very tense and suspenseful summer, that the Oakville Assembly Plant was worth saving.

Now, this shows that Oakville keeps moving forward, even in adversity, and I think we can all be proud of that because we all had a hand in our success.

Black Lives Matter has shown us during this year that we must come together to fight racism. We’ve got to make sure that no one is left out and that no one is left behind and that everybody feels comfortable and accepted in our community. We have to remember, I like to remind people, that three races founded Oakville and they founded Oakville with a goal and a vision of harmony and prosperity. That’s why I think it’s important to acknowledge the Indigenous, white and Black settlers who gathered here and lived together seeking harmony and prosperity long before the 1857 recognition of the settlement by the Ontario Legislature when Oakville was officially created as a Town.

Now it’s time to say a word about our vision. People without a vision can wind up anywhere. If you don’t know where you want to go I guess you’ll be happy with wherever you get. But in Oakville we’ve written down our vision and it is a comprehensive set of plans.

There’s a central document called Vision 2057 and I would say the core part of that is the Livable Oakville Official Plan or Land Use Plan. That’s what sets down what we want our community to look like. And the zoning by-law, which descends from that, and must conform to the Official Plan, is how we implement that vision. These are informed by our Heritage District Plans, and our Area Land Use studies and all of that is informed by our Sustainability plans – whether it’s our Economic Development Strategic Plan, our energy control, air quality, low energy, local food, bikes and paths and trails, our so-called active transportation, green energy or the enhanced natural heritage system. You can call that the Municipal Greenbelt, because that’s what it is. In the Municipal Greenbelt that we’ve created, 51 per cent of Halton is protected open and green space and 30 per cent of North Oakville is saved in the first natural heritage system, which became the enhanced natural heritage system of the Region. And, not to mention, our 40 per cent tree canopy cover goal.

These come together in our infrastructure master plan and the infrastructure master plan feeds our development charges study and by-law and that’s where we make growth pay for every bit of the cost of growth that we can. And because the Provincial Government has, just this year and just recently, reversed the Harris government discounts and exemptions for developers over the next two years, the Legislature has now implemented a new statute that takes away those exemptions and discounts and gradually phases in the full recovery of growth costs. And I have to thank the current Provincial Government for that far-sighted and important change.

All of this leads into our asset management plan and we are very proud of our asset management plan because it’s fully funded, unlike our neighbours who have to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars in order to do the maintenance and renewal of their infrastructure. We have a cash basis fully-funded asset management plan and all of that leads us to our annual operating budgets and capital budgets.

I hope this is useful to you. I think whenever you want to make a place better you usually go: “something’s wrong, I want to fix it or I want to get it changed”. When you have this roadmap to how all our plans work together I hope this lets you see where to put your energy to get the change that you may want. Mind you, change requires a certain amount of consensus and community engagements so I recommend that you remember how important community engagement is.

So our vision is to have outstanding staff, services and facilities and the most sustainable region in Canada. We believe in fully-funded asset management, our vision includes controlling growth, debt and taxes. Our vision includes strong, discretionary reserves so that when nature or disease throws us a curve ball it doesn’t flatten us. And our vision is to be Canada’s most livable town.

We have a vision that we must have diversity, equity and inclusion. No one should be left out or left behind. Our vision is to continue to be the safest region in Canada. We believe in developing new, non-tax revenues so that we can afford the high quality services and facilities that our residents want without having higher taxes to burden us.

And we also have as a key part of our vision that we keep our community engaged. We work really hard at that. Luckily, it’s not a really big challenge because it seems like Oakville attracts people that want to be engaged in making their community better.

We keep our taxes at or under the Consumer Price Index and I don’t see that changing.

And we seek climate resilience and all of that adds up to being a greener and cleaner place to live.

So our mission, in a nutshell, is Livable Oakville, Canada’s most livable town. And, Sustainable Halton, Canada’s most sustainable regional municipality.

Our motto is “Avancez”, that’s just a fancy word for “keep moving forward” and the great recession and the great pandemic have shown that Oakville keeps moving forward, even in adversity.

Thank you for your time and attention. I look forward to continuing to serve you.

The following remarks were delivered to Council, staff and residents at the September 23, 2019, Council meeting, where Mayor Rob Burton also presented his Oakville Status Report:

It is my pleasure at this time to provide you my annual Oakville State of the Town remarks and tonight if technology permits; so tonight is a bit of an unusual approach I'm giving a slide talk instead of a speech. And let's see how it goes and if it if it's a hit we'll do it again and if it's not we'll never do it again, so a lot of work.

So I thought I would start with some basics and I know that many of the public have some particular questions on their mind and I have some information if not answers for all of those.

So let's start with the fact that municipalities have many moving parts and our municipal parts are moving very well and the province of Ontario is changing the rules in the middle of the game, so to speak, in ways that they did not campaign to do. And in my view, our taxes, our services and our quality of life are at some risk.

So, with that as the setting for these remarks I want to turn first to how the municipality is organized because one of the things I've learned over the years I've been Mayor is that the structure of the municipality is not clear to everybody and that's because we have several kinds of municipal structures in the province of Ontario. And, so we'll start with the question what is Oakville anyway?

Oakville and my submission is one of four local partners of a two-tier municipal cooperative services body that is called Halton Region. And this has been going on since 1974, it's 45 years old and so it's always; I meet newcomers who don't understand it or know it and I explain to them it's 45 years old and they go, “Oh.” But nobody's really given anybody this picture before, so here is a picture that displays that organization for you and you can see here that at the local municipal level are the four partners in Halton region, operate what are called local municipal governments. Burlington, to do this alphabetically has a Council of seven and sends all seven of them to the Regional Council. And Halton Hills has nine Councillors and sends three of them to the Regional Council. And Milton has eleven Councillors and they send five of them to the Regional Council. And we have 15 Councillors and we send eight of us to the Regional Council table and that totals 24 when you include the Chair, Mr.Gary Carr who's been our chair for going on 13 years now. He also describes himself as a recovering professional hockey player.

Now, one of the things that came up in my interview with the special advisors to the Minister on the amalgamation or the regional government review, regional governance review as they style it; was the cost of Council. And I owe Councillor Adams for this work but he basically went and added up everything they spend on their Council including staff and offices and everything we spend, in order to show that our larger Council actually cost $120 thousand dollars a year less than theirs. And the result is that you have far more local access, far more local contact to your members of Council. Why does this matter?

In September of last year the Premier was on Global television, I happened to see him and he was being asked about his complaint that there are too many local politicians and this is what he said, he said, “Everybody knows that in the corporate world, best practice is to have a board of directors of seven to nine.” And he added, “I expect every municipality in Ontario to fall in line.” Now I'm not here to argue with the Premier, but I am aware of corporate boards including some of our major banks that are a bit bigger than that, you can look it up.

So here at the Town we divide our territory and Wards and these fine people are your representatives. There are six women and nine men and if you can see Ward One on this map that's where Beth Robertson and Sean O'Meara share representation duties, with Sean also being one of the ones at the Region. Similarly Councillor Ray Chisholm and Councillor Cathy Duddeck represent the south-central part and Councillor Duddeck is the one who sits on the Regional Council. On the Ward Three end of this map that's where you find Town Councillor Janet Haslett-Theall and Town and Regional Councillor Dave Gittings. On the Ward Four part of the map is where you find Town Councillor Peter Longo here and his Town and Regional Councillor colleague Allan Elgar who couldn't be with us tonight. In Ward Five, is where you find Town Councillor Mark Grant and Town and Regional Councillor Jeff Knoll. Ward Six is where Town Councillor Natalya Lishchyna represents and Town and Regional Councillor Tom Adams. And Ward Seven, our newest Ward is represented by Town Councillor Jasvinder Sandhu and Town and Regional Councillor Pavan Parmar who's on maternity leave.

Now, another thing that people are always wondering about is what is the size of Oakville? What's our population? And our population in the census in 2016 it was reported as 194 000, almost and that is about 36% of the population of Halton. And we have and the other municipalities are shown here, I don't think I need to repeat them but what's interesting is when you move forward to today and we do this, this is an estimate but not the census but it's based on construction activity. You'll see that we tend to stay around 36% of the population of Halton and you also learn that we're a nice 600 000.

Now if we were to be put on the same regime that the City of Toronto's Council was put on, where one Councillor per roughly a hundred thousand is what that obtains, you could see a possibility here of six Council members and a Mayor for if there were a City of Halton or if there was an order from the province to change the size of the Regional Council. I don't know if the province has an appetite to reach down to the local municipal level, the name they gave their review activity is a “regional governance review”, however we are a constituent part of that so we'll have to wait and see.

Now another thing that's always kind of a surprise to people is that most, is that we have a great deal of the ratable property in Oakville when you speak about the Region as a whole. So we may only be 36 per cent of the population but we have 42 per cent of the taxable property. So the result is that out of every Halton tax dollar 42 cents of it comes out of Oakville and the others contribute as you see here: 33 cents, 16 and 9.

Now another thing that's very usually surprising to people is to discover that all municipal powers are exercised only by resolutions of Council. Individual Council members can't go ordering people around and that a Mayor has only one vote plus the leadership duties of a CEO for the Town and leadership duties are the duties that are not executive or authority-related. That's the duty to inspire and lead as opposed to direct and order. And our Councils at both levels seek consensus. We don't always achieve it but we do seek it and I think that's a great part of living in Oakville.

All municipal power comes from the province, this is a big surprise to people because a lot of people think that everybody is sovereign in their own sphere and but when you go look at the Canadian Constitution you discover that there is no municipal government level. There's only federal and provincial and the provincial level creates and regulates a municipal level. And the province has a veto over all of our decisions. So it can feel a little bit like the old game of “Mother May I?” if you remember as a child ever being a part of that or seeing others.

The role of a municipality when you look at it in a technical way is that it's a municipal service delivery corporation and as I mentioned it's created by the province. And the province’s regional governance review of which I've spoken a couple of times is being delayed. It's being delayed until after the federal election.

Now I want to turn to services because I think that's another area where people; there's a certain familiarity that people don't have about the services. We at Oakville Council, because a majority of us also sit at the Regional Council, we tend to think of the municipality as being two-in-one. There's a local element and there's an upper element and we are in both. And so, I'm going to show you what our taxes buy at the two different levels. Now our property tax also goes to schools, so out of Oakville $106 million, approximately, goes to the province for schools. $197 million of property tax comes to the town for services like fire, library, parks streets and transit. And about $182 million goes to the Region for ambulance and garbage and housing and police and roads and other things.

And then there's water, water is a really big expensive thing when you open your tap you have, most people have no idea how expensive that water that you get from your tap is. And I'm going to tell you, out of Oakville because we're about 36% of the population goes about $360 million dollars for water to the Region to sustain the waterworks. So if you compare $360 to $182 or $197; you can see that the biggest bite on your dollar on your wallet comes from your water. When you add it all up the Region of Halton spends about almost a billion and a half dollars and the Town of Oakville spends almost $300 million dollars. Those numbers will be important later.

Now when you look at those services and what I've done here is I've shown you how much tax money goes into each of those services. And the orange or brown ones are the regional ones and the green are the local Oakville ones. And what you will see there, what I want you to take away from there is I want you to notice that the biggest thing that the town spends on is infrastructure maintenance and renewal and then the next two biggest ones are fire and transit. And well, next three biggest ones are fire, local streets and transit but let's remember fire and transit because we are going to come back to those later.

Now I'm very pleased to tell you that great progress has been made on reducing poverty and I don't know that we at the local level can take much credit for that. I can tell you that it's not our job to reduce poverty at the local level, poverty is something that's addressed by the spheres of jurisdiction and influence of the federal and the provincial government. However we have made progress at the local level towards supporting or increasing anti-poverty measures as I'm about to describe and that is we've been steadily increasing the number of new regional social housing opportunities and that over the last 12, 13 years we've added about 1,700 new social housing opportunities to the almost 4,000 that we started with so that's some progress. We've also adopted, unanimously, a Community Safety and Well-Being plan and we were the first large municipality to do that at the order of the province. And I'm very, very pleased to tell you that the Community Safety and Well-Being plan was, it was created under the previous government but the current government saw enough value in it to become a proponent of it and it followed through and ordered the municipalities to create them. The Community Safety and Well-Being plan allows us to focus our resources on the safety and well-being of all our residents and it works in cooperation with the police. It's a great plan and you can find it on Halton.ca.

At the upper municipal level we also administer for the province, the Ontario Disability Support payment program and Ontario Works and because the province historically, and I'm not blaming this government, this is endemic to the provincial government no matter who is in power. Relative to our perception in our municipality at the Halton level, the ODSP and OW funds have not been adequate and we have been supplementing the province’s spending in this area. In addition to that, we have over the last 13 years created the Halton Community Investment Fund which has gone from $800 000 a year to $3 million dollars a year approximately and that when you combine it with the United Way and the Community Foundation, represents the major source of funds for the, let's call them the non-government organizations or the civil society groups that work to help the needy among us. And mentioning the United Way I want to point out that as Mayor, I'm proud to tell you that I raised about $200 000 a year for the United Way and I support them strongly and I hope that you will too. The United Way has taken under its wing two important initiatives and one of these is a community benefits committee which is seeking to use the opportunity of the construction of the new courthouse near the hospital as an opportunity to create training and job opportunities for people who need a lift out of their situation in life. And as well, the United Way has also adopted the strategy of creating this Halton poverty roundtable and I am assisting them in their work.

Now the biggest change has been the Canada Child Benefit and analysts have shown that it has actually achieved about a 20% reduction in poverty. So our efforts I think have been good about comforting but not necessarily moving the needle very far; but the Canada Child Benefit has truly made a difference.

Now Oakville's Town revenues don't all come from property tax, in fact it used to be more than 59% but over the last 13 years we've brought that percentage down. And in addition to the property tax we also have user fees, grants and we also have fines and interest. And the fine folks from Oakville Enterprises and Oakville Hydro are responsible for a good portion of the interest and other non-tax revenues that we receive and they'll be speaking later tonight about their work.

Now I want to discuss some of the trends that we're experiencing the first one I'm quite proud of and this is important because there's a lot of misconception about how assessment growth impacts the property tax rate. This is the actual property tax rate since 2008 and the reason it goes down is that the tax rate must be reset to avoid any profit from assessment growth. And if you're not growing, your tax increases more than the rate of inflation and if how and if assessment growth is better than that; you mathematically get a decreasing tax rate and this is the total for the local government, the Regional government and schools. This is the total property tax path over the last many years, say 20 years and what you'll see is that before the current era in which we adopted something called “outcomes management” also known as performance-based budgeting (PB2). On the red side, the before side that's what we were experiencing and what PB2 has allowed us to do is to continually seek and achieve efficiencies that allow us that downward path in tax increases; even while we have increased and we have increased so much the facilities and services that our residents demand and enjoy.

Last year, the Oakville total tax increase was 1.47 per cent. To make that meaningful I need to compare it to some of our neighbours next door in Burlington they got theirs down to 1.96 Mississauga was a touch higher and Toronto was 2.55. Now in the coming year, we're doing the budget now for next year, this is what I believe our tax increase will be for all of our government and school services and that's because we're bringing on stream a new library, a new rec centre and a new fire station and the operating costs of that have to be reckoned with. Our neighbours next door in Burlington are saying, I've heard that they're aiming for two per cent. I am predicting that Mississauga will hit three and Toronto will say I think two and a half but there's a little thing called a municipal land transfer tax and it is so much money in Toronto is the only city that can levy that tax; there's so much money coming into the city of Toronto in that tax that if they didn't have it their tax increase would be much more dramatic than that and certainly much more dramatic than the rest of us. So they're sort of, you know everybody talks about tax increases but they get to hide behind the skirts of the municipal land transfer tax.

Now debt is another thing that people are always asking about and I'm going to start from the bottom here. Canada has a debt, total debt equal, to 206% in 2019 equal to more than 200 per cent of their revenues. And the province of Ontario last year had total debt equal to 245 per cent of their revenues. And Oakville and Halton on a consolidated basis are less than 1 per cent and that's because Halton has no tax paid debt and Oakville only has a smidge and that works out to about 1.4 per cent of our revenue. On the future side, I'm expecting that our share of debt to revenue will reduce. And as I understand it, Canada can expect a small increase and I've been tracking all those promises in the federal election that we're in the middle of. And I'm anticipating that Ontario's debt percentage will come down about 5 per cent.

To achieve what we do we use seven fiscal tools: we reversed the downloads by the previous government before 2003, the previous time the Progressive Conservatives were in government, the Mike Harris years. And here we need to give credit to Halton Chair Gary Carr, he was in the meeting where the Finance Minister of the day responded to the argument of the Heads of Council and including his and agreed to reverse the downloads. And that reversal was spread out over seven, seven to eight years; depending on which of the downloads and that is all behind us. So what that means is, in particular the most egregious part of the download was: for quite a time we, in Halton were sending money to the City of Toronto to subsidize their low tax rate. And that's finally gone, for now. We also maximized development fees so that growth would pay for growth to the extent that the province permits. Ever since December 8 1997 when the province amended the Development Charges Act, development charges have failed to capture all of the costs of growth and we've had our finance departments estimate that gap and the estimates hover around 15%.

We have reduced tax-paid debt by 88%. And we have created new non-tax revenue as I said, thanks to the men and women at the Oakville Enterprise and Oakville Hydro. And we have linked user fees to the Consumer Price Index, it was the custom before 13 years ago to respond to requests to hold the fees for arenas and pools and everything and shift all those costs onto the property tax. That had the result that fees and for the services that we consume were flat relative to the inflation rate and the property tax was going up at an unsustainable rate. We also, as I said adopted outcomes management, PB2, as I lovingly refer to it. We are still the only government in Canada at any level in any place that uses performance-based budgeting. We also conduct regular value and efficiency audits and trim $2 and $3 million dollars out of our operations. And we do that by looking for new technological efficiencies, reorganizing our staff deployment and adjusting according to the market and the demand that we see at the door. Now the reversed downloads by the PCs is a tool we're not going to have in the future because the current government has taken some steps around development charges that aren't friendly to us on that front. And there are some downloads have been sent our way for the coming fiscal year and I'm going to talk about those in a minute; and they've also made changes to development fees there against our interest. This is our growth path by census and as you can see our new Official Plan “Livable Oakville” allowed us to change the pace at which we grow, and that also because I mentioned that growth isn't fully paying for growth, that’s another reason for why the tax increase trend is down.

Now speaking of growth, this is the growth that we have already been ordered to accommodate. You know it is 2019 now and in 2031 we have a growth forecast of about 290 000 residents and we are, as I told you, about 211 000 now. And the 2031 to 2041 local forecasts are due next year and the columns that just painted on show you one of the possible scenarios that the Region of Halton is considering for that allocation of the growth among the four municipalities. And we have embarked on an ambitious consultation program here at the Council of Oakville with all of our residents associations and all the people who are interested in this topic. They’re beginning right away, please watch our website and the newspapers like the Oakville Beaver and OakvilleNews.org or any residents associations if you if you live in a resident’s association area and many people in Oakville do.

Another trend that we're proud of is that we've been number one in safety for 13 years compared to other large police services and we’re the top town for livability and we got there from 30th place only 13 years ago. I attribute this to the community engagement and social health that we enjoy from so many places of worship, civil society organizations and residents associations. And just this past week, every week I attend events where, that has brought home to me; and just this past week I experienced four bits that really make this concrete for me. On Saturday I attended the Star Awards Gala that James Montague hosts but it is a massive piece of work that the families of the special young and old people that live among us, the families put all the work into this and James gets to be the emcee and he glories in it and he does a wonderful job of it but the point is that the community as a whole comes together to do this thing and they work incredibly hard at it.

And then last week I learned that Pravin Sharma who's here today has been recognized by a national organization for her leadership role in philanthropy. And her work in that field has raised tons of money for our hospital and she has benefited from the intense engagement of the community that she works with. So once again there's a person on the headline but there's a big organization of residents supporting them.

And then yesterday, I attended a concert featuring an internationally renowned tenor, he's not perhaps one of the three tenors that you remember from TV but there is a website that ranks operatic tenors and Michael Schade is ranked 74th on that website. And you're allowed to up-vote and down-vote, I up-voted him; I hope it helped. And he performed yesterday at St. Andrews, now he performed in a benefit for the charities supported by St. Andrews and he gave an impromptu speech. First of all the man sings like the angel Gabriel if the angel Gabriel can sing. He's an unbelievably good singer and an amazing performer and he's an Oakville boy; and I think that makes it extra special. And he gave some impromptu remarks about he'd like to do more and Father Mahoney told me that St. Andrews is indeed working hard to get him to do more.

And then, also yesterday was “Hope in High Heels”, where men allies turned out to support Halton Women's Place and to witness against violence against women and domestic abuse. And several of us were there, I'm talking about the men on Council. Councillor O'Meara actually wore the pink high heels with the stiletto heels and Councillor Knoll and Councillor Grant were there. Councillor Grant wore the crazy things. Councillor Knoll and I, we opted for the pink shoelaces, right? It's a new feature! They hope it'll get more men to come out. Last time I wore the high heels and I fell and I whined about it at home and my wife said, “What were you thinking?” She said, “I've never worn heels in my life, your daughters have refused to wear heels. A man invented them to torture women.” No sympathy. So was I ever thrilled when pink shoelaces showed up, so now with that I hope that all of you men in the audience will be inspired to also come. And you know if we hadn't had Councillor Lishchyna there as our photographer I don't know what would have happened on the social media side. So thank you Councillor Lishchyna.

Now the provincial changes that are affecting us are this regional government review but that's not all. There's also The More Homes and More Choice Act. And a few of the things that it's done is it’s created a new “pay to slay policy” for endangered species. It's restricted our affordable housing powers. It has greatly reduced our ability to acquire parkland from developers. And it has put in jeopardy the stable neighbourhoods planning rules that we've been relying on to keep unwanted intensification out of your neighbourhood. And it has cut our heritage protection powers and the public process has been greatly reduced. And when you see what that looks like, I think you'll agree that's all but eliminated and our zoning and official plans are subject to appeal again. And the reason that that's a great tragedy, if not a travesty, is they don't go into effect until the province has approved them and then if they're appealed we have to pay to defend them.

Before Bill 108, we had a brief period of about a year and a half where the province agreed with us that since they had approved it, it wasn't fair to ask the taxpayers to pay to defend what the province after all had implicitly ordered. So there was a two-year holiday on appeals for those items. And the costs of growth are shifting to the property tax as nearly as we can tell because so-called soft services are being taken off of development charges. Now a road with concrete and asphalt is a hard service and a rec centre with concrete and steel for some reason is a soft service; but that's just the way it rolls. And those soft services are going to be funded by a new Community Benefit Charge. And the Community Benefit Charge is going to be calculated on a formula that will, get this: according to the Minister when he's talking to the developers it's going to create savings for them. And when he's talking to us Mayors, it's going to keep us whole and we're not going to lose any money. If this if this comes true I think it's magic. I look forward to seeing how that works. And then there are the provincial budget downloads through our property taxes for ambulance, for public health and for child care. And I'm not saying that's all there will be but that's all I know about now.

So let's talk about land-use planning because this gets us to Glen Abbey. The reduction of local municipal powers over land-use has sort of reversed a bit of progress that we enjoyed in the time period centred around 2018. What's happened is, this Bill 108 now allows the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal to make any land-use planning decision the municipality or approval authority could have made. And where we were before was we'd gone from essentially that to which can also be described as deference to the applicant. The test used to be, on appeal is the proposal close enough to the laws? And under Bill 139 which has been erased by Bill 108, I know it's a lot of numbers but anyway we had these two Acts under 139 the test became: is the decision of Council close enough to the laws? And now we go back to: is the proposal close enough? So we call that deference. There's an edge towards Council, a presumption towards Council in the old regime; and an edge toward the applicant in the new regime. They said that one of the reasons they're doing this is to quote “get the politics out of land-use planning approvals” but when you look at it they're also removing public participation in hearings and appeal rights. So I would suggest to you that when you hear them say that they're getting the politics out of land-use planning approvals; they're getting the public out of land-use planning approvals. In fact I would go so far as to say that the new regime tells the public to go to the head of the queue when the zoning by-law is first created by the town and have your input with the town. And when the town creates a new official plan or makes an amendment to an official plan put your input then but later on you are literally not welcome. You can watch but that's about it.

Now another aspect of this is that the Glen Abbey cases have been moved from deference to Councils to deference to the applicant. And the Oakville MPPs voted for this, both of them. And those same MPP said that they would save Glen Abbey, remember? And Council still supports save Glen Abbey and Council is still maintaining its cases in the Court of Appeal and at the Local Planning Appeals Tribunal. So we are seeing it through. And we're wondering if our MPPs have a plan.

Now I also want to talk about this big shift from sales and income taxes to the property tax. I tend to think that property tax is full and overburdened and some people obviously don't agree with me. So these are the costs that are being shifted to the municipal property tax: ambulance costs, child care and Public Health, after the walk back of making the changes in the middle of the 2019 budget year. And this big shift, I think has arisen because of a difficulty that the government ran into trying to make this come true: on CBC Ottawa Morning during the election campaign last year the host asked Mr. Ford if he would cut public service jobs. “No not at all,” he replied. “It's funny, Robyn, I've got to ask you this question. Do you think there's not four cents on the dollar of savings in the bloated government of Ontario?” He then suggested that people at his events “broke out laughing” at the prospect of finding “only” four cents. And then he said, “There's not a person on this planet that can tell me there isn't four cents savings in efficiencies of bloated bureaucracy that we can't find in the government of Ontario, and just watch me do it,” he said.

So I summarized that as: he promised to fix Ontario's finances by finding four per cent efficiency and he said it would be easy with no cuts or losses. And who wouldn’t have voted for that? And this is what that would have looked like: you've got a hundred per cent of the provinces budget and the little dark blue would be the equivalent of finding four per cent. And so for 96% of the previous cost of the Ontario government you'd get the Ontario government; but he actually wound up raising spending by $20 billion. And that's what this looks like when you zoom in. So instead of the blue being cut, the red was at it. Now at the same time he walked back the 2019 cuts, he asked each of Halton and Oakville to cut total spending for 2020 by four per cent after that walk back of the mid-year cuts in transfers to cities. I guess in order to fit those downloads into our tax levy. And that would look like that, the little blue band would be four per cent of a hundred per cent. Oakville total spending is about $300 million and discretionary spending is only about a $100 million. So four per cent of the total is $12 million dollars and that's twelve per cent of discretionary program, which is your program spending. And the same logic applies to Halton. And there's a bit of a infographic to show you that we have only at the top layer we have certain base things that that are already as efficient as they can be in order to deliver you what you want; and that's our staff and our capital spending. So that’s where operation comes in and that red bar is what $12 millions looks like against that $100 million. So the Premier's cut request equals $12 million at the local Oakville level and Halton total spending including water is $1.5 billion and four per cent of that would be $60 million out of the spending of Halton. And leaving out water, a four per cent cut, would be a $20 million dollar cut at the Halton level and that would be coming out of about $450-$460, you know high 400 millions spending. And with the same division between capital, staff and programs. This is Groundhog Day for cities because we had this in the 1990s.

Now last year in August, the Municipal Affairs Minister said to us, “I'm not one for all this long consultation stuff. I like to make a few phone calls and make a decision.” You saw earlier tonight that the Town of Oakville Council doesn't really operate that way. We like to consult and frequently, as a result of consulting with our residents, decisions get improved. I think that's what happened earlier tonight. And what happened with Bill 108 is that in 30 days they raced through the legislature a statute to cut local authority over land-use planning and to cut requirements for parkland from developers. And do you remember Bill 66? The one that was going to open up the Greenbelt? The timeframe for that one was, a little bit more than two months. And a little bit more than two months was enough for the people of Ontario to organize against it and a massive outcry ensued and they walked back the Schedule 10 of Bill 66 that was going to open up the Greenbelt. So I would submit to you that in Bill 108 they shortened the process and nobody had time; you know people were still calling each other going can you believe it? And it was done. And then after they passed it they said, “Oh, we're going to consult with you from now on and we're going to consult on the regulations.” The regulations make the statute work. They're the way you carry out the stated intent of the statute. So, thanks a lot, but 60 days wasn't enough for that really. And we did submit our comments but they didn't listen. So I'm wondering if at this point you feel like this could be the “Don't Tell, Don't Listen government”.

And, let's go back to the regional review Professor Richard Tindall said, “Many of us in the academic world have debunked the myth about amalgamations saving money, for decades. Andrew Sancton, Robert Bish, Harry Kitchen, Wendell Cox and Michael Keating - among others - have all explained why amalgamations don't save money.” Now, this all came from Bill 5. Bill 5 was last August and the first part of it was to deal with the Toronto City Council and precipitously cut it almost in half in the middle of the municipal election. And that's done. The Court of Appeal has upheld it on a vote of three to two. We have to move on, I think. Although, who knows? As I suppose when the Court of Appeal is split three-two, maybe Toronto's tempted to go to the Supreme Court?

Let's look at step two, step two, the other part of Bill 5 concerns setting up the regional governance review. So that was announced in January and two gentlemen were hired to be advisors and their job was to go out and consult. And then the first thing they did was, they announced in January that there wasn't enough time to get it all done by June and have the entire consulting regime that the ministry had laid out on its website. They had first laid out that they would come and interview each of the Mayors of the 82 municipalities under the gun. And then they would come back and they would interview the Councils. And they announced in January that they weren't going to be able to do that, they were cutting talking to the Councils. And so there was a truncated consultation program. And then in response to protests, they extended it.

So, they started; the very first Heads of Council or Mayors that they interviewed were on February 4th right here in Halton. They interviewed Chair Carr and the four Mayors of Halton's local municipalities and then they came back in June for the very last consultation. And that was not a “consult Councils” instead it was a “let the public tell them what they thought.” And so you had “We Love Oakville.org”, the organization created by our residents associations to put in what their opinion is, we had them. And we had one brave Councillor, Councillor Adams who showed up to delegate to them. And for me, Councillor Adams you may not have found this to be the standout moment but I thought the standout moment was when they said rather excitedly, rather happily: “We found a study that shows that amalgamations work.” And so we got one against all the rest and they were not so helpful as to identify it so that anybody could review it and critique it.

And that takes me to my interview with them on February 4th, they had given us some prepared questions and I wrote down my answers on paper and gave it to them at the start. And I also handed them a study by the Fraser Institute debunking amalgamations. And the Fraser Institute, many of you will be surprised to learn, is a renowned conservative group; and you may be aware that from time to time I've been accused of being politically confused or at any rate not identified with conservatives. And Mr. Fenn when I handed him the Fraser Institute study said to me, “This is pretty rich, you of all people giving us a report by the Fraser Institute.” And I said, “Well, I'm considering the audience. They're conservative, maybe you'll listen to them.” And you have what happened: “We found a study!” And they have been, Mr. Fenn and Mr. Seiling, in the Witness Protection Program ever since.

Now let's talk about outright amalgamation, here's my pithiest brief on outright amalgamation. I believe that that would constitute a loss of local identity and I believe that local identity is a crucial part of community engagement. And I believe that community engagement is the heart and soul and backbone and brain of community health and it's the reason why Oakville is Oakville. And you lose that and you start turning Oakville into just another place. That's my view on that.

I also believe that the Oakville brand has a certain value that's reflected in your property. I was on the road coming back from a conference with a Mayor and a Chief of Staff of another City who I'm going to try to not name, and my Chief of Staff and I were in the car. And one of the other gentlemen said, “Rob what would happen if Oakville and Burlington merged and was called Oakville? Do you think Burlington house prices would go up 10%? And I laughed and I said, “No, it'd be 20.” You know, I confess I'm not a real estate appraiser and I was really trying to just crack wise but you know I think the anecdote proves the point.

And the other thing that happens when an outright amalgamation is you have to standardize services. The two special advisors argued with me vociferously, strenuously I think is the word; about how important it would be to regionalize fire and transit. And I said, “Well, okay, if you do that fire and transit will be much more expensive and that will raise taxes. And I thought you were conservatives.” And they said, “How could it possibly raise taxes? Instead of four Fire Chiefs you'd only have one.” I said, “Yes, but you'd have three new Deputy Chiefs. That's how it goes every time you've done amalgamation in the past.” So there's no savings there and if there were, it's miniscule compared to standardizing service. We have 220 firefighters or so. All of our firefighters are professional firefighters. We have more stations. We have more trucks. We have a fire training campus where we train our firefighters to the highest degree. Our neighbours in Halton all have to one degree or another, partly volunteer fire departments. And the result is that we have a much higher standard of fire protection and lower fire insurance and that's good for homes and businesses. And on transit I said, “Gee, Oakville has a hundred buses and a grid system. You can not only go in and out of the GO stations but you also can go back and forth across town and up and down North and South in town. And Burlington, speaking in round numbers they got 50 buses and they're just a radial system going in and out of their GO stations. And in Milton they've got two loops and last time I looked about eight buses. And in Halton Hills they don't even believe in buses. So, if you're going to regionalize transit, are you going to take transit away from Oakville? Are you going to raise everybody up to Oakville standards?” And they said, “Oh.” (They didn't know this.) “Oh well that that would be a problem, well we could keep the service level the same in each area and area rate it.” Now area rate is a special term that means you pay a different tax depending on where you live so you would have a transit tax and it'd be this much if you don't have very much service. And it would be more if you're in Oakville and so on. To which I replied, “Well then, what would be the point of regionalization?”

The other possibility that they also broached was well maybe we'll leave the organization alone but we'll just move those services up and that brings you, as I just said, to the same place. And then the other mystery is, there's a gentleman who's written a paper for the CD Howe Institute advocating the privatizing of water and wastewater so that it would no longer be a public utility operated by the municipal government. And this would allow presumably, private entities to take them over. And the benefit to developers would be, that these utilities may issue debentures or other forms of debt in order to build new water capacity which is very expensive and then collected back from the rates that are paid by the future residents and the existing residents. And the only thing wrong with that is, that it would cost more to have water. There's a profit level that isn't in it now that you would have to be funding but worse, in my view, is the utility is then taking the risk that the growth doesn't come because if you spend a billion and a half dollars on new water capacity anticipating growth and it doesn't show up; you the taxpayer are left holding the bag. I can see the clear advantage to getting the most expensive part of growth off of the costs that are that are charged to the developers but I can't see the benefit to us. And so that's, I hope an adequate explanation of the major things that are wrong with it.

And now there's just one more little thing on regional review. This will be posted, this slideshow and these slides and I recommend to you this coming quote from the Premier. In April at a Chamber of Commerce event Premier Doug Ford was asked about the regional review. Premier Ford promptly responded this way, “I really believe, and it goes back to my roots of being a Councillor, we have to empower the cities and towns themselves.” “Nothing is worse,” he said, “than the province, you know, dictating this, that and the other thing that's why we always say, “Opt in or opt out.” And that's what we're focusing on more. Let the communities decide.” Wouldn't that be nice?

So, my comment follows and that is, if we want Ontario's new government for the people to do what we the people want it's up to us to let them know. The provincial government tracks correspondence on all issues including amalgamation. The more emails they receive from the people of Oakville the better informed this government for the people will be. And here I have to say we are so rich in community engagement. We have so many active residents associations many of whom I see leaders of here tonight and together they've organized this “We Love Oakville.org” group and they've all contributed money to it in order to afford the lawn signs that you've seen all over Town and this is what they've achieved to date: more than 3,400 emails to the Premier, copied to me so I can keep count, protesting the idea of amalgamation. So hats off to Oakville and I'll just say that in the history of Oakville there's never been 3 400 letters or emails about anything. 300 is the high-water mark before this. So Oakville is fully engaged on this on this issue. I will just mention to any who are listening or watching and haven't participated in the “We Love Oakville” email campaign; there's about I say 65 thousand households in 65-68 thousand households something like that in Oakville. And by any reckoning that means that achieving 3 400 while it's an earth-shattering amount there’s room to grow that number and it would be great if everybody would go to WeLoveOakville.org and consider those opportunities.

So where is the regional review now? The Legislature was suspended until October 28th. The original target was early summer. Earlier this year they shifted to early fall and they're now saying in August at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario Conference that it would be before the end of the year. And the Minister assured us a lot in the speech he gave to the more than 2,000 Mayors and Councillors that gathered there to hear from him. He said he's made no decisions but I would note this to you: he chose two advisers who both are well known for favouring amalgamations. He did not choose one for vanilla and one for strawberry he chose two for strawberry; if I can call strawberry amalgamation. So that's not exactly what I would call a “look at both sides of a question” set up. And when he was speaking to us at the conference in August at AMO and he said these words about how there's no decision been made and he hasn't seen the report and it's not going to be revealed until later near the end of the year; the slide behind him said that his goal was, as I quote here “Strengthen Regional Government.” Now whatever that means I have to leave to you to interpret but anyway those are the bits that I've seen and I've duly reported them to you and I urge you to consider what you might want to do about the matter. You have a say and you should use it while you still have it.

So now I want to talk about the needs of the Town and we've met the following people so Council has to operate by policy. And what we've done is we've achieved these policies and they guide what we do. They guide our budgeting and we have a master vision called “Vision 2057”. And that was created at the behest of residents association leaders who thought that the many plans that we have needed something that would hold them together at the centre and that's what Vision 2057 does. And one of those leaders is now on Council and that's Councillor Haslett-Theall right here. And what Vision 2057 ties together is the Livable Oakville land-use plan and the zoning by-law update and all the associated pieces of that. And it also ties together these sustainability plans and policies that are covered in this section of the slide. And they also drive our Economic Development Strategy and operating budgets and our capital budgets and our asset management plan and infrastructure. So it all ties together and I have to salute our staff for their ability to keep that tied together.

Now another thing that we need is, to attract new businesses and we have a terrific Economic Development Department that attracts new businesses. And we were just named one of “Canada's Best Places to Invest” by the Site Selection Magazine. And I can announce that Prodigy Game an award-winning educational technology company will be moving into the former Tim Hortons site with 300 jobs. And BDO, a leading consulting, business advisory, public accounting and tax company is bringing 500 jobs to Oakville at the new office tower down the hill from here that you see the steelwork presently going on.

And these are the major projects that we have needed and that are either done or funded which means they're as good as done but you know in some cases they're going to take a few years; some of these are pretty major. And, we also have on the 10-year forecast a number of very important and expensive projects and I've listed them here. And I'm happy to tell you that two of them are done and the others are on track.

And then I want to close by a word about our vision, our vision is to have outstanding staff, services and facilities as befit a place called Oakville. And to be the most sustainable region in Canada. And to have fully-funded asset management; pays as you go and avoid debt. And we also have dedicated ourselves to controlling growth, debt and taxes to only what fits environmentally and economically. And part of our vision is a dedication to have strong discretionary reserves. The experts say we should have $17 million dollars in discretionary reserves we have more than $50 million, so you have a well-run town. We also aspire to be Canada's most livable town. And we also are and seek to maintain our status as the safest region in Canada. And we also work constantly to develop new non-tax revenues to afford you the things you want and don't want to pay for in your property taxes. And there's no shame in that. All over the world people want things they don't want to pay for. It's normal. Part of our vision is to have a fully engaged community and we're proud of the level of engagement and consultation that we do. And we also have, for quite a long time kept our tax increases at or under the Consumer Price Index. And that involves not only seeking efficiency but also, sometimes saying, “That has to wait.”

So when I ran YTV, I learned from my shareholders that shareholders want a smooth performance in a company. They don't want spiky. And it was no trouble at all for me as a taxpayer in Oakville to imagine that taxpayers of Oakville would prefer a smooth performance of your government over spiky. And as I showed you in an earlier slide, you did have some spiky at a time. Our vision is to be greener and cleaner all the time, so it's an aspirational goal where every opportunity we lift the bar and then we also have passed a climate emergency declaration. And our top goal is to be climate resilient.

That's our vision: to be Canada's most livable town. And far as Halton goes to be part of Canada's most sustainable regional municipality

I want to thank you very much for your attention to these brief remarks and I thank you ever so much for sharing your time with me and hearing these remarks.

The following remarks were delivered to Council, staff and residents at the September 24, 2018, Council meeting, where Mayor Rob Burton also presented his Oakville Status Report. 

Welcome to my 12th annual State of the Town address. At the request of Her Excellency, the Right Honourable Governor General of Canada, I am proud to say, I just presented the Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers to six worthy recipients at a reception here at Town Hall. Our community benefits from all of our residents’ passion for volunteering. It is an honour as part of my ceremonial duties as your mayor to help recognize them.

Twelve years ago, I set out to make this report every year at this time, and I have, every year. I wanted to create a collection of short stories of what we are doing together to make Oakville Canada’s most livable town. This event has also been the best way I have as mayor to alert residents of the town to challenges that from time to time have engulfed us. Think of my announcement three years ago at this event about ClubLink’s interest in removing the world-famous Glen Abbey Golf Course and replacing it with a massive sub-division where our official plan does not fit such a thing.

Again, in this report, I will alert you to two entirely new and unexpected challenges ahead, and it’s a possibility that we can turn them into opportunities, but nevertheless they confront us even as we continue to work to defend our decision to refuse to allow the development of Glen Abbey.

Councillors Cathy Duddeck, Jeff Knoll, Tom Adams, Dave Gittings, Sean O’Meara, Allan Elgar and I are also part of Halton Regional Council, which is led by Regional Chair Gary Carr.

Chair Carr learned his teamwork style of leadership as a hockey player who went all the way to the NHL – as a goalie. He also went on to earn an MBA.

As a goalie dad myself, I think goalies have the toughest position. We have a lot to thank Chair Carr for – for his leadership in helping us work together to shape Halton’s future as Canada’s most sustainable Regional Municipality.

So, at least once each year, being mayor feels like being the narrator of our town’s on-going story.

And our story together for the last 12 months and the last 12 years has had dramatic moments. We’ve had challenges and obstacles. A much-loved member passed tragically young. And we’ve had renewals. Oakville lives on.

We’ve had triumphs against the odds and against great threats to our health and our safety. I’m very proud to say, our wins outweighed our losses.

In this, my 12th annual State of the Town Address, there are a mix of successes and challenges to report. I believe in our Town and I believe we will continue to prevail.

There are nine chapters in this year’s State of the Town story:

• Setting records in economic development.
• Controlling growth to only what fits.
• Keeping our finances strong and healthy.
• Setting records in creating affordable housing.
• Protecting our built, cultural, and natural heritage.
• Providing high-quality infrastructure, facilities and services.
• Leveraging our community’s inclusivity to care for all.
• Keeping us Canada’s safest region.

Facing two challenges: a review ordered by the Province of municipal governance and a review ordered by the Province of the speed of municipal planning

Chapter 1 - Setting Economic Development Records

We can all feel proud of our town’s recognition earlier this summer when MoneySense Magazine named us the Best Place to Live in Canada and Canada’s Best Place for Newcomers. For the third year, the magazine also called us Ontario’s best place to raise a family. We have gone from 30th to 1st in the overall rankings in my time as your mayor. We know we still have work ahead of us. We will always have work ahead of us, but what our rise in the rankings tells us is we’re on the best path. Ours is a path that pays dividends in economic development.

Our rising reputation for livability attracts economic development. For example, Oakville entrepreneur Rob Tessarolo is re-locating his Mississauga-based Cipher Pharmaceuticals company to Oakville now. A proud Oakville resident for the past 17 years, Rob says what he loves about our community is the “the vibrant, anything is possible attitude in Oakville.”

I share his optimism. I hope you do, too.

Rob is just one player in our on-going economic success story.

We have an award-winning Economic Development Strategic Plan developed under our Economic Development Director Dorothy St. George. We enjoyed almost four per cent job growth last year. Job growth about doubled population growth. That’s something all of us on Council and staff are very proud of.

Chapter 2 - Controlling Growth to Only What Fits

Our population growth rate is down to more manageable levels thanks to Council’s commitment over the last 12 years to control growth to only what fits environmentally and economically. We have been growing slower for 12 years to avoid straining our infrastructure despite the province’s growth plan. Our rate of growth is half of what it was when I became mayor. Our rate of growth of population is in fact at a 30-year low.

This slower growth lets us protect the character of our stable established neighbourhoods and our greenspace.

Our Livable Oakville Plan directs growth to six growth areas: three major nodes at Midtown Oakville, the Uptown Core, and Palermo Village, and three minor nodes at Kerr Village, Bronte Village, and Downtown Oakville, in accordance with their wishes.

This is how the official plan protects the character of our stable existing neighbourhoods – it directs growth to the places where it’s wanted. Council also believes growth should pay for itself. We keep our Development Charges by-law updated to ensure that we recover the full amount possible under the Development Charges Act 1997.

The parts of growth that we are not allowed to recover are unfortunately carried on our property taxes. So, growth causes tax increases. More about this in a moment.

Chapter 3 - Keeping Town Finances Strongest and Healthiest

Our finances are the strongest. We work hard to keep life in Oakville as affordable as possible. Over the last 10 years, we’ve kept taxes in line with or lower than inflation and trending downward. We are getting great results from our decision ten years ago to adopt Performance Based Program Budgeting. PB2, as it is known, is the successor to the old zero-based budgeting that everybody, I think, heard about in the 60s. We also created the office of the internal auditor.

These steps have proven their value.

As a percent of household income, our taxes are the most affordable in the GTA. We had the lowest tax increase in the GTA this year. Our tax rate is Ontario’s sixth lowest.

We continue to have a strong stable financial position, which was validated during this term of Council by the University of Toronto’s Institute of Municipal Finance & Governance when they ranked Oakville’s fiscal health as the strongest in Ontario. And in my time as mayor, we’ve cut tax-paid debt by 88 per cent.

Halton Region has a AAA credit rating from Moody’s Investor’s Service and S&P Global Ratings. Oakville is a major financial component of the Halton rating – because we are part of this split-level government. Halton’s AAA is the sum of the fiscal health of its four local municipalities.

We all share the benefits of the AAA credit rating.

Oakville is strong and able to meet the financial and service needs of our community now and in the future.

We do need to think about the costs of growth.

With a new provincial leader and party at the helm looking for efficiencies and ways to lower taxpayers’ costs, I hope the Province now will be receptive to an approach it wouldn’t listen to before that respects the taxpayer by putting more growth where the infrastructure already exists and less where it must be built new and also fix the Development Charges Act so that we can charge the full cost of growth and get the cost of growth off the back of the taxpayer. In sum that means let us charge developers the full cost of growth and let’s have more growth in the city and less in the suburbs.

For far too long existing taxpayers have been footing the bill for the costs of schools and infrastructure needed to support the massive growth the province’s Growth Plan assigns to our town and region.

Your property taxes could be cut by 5 to 7 per cent if the Province would make developers pay the full costs of the growth from which they profit so much. Do existing taxpayers really want to keep paying for about 25 per cent of growth? I sincerely doubt it.

Chapter 4 - Setting Records in Creating Affordable Housing

We are outstanding at creating affordable housing. We blow the doors off the Provincial requirement to create affordable housing. Because resale prices are so high for existing housing and they grab the headlines, it’s hard to know if anyone knows about our affordable housing success story.

By Provincial law and Halton Region’s official plan, at least 30 per cent of new housing units produced annually in Halton must be affordable or assisted housing.

In Oakville 51.4 per cent of new housing is below the affordable threshold of $365,000.

Chapter 5 - Protecting Our Built, Cultural, and Natural Heritage

Our Members of Council remain committed to preserving Oakville’s greenspace and natural heritage. We’ve worked hard at defending our decisions to refuse development of the Glen Abbey Golf Course.

It will be the job of the new Council to defend the town from the appeals launched by ClubLink. ClubLink’s plan would break our official plan’s urban structure and destroy our most important cultural heritage landscape.

If this decision isn’t worth defending, there is no point in having a set of land use rules called an official plan.

ClubLink has filed numerous appeals and the cost of defending our decision will be similar to the cost we paid to defend our vision of a town greenbelt, called the Natural Heritage System, earlier in my time as your mayor.

It also remains true and daunting that Ontario owns lots of land in Oakville that it wants to develop and some of it is in inappropriate places. As Toronto recently discovered, the Province is the boss of the municipalities. A large area of northwest Oakville owned by the Province has been under threat of development by the Province for many years.

I am pleased our town was able to secure the Merton Lands under Town ownership from the province earlier this year.

As a result, we saved 83 per cent of the Merton Lands even though the Province wanted to develop them. We saved all of the environmental lands, even in the part the Province succeeded in getting developed. The lands are now protected recreational open space, neighbourhood parkland, and public green space with wildlife corridors and linked natural heritage systems that our community can enjoy forever.

So keeping the greenspace and open space we have in good condition is more important than ever. Down at our lakefront, Oakville Harbour is more accessible for the public and shoreline rehabilitation and waterfront trail improvements are being made from Tannery Park to Waterworks Park. A new waterfront trail is now open to the public and is accessible at the bottom of Maple Grove Drive or from Lakeshore Road at the west end of the Edgemere property.

And over the last year we have planted 30,000 new trees and shrubs, and cleared 77 woodlands of dead and dying ash trees, a public hazard.

By popular demand, we enhanced our private tree protection by-law to reduce the removal of healthy trees.

The town also launched Please Let’s Add New Trees, which is abbreviated as PLANT, to encourage residents and businesses to plant trees on their property and record it on our PLANT webpage.

More than 22,000 new trees have already been logged.

This initiative, alongside our existing tree-planting work and Oakvillegreen’s new Backyard Tree Planting Program in cooperation with a group called LEAF, will surely help our town reach its 40 per cent canopy coverage goal by 2057.

Trees contribute significantly to our personal health and our town’s livability.

As a community, I hope we will continue to work together to protect, preserve and grow our urban forest.

Chapter 6 - Infrastructure, Facilities and Services

Our vision of being the most livable town in Canada is strengthened by our continued investment in high-quality facilities, infrastructure, and services. We recognize the importance of investing in a healthy active lifestyle and what our residents need and value. Each year, our community centres and cultural facilities welcome nearly four million visits.

That number will continue to grow with the addition of the new Trafalgar Park Community Centre, which opened over the weekend.

This 65,000 square feet facility retains the distinctive wooden roof truss system of the old Oakville Arena while boasting a full NHL-size ice surface, an indoor running track, a new seniors’ centre and much more inside and outside.

We have also begun work on the South East Community Centre and neighbourhood park on the former hospital lands.

About three acres of greenspace will be created on this presently grey space. It will be open to the public by fall of 2020.

Library services are being offered now at Sixteen Mile Sports Complex much like the services offered at Queen Elizabeth Park Community and Cultural Centre. A temporary library will also open this winter across the parking lot from the Sports Complex to address the growing need for library resources in north Oakville.

This 5,000 sq. ft. modular building will be equipped with traditional library services and resources, technology, programming, seating, and study space. It will become part of a new community centre there when that project is built.

Meanwhile the White Oaks library branch is open again after being closed for the summer for renovations. In the spring of next year, the Glen Abbey branch will see renovations that will update it into a technological and creative hub for residents.

Investments in our infrastructure are crucial to our livability and we aren’t stopping there.

Fresh on the heels of the new bridges over the 16 Mile Creek harbour, there are five road improvements you will see in addition to our 10-year road quality resurfacing program:

1. First, key arterial roads are being widened to help move traffic. Work on Cornwall Road and Dundas Street has already begun with Trafalgar Road construction set to begin next spring.
2. Second, the Grade separation projects at Burloak Drive and Kerr Street will begin next year in partnership with Metrolinx.
3. Third, an east-west bridge will be built to connect Wyecroft Road to Burloak Drive.
4. Fourth, we’ll have smart traffic signal coordination upon completion of a pilot project to test out smart traffic signal technologies.
5. Fifth, with Lakeshore Road East between Navy and Allan streets coming to the end of its lifespan in downtown Oakville, this road will be rebuilt next spring.

Smart infrastructure will be incorporated, the streetscape will be revamped, and public spaces like Towne Square and Centennial Square will receive a makeover.

We will have the most attractive downtown in all of Canada when it is done in two years. Council’s mitigation strategy will minimize disruption to businesses during the reconstruction, as we work towards transforming downtown Oakville into the most attractive downtown village in Canada.

The town will also have the option of restoring Town Hall to its historical roots in downtown Oakville.

The Province’s official Growth Plan has led to the requirement for a new transit bridge over the QEW by Trafalgar Road, running over the present Town Hall location. Town Hall will need to be moved. A logical place for it would be in our downtown. I believe the move to downtown Oakville would help reinvigorate the area.

One possible location could be the old fire hall site on Navy Street where a 12-storey office building has been permitted in our official plan.

Our community can also look forward to welcoming a new 21-room courthouse in Oakville to replace the courthouse that was traditionally in Milton. It is expected to begin construction late next year. This has long been needed by our judges and lawyers – and by our police! I was pleased to have provided my support for getting this project approved – and located in Oakville, near our new hospital.

I’d also like to congratulate Halton Police on opening its new headquarters in Oakville. As chair of the Halton Police Services Board, I’m proud to see this state-of-the-art facility finished.

For fifteen years, the need to either expand our police headquarters or build a new facility to accommodate our growing service was obvious but the consensus necessary to make it happen was not available. I am proud of the part I played in getting the consensus needed to make this headquarters happen at last.

Chapter 7 - Inclusivity and Serving Needs of All

We have very much to be proud of here in Oakville, but as we continue to write our story we should be reminded that our greatest strength is our sense of community and our direction. We continually work at being an inclusive community and we have ever since our days as a terminus on the Underground Railroad when we welcomed escaped fugitive slaves from slavery in the United States.

Everyone deserves to enjoy a place to work, play and raise a family.

Recognizing that everyone has a right to live in good health and with dignity, we have people and organizations like June Cockwell’s Halton Poverty Roundtable leveraging resources and partnerships to fight poverty in Halton through education and engagement.

They are the reason I support the Town of Oakville becoming a Living Wage Employer and why I’m fully supportive of community benefit agreements, social procurement and social enterprises.

 As Chair of Halton’s Health and Social Services Committee, I will ask the Region to create a poverty advisory group to develop opportunities for action on poverty. While we know that many of us in Oakville and across Halton enjoy a higher social and economic status, together we can work at helping lift those who are struggling to make ends meet.

It is the Oakville way to care about and connect with our neighbours.

You can see from the candidates in the current election that people of all faiths and ethnicity feel included enough in our community to run for office – and I would say have a very good chance of winning. We are a city that calls itself a town, and acts like a village that still includes, and cares about, and listens to everyone. That’s how we hold on to our small town charm and safety.

Chapter 8 - Police and Safety

Our safety has been a paramount concern to me. Every year that I’ve been mayor, we have been Canada’s safest large community.

Halton Police have steadily improved their record in crime solving and just plain “catching the bad guys.”

Halton Police deserve our respect and thanks for the work they do in keeping our communities safe, our children safe. Halton has been recognized again as the safest large municipality in Canada according to Statistics Canada, this year.

Halton Police are deeply committed to British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel’s Principles of community policing and I hope all of us understand our crucial role as community members in having a safe community, “the police are only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence,” is what Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel said.

In line with those principles, Halton, the upper tier of our split-level government in Halton, and the Halton Police have created the first regional Community Safety and Well Being Plan to work together with helping agencies to get at the upstream roots of crime and social disorder and poverty to make our community even safer and healthier.

I have to tell you the proudest moment of my time on the police board was ten days ago when former Halton Police Chief James Harding gave me his keepsake Medallion for the Bi-Centennial of Sir Robert Peel’s birth. He told me to keep it until I was sure I could find a worthy successor to whom to pass it. Chief Harding was Chief five chiefs ago, and his legacy of establishing the Peel Principles here is stronger than ever. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a legacy we can all aspire to – to make change and to see it last.

Our police take the safety and well being of our community to heart. We owe them a reciprocal commitment and gratitude. I hope you will join me in expressing our deep appreciation and our wishes for speedy recoveries for the two valiant Halton police officers who were wounded in the shooting Saturday in Burlington. As chair of the police board I was part of the swearing in of each of these young officers. It felt like being a Police Board Chair “Dad” when I was visiting with Officers Schneider and Hanson and their wives on Saturday.

I was impressed, when I visited them in hospital that they had also received a personal visit from Premier Doug Ford.

As municipalities look ahead at the legalization of marijuana on October 17, I know that we are ready and so are the Halton Police to ensure our community remains safe. Now I know opinions differ about cannabis and I want to take a moment to set out some basic facts. We take an oath of office that says we will be faithful to the laws of Her Majesty’s government.

Her Majesty’s governments have decided cannabis will be legalized October 17 and next year, in April, there will be private retail stores in Ontario. These are settled matters. I do not dispute them.

I take my oath of office to heart, as you can see. Now, here are the facts about the government of Ontario’s plans. The government provided us two briefings last month on their plans.

They are offering municipalities a short, one-time opportunity to opt out of having private stores in April and this option, this opportunity doesn’t exist until the next term of Council when they decide to make the option available, but we believe it will be in December. The reason they are offering it is that they recognize the uncertainties they are not ready to clear up around six big questions: locations, numbers of stores, hours, enforcement, authorities to do the enforcement, and public smoking. If you opt out you can opt in later when the six big questions are answered, if you like the answers.

If you don’t opt out and you discover later that you don’t like the answers to the six big unanswered questions when the answers come forward – they said you cannot opt out after. In any case, the opt-out decision is a matter for the next council, after the government opens their short, time-limited, opt-out window and puts the opt-out question to the municipalities. No matter what cannabis will be available online as of October 17 and it will be legal for adults to smoke it in their homes. And there will be no stores for anyone before April they said. They said retail will be “an iterative process.” The word iterative means experiment, it means keep trying things until you get it right, so the choice is, do you want to be part of the experiment or do you want to wait and see how it settles down?

Chapter 9 - Municipal Governance and Planning Reviews

We now face two new challenges in the next term of Council. Being an eternal optimist, perhaps these two challenges can become opportunities. But challenge or opportunity, a municipal governance review and a municipal planning approvals review have been launched by the Ontario government. We, as part of Halton, are included in those reviews. A governance review usually involves a look at who does what.

The actually terms of the review have not been set, but we have been given some advice by the Province. In consultations with us last month at the annual conference of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the government told us the main thing they want from us in the planning approvals review is to identify ways to speed up approvals of developers’ projects. They want to get a big increase in the speed and the number of houses being built.

Then, in his speech to the delegates, Premier Doug Ford closed his speech with these words: "And together we will make this province better than it has ever been," he said.

He then added these as his final words that were not in his prepared text: "A new day has dawned in Ontario, a day of prosperity and growth the likes of which the Province has never seen before."

The Premier has spoken. I’ve known him a few years and I always find it’s best to take him at his word.

He likes to move quickly – if we want a say in these reviews, we, all of us in our community, need to start thinking about what we want our future story to be and we need to share it with our MPPs, Stephen Crawford and Effie Triantafilopoulos.

We need to start asking them, what they want the future story of our community of Oakville and for Halton to be.

This was not covered in the elections in June so there’s not a lot more to go on, except the government statements that it needs to cost taxpayers less and growth needs to speed up.

Through the last 12 years, I’ve been fortunate to work alongside my Council colleagues, dedicated staff, engaged residents, and passionate community leaders who are committed to, and achieving our shared vision to be Canada’s most livable town. It’s been even more fulfilling work than running my television network, YTV, was. And that’s saying something.

Our traditional two-tier Town Council of councillors who are town-only and councillors who are town and regional has served us well for generations, providing more voices at the table and giving us real value in better decisions.

Councillors Ralph Robinson, Ray Chisholm, Nick Hutchins, Peter Longo, Marc Grant, and Natalia Lishchyna, your positions on Town Council have helped give Oakville the good governance that we are known for.

To retiring Councillor Robinson, I say, thank you sir, for your remarkable 36 years of service.

As we leave here tonight, reflecting on our town’s story so far and the possible twists and turns that lie ahead, we are in good shape, strong and resilient.

If the going ahead gets challenging, let’s hang on to this thought from our heritage of First Nations stories: if we take care of the land, the land will take care of us. Now we know that four of you on Council will be here in December and 11 seats, including mine will be decided by Oakville voters by the end of October 22. These thoughts and my State of the Town are my contribution to our future and I hope those who are here in the future will receive some help from these remarks. Whoever is here in future, may Oakville be forever!

Friends, neighbours, community members, Council, staff, Burlington Mayor Rick Goldring, Minister of Labour Kevin Flynn, thank you for your interest in my 11th annual State of the Town address. Let me take a second to explain why my good friend the Mayor of Burlington has joined us. It was his idea, about a year ago, that we should attend each other’s State of the Town/State of the City addresses in the interest of better harmony and cooperation between our neighbouring communities. I learned a lot by attending his, and I’m really pleased to see you here, Rick. It really speaks to the kind of leadership that you espouse, the collaborative way that you urge everyone to work, that you are here tonight. I thank you for that. You are terrific to work with.

The changes this term on Council make me want to start with the state of Council. The state of our council is good, with three new members doing well, and with more change ahead after next year’s election. We will add a seventh pair of Council members for Oakville above Dundas, and six of our current members will have familiar boundaries changed.

In the last year we’ve seen how the newest member of Council, Ray Chisholm, has made a success of his first full year on Council. That’s thanks to his ability to hit the ground running after his election last year because of his wealth of knowledge about the town, from having been born and raised here. His has been a strong voice added to his Ward 2 Town and Regional Councillor partner Cathy Duddeck’s voice for improvements people need, such as the Speers Road pedestrian crossing and the about-to-be-completed Kerr Village community centre and other initiatives.

The other member of Council new since the 2014 election, Natalia Lishchyna, has made her own contributions to our work since her election two years ago. She serves in place of our tragically taken from us Council colleague, Max Khan. 2014’s new member of Council, Sean O’Meara, has had his voice heard, too, especially on the need to improve traffic on Bronte Road. All three have been strong new voices for our town’s Livable Oakville vision.

Our community’s embrace of the Livable Oakville growth plan is as strong today as it was when we created the plan. We saw that commitment vividly during the engaged and impassioned statements by residents we heard right here last month speaking about the Glen Abbey Golf Course. This passion should encourage us to continue our focus on the four pillars of our livability:

First, we control growth to only what fits environmentally and economically and only what protects the character of our stable existing neighbourhoods;

Second, we protect our community’s natural and cultural heritage;

Third, we invest in high-quality facilities, infrastructure and services; and

Fourth, we keep overall tax increases at or below inflation and keep debt from increasing our taxes.

Now let’s look at some of the great progress we’ve made to strengthen these four pillars. There are challenges on the horizon for each of these pillars. There are opportunities with each pillar to enhance the livability of our town.

First, let’s look at the pillar of controlling growth. The vigilance of this Council and the community keeps growth under control. We avoid straining our infrastructure, we protect the character of our neighbourhoods, and we conserve our built and natural heritage resources – our greenspace.

Our greenspace is an important part of who we are and who we want to be as a community. That’s why we established Oakville and Halton’s municipal greenbelts, the first municipal greenbelts in the province, setting aside 50 per cent of Halton from growth. That’s why we created the Livable Oakville Official Plan to protect what’s valuable: our greenspace and our stable existing neighbourhoods. Over the past 11 years, we have seen a reduction in our rate of growth to a more sustainable pace, and we’ve seen improvement in how we grow. I’ll prove that to you with one simple statistic: We grew by 21,000 in the five years before I became mayor. In the last five years, we grew by 11,000. We got growth slowed down and we picked up our work on infrastructure. We want growth that works for our community.

Here’s a small example. Most of us on Council are recovered soccer and hockey moms and dads. I’m looking at Ralph Robinson, Cathy Duddeck, Ray Chisholm, Dave Gittings, Nick Hutchins, Roger Lapworth, Marc Grant, Allan Elgar, Jeff Knoll and Natalia Lishchyna as well as myself. Sean O’Meara and Tom Adams are current soccer dads and coaches. All of us have seen our growth help our kids’ sports and other activity groups increase the opportunities they can offer our kids.  For all our success at controlling growth, the Province sets the numbers for how much our community must be able to grow. We have accepted the Province’s promise that we can decide in our Official Plan where and how we grow. We have a community-generated growth plan. We all call it Livable Oakville.

When developers follow our plan, as delegation after delegation said at the Glen Abbey council meeting, we’re good with our growth. We have rejected applications that don’t fit our plan. But it has been too easy for developers to disregard our Official Plan and ask an unelected member of the OMB, the Ontario Municipal Board, to change our community’s democratically chosen plan for our future. That isn’t planning and it’s not democracy.

Thankfully, now there’s good news. We’ve worked very hard with the other mayors of Ontario and with MPP Kevin Flynn and with the Premier to get the OMB terminated by Bill 139. Kevin Flynn has led opposition to the OMB since I met him 17 years ago. Back then he was a highly regarded member of this council. Bill 139 replaces the OMB with a tribunal with a much narrower scope. It will only be able to check that Council decisions align with the terms of the Provincial Planning Act and municipalities’ own official plans.

I look forward to seeing what Council and staff can achieve with stronger tools to control growth, after these reforms come into play.

This year Council has taken bold steps to protect our natural and cultural heritage, the second pillar of Livable Oakville. In August, we voted to issue a Notice of Intent to Designate the Glen Abbey Golf Course as a significant cultural heritage landscape under Section 29 of the Ontario Heritage Act.

The designation of Glen Abbey was based on evidence presented by staff and independent third-party experts and recommended by Heritage Oakville. The Heritage Oakville Committee has been a steady champion of our work to conserve our heritage. The entire community, I dare say, now sees the value of the strong approach to heritage conservation established under former mayor Harry Barrett and revived and continued under our leadership. For this Council, the preservation of our community’s natural and cultural heritage will continue to be of the utmost importance.

As for the Glen Abbey Golf Course decision, as you’ve just heard, Council will vigorously defend our decision to refuse ClubLink’s application to turn Oakville’s most famous landmark into a vast subdivision.

The third pillar of Livable Oakville is to keep our community’s amenities in line with our needs.  In the past ten years, we’ve nearly doubled our community facilities, from seniors centres, to ice rinks, to cultural facilities and playing fields. This year, we have launched additions to that legacy.

We took the first steps to creating a new community centre on the former hospital lands in southeast Oakville and adding more than two acres of new greenspace there. We also began rebuilding Oakville Arena into a state-of-the-art recreational centre that will open next year. We improved our existing facilities like the Iroquois Ridge Public Library in North Oakville. This year we saw it updated into a technological and creative hub for residents to learn and practice digital media, 3D design and even computer coding and programming.

Driving that vision forward was Library Chair and Ward 5 Town and Regional Councillor Jeff Knoll.  Council is also asking our Budget Committee, chaired by Ward 6 Town and Regional Councillor Tom Adams, to approve a significant increase to our cultural grants in the 2018 budget. These grants are made available by the Town and administered by the Oakville Arts Council to qualified not-for-profit Oakville arts and culture groups to serve the public and their kids.

And Council continues to make critical investments in infrastructure. I’d like to highlight seven:

First, drivers benefit from our various road widening projects, such as on Fourth Line, or the Road Resurfacing Program which each year makes pavement smoother and more drivable. This year we resurfaced 10 km.

Second, everyone will benefit when we finish the grade separations for Burloak and Kerr.

Third, everyone will benefit when we create two planned Bronte Creek bridges at the QEW.

Fourth, pedestrians and cyclists will be able to get where they need to go more quickly, safely and easily as we create our planned addition of 700 more kilometres of pedestrian and cycle facilities to add to the 1,500 kilometres we have already created all over town.

Fifth, Oakville Transit is improving service by expanding its premium on-request transit service for areas without enough riders to sustain a regular bus route. Home to Hub picks you up at the driveway of your home and takes you to the nearest transit hub where you can catch a bus, at no additional cost.

Sixth, another amenity we have worked hard to develop is our system of harbours. This year, we achieved a long-held goal of former mayor Harry Barrett when we got the Bronte Outer Harbour transferred to the town.

And seventh, the infrastructure our downtown needs will make it flourish.

There are three steps underway for downtown.

Step one is this year’s successful rebuild of the Lakeshore Road bridge downtown. The bridge will be completed under budget and ahead of time. In fact, the bridge will be open for Santa’s parade November 18!

Step two in downtown is our streetscape renewal. 2018 is the year we need to get everyone ready for the reconstruction of the Lakeshore Road streetscape downtown in 2019 and 2020.

Step three will address our old downtown cultural facilities which served the last century. We need downtown cultural facilities to serve this century. We will have our renewed cultural hub facilities open and energizing our main street by 2026. With new parking spaces. The community’s thanks for that will have to go to Oakville Enterprises Corporation for the revenue streams that will enable this investment – just as their work enabled our contribution that made Oakville’s new hospital possible.

We want thriving small businesses, great social and cultural facilities, and Canada’s best downtown community gathering place.

These seven investments, and others, that Council is making in our livability are only possible thanks to our strong financial position.

The fourth pillar of Livable Oakville is our town’s strong financial position. Our financial management avoids erratic spikes in property tax increases that make it harder for our residents to manage a household.

Right now, Council is preparing the 10th straight budget that will keep overall tax increases at or below the rate of inflation. And we will keep being Ontario’s most fiscally healthy municipality. These four pillars of Livable Oakville (growth control, heritage preservation, infrastructure, and fiscal health) are supporting great progress. This year, we were named again the best place to raise kids.  Oakville was also ranked as the fourth-best place to live overall. We also enjoy being the safest, healthiest and longest-lived community.  And the safety comes from the outstanding job done by the Halton Regional Police Service which also enjoys the reputation and the record of having the highest clearance rate for crime of any of the big 12 police forces. Next time you see a cop, you have more to thank them for than you might have known.

Every year, we find ourselves closer to our vision of being Canada’s most livable town. This is a collective achievement, and it is one that spurs pride in our town.

We have a great foundation on which to face six big challenges we can clearly see ahead of us.

The first and biggest challenge we face is ensuring Livable Oakville is livable for all. Next month, we will launch our first Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan. Oakville has 48 per cent of Halton residents below the low income cut off as defined by Statistics Canada.

Oakville and Halton organizations like the Oakville Community Foundation, the United Way, the Y, and our Halton Community Investment Fund all work together, with others, to help those who need help to keep up. And last week our community received $12 million for public housing and fighting homelessness from the Province of Ontario. Thank you, Minister Flynn, for delivering yet again for our community!

The second big challenge we must keep working hard on, in this age of NAFTA talks and other threats, is the economic challenge to assure Oakville’s local economy grows and thrives. To lift all boats, we need to grow our economy. We are proud to be in the competition for Amazon’s HQ2 with an Oakville site that in the pitch to Amazon by Toronto Global. The bid is an amazingly good document. I wish everyone would read it.

But the most promising economic development we have is the forward-thinking, innovative Health Sciences and Technology District. This health science high tech hub, which is located beside the new Oakville hospital, would create nearly two-thirds of the number of jobs expected from the second Amazon headquarters that everybody wants so much. And unlike Amazon, we don’t have to compete for it. The Life Sciences and Technology district is innovative, it’s sustainable, and it’s already chosen Oakville as its home. Best of all, it’s a homegrown project, put forward by Oakville’s own Dr. Joseph Dableh. Councillors Roger Lapworth and Allan Elgar and I ran in support of it in the last election. The stronger our economy and the greener our community, the happier and healthier we will be.

The third big challenge we must accept is a green challenge for every resident. One thing that defines Oakville is our desire to protect and preserve our tree canopy and to add to it. We can be proud of our goal of a 40 per cent tree canopy by Oakville’s 200th anniversary in 2057.

We’ve come a long way from the clear-cutting days of our founders.

I’m pleased to share that Staff are finalizing the details of a new Town initiative called PLANT — Please Let’s Add New Trees. We will encourage individuals, community groups and corporations to plant trees on their properties and on town property every year. In 40 years, when we reach 40 per cent canopy cover, each tree we plant today will have stored a ton of carbon. Oakville’s future is green if we keep working together, one tree at a time.

A million trees by 2057 would take a million tons of carbon (or more than 3.6 million tons of carbon dioxide) out of the air. That’s on top of what our existing trees do. PLANT will support our existing tree-planting work and Oakvillegreen’s new backyard tree planting program in cooperation with the group called LEAF. It all adds up to what we could call a million tree challenge, as the Oakville Horticultural Society has suggested our Town needs.

Our fourth big challenge is to green our transit fleet by converting to electric buses. In a few moments, at this meeting, Council can approve our application to the Province’s new Municipal Green House Gas Challenge Fund for eight electric buses. Kevin – we are going to be counting on you to help us get this! An electric transit fleet was what we built our new Transit facility for, also with support from the Province. Now our far-sightedness is about to be rewarded.

There is a fifth challenge for us to ensure Oakville’s future is green. The Province is declaring surplus the lands we lease from them between 9th Line and Bayshire. I will be challenging Council to take steps to acquire and rehabilitate these lands. When our lease on those lands expires everyone in our community should be able to keep enjoying the greenspace there. When fully rehabilitated, we should see approximately 36 hectares or almost 90 acres of greenspace.

Our sixth big challenge is another opportunity to protect greenspace for our Town. We are working closely with Kevin Flynn, our Oakville MPP and Minister of Labour, to secure in public ownership the balance of the Merton Lands. This is important, because the Province once sold much of the Merton lands for development before the present provincial government took office. We need to prevent the risk that a future provincial government might sell the rest of the Merton Lands for development. Council and I were pleased to hear Minister Flynn’s announcement September 25, that I read in this chamber, that he is working with us to get the Merton Lands and Deerfield Golf Course kept in public ownership.

These six challenges (wellbeing, jobs, trees, electric buses, the Parkway and Merton) are opportunities to strengthen the livability of our Town and assure that Oakville’s future is green. What you’ve heard here are all goals I’m confident you the public support. I am confident these goals are achievable.

Together we have proven we can have as good a community as we’re willing to work together to create. Oakville’s great strength is how many of us are willing to show up and do that work, whether we are showing up as volunteers or as voters.

One resident’s association leader said when we adopted our Livable Oakville plan, and this remark has been an inspiration coming forward for everything that Council does, “It feels so good to live in a town where the Council listens to the people.” I can tell you that it feels good to Council to know you, the people of Oakville, feel you can bring your concerns and needs to Council and get heard.

Thank you very much for your attention to my remarks.

Introduction

We are gathered here together as residents, staff and members of the Councils of our Town and our Region for the tenth annual State of the Town address in this Chamber, on the traditional lands of the Mississaugas of the New Credit.

We are honoured by the attendance of so many community leaders, as well as our regional chair, Gary Carr. Chair Carr, thank you for your leadership of the four municipal partners of the Region of Halton. Together, we are working to make our communities across Halton more livable and sustainable.

This is my tenth report to you on the state of our town. In it, you will see a portrait of a town achieving its goals. You’ll also see a town on the threshold of a great opportunity to do more, to help everyone participate in its successes.

Over the last ten years, our community has embraced a vision to be the most livable town in Canada. This year, Oakville moved from sixth to third best place to live in the country in MoneySense Magazine’s ratings.

This is the best ranking we’ve ever had, and the third year in a row we’ve been in the top ten.

We were named the best place in Ontario to raise children. We are Canada’s safest community and Canada’s healthiest community.

And our economy is strong! As chair of the Auto Mayors, I am optimistic about the future of major employers like Ford, who today employ 5200 people in Oakville. Everywhere we look we can see significant signs of our vision’s success.

Keeping our finances healthy

That success requires a strong foundation of fiscal health and stability.

You, the Councils of our municipality, have created that strong and stable fiscal foundation.

Ten years ago, Oakville residents were weary of unpredictable – and often unsustainably high - property tax increases. Total property tax increases could fluctuate from two to six per cent a year with no warning.

Now, we have shifted to predictable - and predictably low - total annual increases. For eight years running, we have set and met the goal of keeping total property tax increases at or below inflation. Residents will be pleased to hear we will be able to meet that goal once again in the 2017 budget.

I know many residents were happy this year to receive the news from the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, MPAC, of how much their properties have risen in value over the last four years.

Happy about the value, you may have worried about the impact on your property tax.

You will be relieved to know that your home’s taxes aren’t going up the way your home’s value is. We reset our tax rate to avoid any windfall surge in tax revenue.

All the same, we will maintain our strong municipal financial position. Chair Carr places the highest importance on keeping our triple-A credit rating. We’ve done that again this year even while we have made important investments to improve livability. A triple-A credit rating means you pay the lowest rate of interest when you borrow.

Investing in livability

We want to see our property taxes go toward ways to improve our livability and sustainability. Three of the ways I want to highlight are one, providing better roads and infrastructure; two, keeping up with demand for community facilities; and three, protecting greenspace and growing our tree canopy.

Let’s look first at our road improvement and infrastructure work. The money allocated to road resurfacing ten years ago was not enough to keep Oakville’s roads in good condition.

Our roads and works staff, in response to Council’s desire to improve our roads, developed a plan to expand the amount of road work we can do in a year.

This year we allocated nearly double the funding of ten years ago. That funding will resurface 22 kilometres of Oakville roads this year alone.

By the time our roads plan is finished, virtually all of our roads will be in good condition. Residents’ compliments are a welcome alternative to complaints about pot holes.

Renewing and reinvigorating our downtown’s infrastructure is another key priority. By 2019 when we do the work to replace the Lakeshore Road foundations in the downtown, we’ll have a complete vision and a construction mitigation plan the community can have faith in.

When the work’s done in 2020, we’ll have a downtown that is even more attractive than it was when we began.

The second way we are improving livability is our progress creating community centres in each of Oakville’s seven wards.

This year, we’ve begun work on transforming the Oakville Arena in Trafalgar Park into a south central community centre targeted at seniors and youth.

We’re also about to begin the functional planning of the next community centre on the old OTMH grounds on Reynolds Street.

Every two years for the next four years, we’ll open a new community centre. In ten years or sooner, we’ll add the Neyagawa Boulevard community centre expansion to the 16 Mile Sports Complex.

Our Town values our community facilities -- and our public assets. We were recently relieved to know the Province has decided to relax its pressure for consolidation of municipal hydro utilities. Our hydro is the ninth largest in Ontario already and a tremendous asset for the Town as it is.

The third key to our livability and sustainability that I want to highlight is making our town a cleaner, greener place to live.

High priorities for our Councils are our parks, trails, ravines, waterfront, and tree canopy. Our green and natural assets make for happier, healthier residents so we must protect them.

First, we created the Oakville Natural Heritage System of 2,300 acres of protected (and natural) greenspace across north Oakville. Then, working with Chair Carr, we protected our NHS by making it part of a larger natural heritage system protecting 50 per cent of Halton and connecting it the Greenbelt.

We also committed to expanding Oakville’s urban forest canopy. It might be the best in the GTA today, but we set a goal to reach 40 per cent coverage by Oakville’s 200th anniversary.

To do that we have a four-part plan. We’re now beefing up our policy of saving trees on private land, we’re extending tree protection controls to developers land, we’re fighting the emerald ash tree borer and - of course - we’re planting more trees.

Our policies reflect the ideas of stewardship espoused by the Indigenous peoples who first inhabited this land. Among those ideas is the belief that we should make decisions for seven generations, not just for today or tomorrow.

This idea reinforces our determination to protect our environment and control growth to what fits.

Ten years ago we had local, regional and provincial rules that unfairly favoured developers. The local land use policies in our Official Plan were full of loopholes and contradictions that allowed developers to run roughshod over residents and communities.

So we created the Livable Oakville and the Sustainable Halton Official Plans. These two plans introduced protection of our green spaces and our stable established neighbourhoods from unwanted intensification. Our plans now channel growth to six carefully selected growth nodes. We have gone from losing 75 per cent of the time at the Ontario Municipal Board, the “OMB”, to winning 67 per cent of the time.

We’re being challenged at the OMB now over how we will conduct the planning process required to consider the future of Glen Abbey Golf Course. I’m confident of our success in that contest.

Our plans also work to protect heritage, inspired by the work of six-term former Mayor Harry Barrett. His foundational work to protect and preserve our heritage is the work we built upon in our Livable Oakville Plan.

As proud as we are of our town and regional official plans, we are now working to review, renew, and revise these plans to make them even more effective. We’ve also turned our attention to the need to improve the Province’s rules for development and we’ve won several improvements there.

Now, the Province is considering changes to their Growth Plan for the Golden Horseshoe and changes to the powers of the OMB. Our engagement with the Province to get these changes will not let up in the coming months. Thanks to our MPPs and cabinet ministers Kevin Flynn and Indira Naidoo-Harris, we’re in the best position ever for success in getting the changes we need to create the future as we want it for our town.

We have planning staff who “get” Oakville. They have worked with us as local and regional Councils to maximize the quality of our advice to the Province as it evaluates changes to its Growth Plan and to the OMB.

There are good reasons to be optimistic that provincial policies will change to help us achieve a more livable Oakville.

As we do, we’ll continue to attract more newcomers to Town.

Keeping Oakville welcoming, friendly and diverse

And the question newcomers ask me most is why we call ourselves a town. We’re surrounded by some of the country’s largest urban centres. We have 25 times the population of the City of Dryden.

We call ourselves a town because it reflects the warmth, the friendliness and the welcoming nature that has always helped newcomers to fit in and find their footing.

Though we’ve faced great challenges and had our share of shortcomings, Oakville’s history is one where welcoming and diversity wins out.

Over the years, Oakville has been a place of refuge and hope for those seeking security, prosperity and new horizons. That was the case nearly 200 years ago, when Oakville was a destination for those fleeing on the Underground Railroad to escape slavery and oppression.

The hope and opportunity Oakville offers has been shared with immigrant communities ever since. Today, Oakville’s diversity serves as a tremendous source of strength. We all benefit from our thriving South Asian, Chinese, Hispanic and European communities. This year, residents of all backgrounds have come together to welcome over 50 families from Syria.

Our diverse population and our welcoming, neighbourly communities are a key part of what sets Oakville apart. In many places, the term neighbour is little more than a geographic distinction. In Oakville being a neighbour still means more.

In Oakville, we feel good about the fact that kids know which door to knock on if they need help. We have a neighbourly urge to volunteer more. Being neighbourly pays us back in our community’s safety and well-being.

All of us contribute what we can to the strength of our community, and Oakville’s strengths are abundant. We have a unified vision of what we want our town to look like. We have committed community leaders working side-by-side with us to control growth and protect their neighbourhoods. We also have what I believe to be the best municipal staff in the country.

As Councils we have many times leveraged the strengths of our community and staff to everyone’s benefit. All of this is what makes me so confident in our ability to do more. So - with that in mind - let’s look at the opportunity we have to be an even more inclusive and caring community, and to make sure everyone can participate in and enjoy Oakville’s livability.

Plans for the future

Oakville’s poverty rate is two-thirds the provincial average. Oakville’s assets as a community are well above the provincial average. Our finances are the healthiest in Ontario. We can do more. With a smaller poverty rate and greater capacity to deal with it, it makes sense that if Oakville can’t deal with its poverty, nobody can.

We’ve expanded and extended our low income transit pass to support people whose means of getting around is challenged. We’ve strengthened property tax deferment opportunities to help low-income seniors. But we can do more.

Oakville and Halton can be the first municipality with a comprehensive set of community safety and well-being plans to fundamentally change our approach to poverty and community well-being for everyone.

In the year ahead it is going to be my focus to engage and expand everyone’s participation in the safety and well-being of our communities.

Our municipality is blessed with volunteer organizations who all have much to contribute to this work. Think of the Vital Signs and Solutions work by the Oakville Community Foundation. Think of the ambitious targets the Oakville United Way meets every year. Think of the Halton Community Investment Fund that has grown to be a significant force for good under Halton Chair Gary Carr. Think of the leadership of people like June Cockwell, co-chair of the Halton Poverty Round Table. Think of the many members of the Chamber of Commerce and other service clubs who care about our community’s safety and well-being.

If we reach out to each other to create these community safety and well-being plans the way we created the Livable Oakville and Sustainable Halton plans, we will enjoy great success.

For the past ten years, I have said the secret to Oakville’s success is that we are a city that calls itself a town, and acts like a village. That will remain the secret to our success for years to come. It is a pleasure to work alongside residents, staff and you my fellow Council members to move forward with our Livable Oakville and Sustainable Halton visions.

The last ten years have been a time of tremendous success. I look forward to ten more years of our success working together to protect our future for many generations to come.

Fellow residents. Town staff. Members of Council. This is my ninth State of the Town address. It's a pleasure to be able to tell you how well the town we all love is doing.

First, our financial health is the best. So says a 2015 book about municipal finances. (Yes, books about municipal finance really can be enjoyable after all. Especially if you are the star of the book!). This is gratifying to see. We’ve worked hard for the last nine years to make our financial health the best it can be.

We believe that financial strength is critical to our town’s livability. The performance-based program budgeting approach that we introduced in 2007 to get budgets under control has worked very well for us. How well? So well that total tax increases for eight years, including next year’s projected budget will have been in-line with inflation.

At the same time we've added 80 per cent to our facilities and improved services, fire protection, transit and infrastructure renewal.

We need our financial strength going forward because we face challenges and opportunities at five levels. These are international, national, provincial, regional and local.

Internationally, two opportunities stand out in 2015. First, this year, we became sister cities with Huai’an City, China. Our bridge to China will provide our local companies with new business opportunities overseas.

The second item is the Syrian Refugee crisis. In Oakville, residents have organized groups to host displaced families. Living in Oakville will give them the opportunity to experience the Canadian way of life. Their success here will make Canada and Oakville more successful. So this will be an ongoing circle of opportunity for them and us.

Everyday our residents prove former Oakville Mayor Harry Barrett was right about our Town. He said, “Oakville is a city that calls itself a town and feels like a village.” He set us on the right path in his six terms as mayor. I hope that we can all wish him a very happy 90th birthday this month.

Nationally, two challenges stand out. First, the recent federal election gave municipalities a chance to get infrastructure needs on the agenda. So our challenge now is to ensure campaign infrastructure investment promises will be kept.

The second challenge nationally is the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. The Canadian negotiators achieved different results than we were hoping for. As Chair of the Auto Mayors, let me express my strongest support for the remarks today by Ford Canada President, Diane Craig. We will work with Ford Canada and the rest of the Industry to keep the automotive sector competitive and in Oakville.

Provincially, two opportunities in 2015 stand out. Ontario’s Premier convened Summits with the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area mayors and chairs in March and October. We raised our concerns about economic growth, infrastructure, transit and transportation. We presented consensus recommendations. The Premier has committed to respond to our recommendations. The Premier has also agreed to continue the Municipal-Provincial Summits three times a year from now on. This is something that the Mayors and Chairs have been longing for and working for many years. So there is a great deal of promise in this, in our view.

The second provincial-level opportunity is the Province’s review of legislation affecting municipalities. Some proposed provincial changes look like opportunities to help us achieve our goals. The Province seems to be agreeing to better funding for transit. The Province may be about to agree to expand the Greenbelt. These are both welcome moves.

On an unwelcome and challenging note, proposed changes to parkland dedication rules will reduce the amount of parks in new areas. We will support the good and oppose the bad.

Regionally, two opportunities stand out. First, thanks to a big increase in spending on transportation, we’ll have less congestion when the construction finally clears. The pain for the gain will be worth it. The days of growing without keeping up are gone for good. The pain for the gain of catching up shows us why keeping up is always better. We are now securely on that path.

The second regional opportunity of note is our work to make Halton political representation more fair. We should see a seventh Oakville ward in the 2018 elections for town and region council. We'll also see more equal representation in our wards.

Locally, two opportunities dominated 2015. The first is the opening in 48 days of our new, state-of-the-art hospital. This hospital is already driving a boom in economic development.

The second local, Town level opportunity has been our work to get most of the Merton Lands designated as part of Ontario’s Greenbelt. That goal is now very close.

We also endured a sad event in 2015. The loss of Councillor Max Khan left an empty seat on Council.

The election of our new Member, Natalia Lishchyna, has made us whole again. Now, we congratulate Councillor Pam Damoff on her election as a Member of Parliament. When Pam is sworn in, her Council seat will become vacant. Council's loss will be Parliament's gain. And it will be an opportunity for another member of our community to run in a by-election to serve on Council with us.

As 2015 draws to a close, it’s clear that there are some big local questions ahead of us that we as your Council will have to answer. These questions have Federal and Provincial links.

Here's the first question. How will we respond to the Province's determination that Ontario’s many large and small local power distribution companies need to be combined into a handful of large and more efficient regional entities?

The Province expects this to happen over the next three years and that’s not a long time. We must evaluate our options and we will.

The second question ahead of us is the renewal of our cultural facilities downtown. The change of government in the election has increased the chance of federal infrastructure funding for municipalities. All of us need to settle on a master plan for downtown facilities to be ready for funding.

The question is really simple. Do we want our downtown facilities all in one place? Or do we want some at Centennial Square and some at the Old Post Office?

Everything else, like the funding depends on other levels of government. The vision depends on us. We need to choose.

Here's the third question. What will be the future of the world-famous Glen Abbey Golf Course? ClubLink, the owner, has announced it wants to convert Glen Abbey into a housing subdivision. There can be no quick and easy answer to this question. And here is why.

Ontario has a legal framework for land use decisions. Council sits as a kind of panel of judges. Judges who do not want to be overturned on appeal must hear all the evidence before taking positions or making decisions. If we want to judge we must not pre-judge.

Your Town Council’s decisions have focused in the last nine years, entirely on providing Oakville with the best possible services and programs and outcomes.

Our goals are your goals. Fiscal health. A clean, green and safe environment. Community facilities. Mobility. A good economy. Action to protect us from climate change. All our achievements with these contribute to our celebrated livability.

As an Oakville resident, you can continue to feel confident in the high level of commitment from your Council. Let me give you some more evidence.

First, for eight years in a row we are the safest community in Canada, while enjoying having Ontario’s most efficient Police force. One of the best in clearing crime – that is solving crime.

Second, a new national survey ranks Canada's communities by their attractiveness as places to start a business. Oakville is seventh in all of Canada. Two other parts of our Halton Region are in the top ten, too. I think this is a pretty remarkable thing to have three parts of Halton in Canada’s top ten. So I think that shows how well we’ve been working together with our partners across Halton.

To our colleagues at all levels, it’s been good working with you in 2015. We look forward to working with you in the years ahead.

To town staff, we on Council and in the public appreciate you very much. You provide us with the best possible advice. You provide the best possible services and programs for our residents. Above all, you have a true spirit of continuous improvement in your work for us. We thank you for that, and we count on it.

To you, the residents we serve, we thank you for your feedback, your support and your trust. Your engagement in our community's future is an example for everyone. 28,000 residents gave $65 million to make our new hospital possible. Thousands of residents participate in the community groups that give our town so much vitality. Many work to extend and expand opportunities for the less fortunate.

We all contribute to the livability and success we celebrate and strive for in Oakville. Oakville is succeeding because we work together with creativity and imagination. The longer we do that, the farther we will go.

Little by little we make a better day. Day by day we make a better town. Town by town we make a better world. We are creating an Oakville and a Canada we can believe in and can be proud of. Let's keep our direction onward and upward!

The following remarks were delivered to Council, staff and residents at the September 22, 2014, Council meeting, where Mayor Rob Burton also presented his Oakville Status Report.

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbours. Every year at this time, it’s been my pleasure to give you my report and share my views on the state of the town. My focus this time is our decision-making. You can see our past, our present and our future in our decision-making. You yourselves and all the rest of our friends and neighbours will be making decisions later this year, next month in fact, when you vote for the regional chair, mayor, councillors, and trustees.

So the theme this year is decision making. All of our decisions together add up to what kind of town we are creating.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield said it this way in his book: “Every decision you make, from what you eat to what you do with your time today, turns you into who you are tomorrow and the day after that.” Mr. Hadfield was writing about achieving his dream of going into outer space. But the same words apply for those of us just trying to make our corner of the planet Earth a better place to live, work, play, raise a family and retire. We have a vision of being the most livable town in Canada.

To judge the state of the town at this point in our history, let’s look at my choices for the top ten groups of decisions that we’ve made. You’ll see what they’ve done for you. And you’ll see what they will do for you.

My list is from my perspective as your mayor. These are the groups of decisions with the most impact on you and our future. Let’s start with the environment.

A more livable Oakville needs clean air

First, a more livable Oakville needs clean air. We decided to enact Canada’s only legislation restricting PM2.5. PM2.5 is the deadliest form of air pollution. We are the only government in Canada to restrict PM2.5. Since 2010, our air has had a 37 per cent reduction of PM2.5. We also decided to ban smoking within nine metres of all town areas where we know kids play, to protect children from second-hand smoke, which is a proven carcinogen.

A more livable Oakville needs generous green space

Second, a more livable Oakville needs generous green space. We decided to save and protect green space. We created our own 2300 acre local green belt across north Oakville. Some said it couldn’t be done. We developed new parks and redeveloped old ones. We are restoring and protecting the Bronte Bluffs. We’re upgrading Oakville Harbour’s shoreline. We made decisions that saved 80% of the Merton Lands. With the new greener Provincial Policy Statement on land use planning, we expect to save the rest.

A more livable Oakville needs to keep its trees

Third, a more livable Oakville needs to keep its trees. We need to add more, too. There are only two ways to deal with the Emerald Ash Borer: cut or cure. With our target of growing our tree canopy to 40% in mind, we decided to fight this pest by treating our public trees. We recommend to home owners to treat to save theirs, too. Our tree protection and strict tree planting rules for developers will help us reach our goal, and so will our decision to plant more trees everywhere we can. These tree planting rules should make lollipop trees a thing of the past.

A more livable Oakville needs facilities for its residents to stay healthy and active

Fourth, a more livable Oakville needs facilities for its residents to stay healthy and active. We decided to create an additional 800,000 square feet – a 70% increase – of new community facilities. We needed it to catch up with the growth we had experienced as a town. You responded with appreciation and increased levels of participation and enjoyment. And we’ve made decisions that will create more public facilities for you:

• We’ll create a new community centre in North Park.
• We will renew and expand Oakville Arena as part of a new community and seniors centre on Kerr Street.
• We’ll establish a new community centre where the old high school is in southeast Oakville.
• We will renew the streetscape of the downtown when we rebuild the roadbed.
• We will add more parking to the downtown.

In 2017, we will be ready to renew the central library and performing arts centre at Centennial Square and create a new home for the Gallery for Canada’s 150th birthday celebrations.

We will enjoy a state-of-the-art new hospital. And we decided to make it happen by funding the hospital donation using non-tax funds from green and other energy projects. We believe the property tax is not the appropriate source to fund hospitals.

A more livable Oakville needs to be fiscally responsible

Fifth, a more livable Oakville needs to be fiscally responsible to be able to afford what we need. So we on Council made decisions to run the town with business-like tools.

• We work each term from unanimous four year strategic work plans. Our version of a business plan.
• We moved to performance-based budgeting. And we’re still the only government in Canada that operates on a results based basis.
• We shifted all the costs of growth we could off of you, the property tax payer.
• To get developers’ hands out of your pockets, we raised our development charges to the maximum allowed by law. We were 15th highest. And now we lead.

The result of our decisions has been to reduce tax increases. For four years before my time as mayor, the property tax levy increase averaged 7 per cent a year. In my first term, we cut that to 5 per cent. This term, we’ve cut it to less than 3 per cent a year. The idea the total tax levy conveys includes our growth in new assessment of new homes and properties.

Our record with the total tax increase, which is what you experience because that leaves growth out of the equation, is even better. This year it was just 0.7 per cent, less than 1 per cent, well less than inflation, the lowest in 15 years. In fact, the total tax increase for this four-year term of Council was 20 per cent below inflation. In the four years before you elected me, the total tax increase was 60 per cent higher than inflation. And each year for the last six years, we have cut the actual property tax rates. If you like your tax increases going down, here on this council are the people you can thank.

Our fiscal status has never been better. S and P has renewed our triple A credit rating. We're rated better now than Markham, Vaughan, Richmond Hill, King, Aurora, Newmarket, the City of Toronto and the Province of Ontario. Oakville is also one of the few places with a fully-funded Asset Management Plan. Your neighbouring cities face massive infrastructure renewal deficits. You don’t.

Oakville is on a steady path of declining tax-paid debt. Tax-paid debt was $24 million eight years ago. It’s $10 million now. And it’s headed down.

A more livable Oakville needs strong and successful business districts

Sixth, a more livable Oakville needs our classic village-style business districts to be strong and successful. Ours have weathered economic and natural storms. Ours are facing competition from places that have beautified their downtowns. We decided to help meet the challenge. We have business development strategies to assist all three of our small-town business areas to reach their potential and to be as successful and resilient as possible.

A more livable Oakville requires a future supply of employment land

Seventh, a more livable Oakville requires a future supply of employment land. Our town had a very bad record before this Council of letting developers convert employment land into houses. Over the last two terms of this Council, our decisions have preserved job lands through our official plan and our zoning. We decided that your need for a financially sustainable town outweighed the desire of developers for fast and easy profits. All of this makes for an even more livable Oakville. And, that attracts business.

The businesses we attract and the ones we keep are how we are meeting our goal of creating 1000 jobs a year for Oakville. Oakville is a great place for business because it is such a great place to raise a family.

A more livable Oakville needs a strong and successful auto sector

Eighth, a more livable Oakville needs a strong and successful auto sector. When the Ford Motor Company decided to invest the best part of $1 billion in its Oakville assembly plant, rather than close it, we did more than celebrate. We took the initiative. We formed the Auto Mayors Coalition. We’re working with the automakers, Unifor, academics, and government. We’re driving to create an Industrial Policy for Ontario and Canada, with an Auto Manufacturing Policy at its core.

We need to keep good-paying manufacturing jobs in Oakville, in Ontario, and in Canada.

A more livable Oakville needs plans

Ninth, a more livable Oakville needs plans. I’ve always been reluctant to call them blueprints. Let’s call them “greenprints”. For our town, Livable Oakville is our vision and our land use plan. For our region, Sustainable Halton is our vision and our land use plan. Now, these plans control growth. They protect our neighbourhoods from unwanted densification. They protect our green space. They protect us from having to finance and subsidize developers infrastructure. Our town plan and vision are required by law to conform to the region’s plan and vision.

For that reason alone, the region is worth paying attention to – and we do. One result is we have been able to make developers pay for an almost 500 per cent increase in our roads budget to fight gridlock. The leadership of Regional Chair Gary Carr has been essential to our victories in that forum.

A more livable Oakville needs the best possible professional civil service

Tenth, a more livable Oakville needs the best possible professional civil service. So we made decisions to invest in recruiting and developing and retaining the best and the brightest. Our clear vision for Oakville has attracted talented and committed staff. You have seen how we have been able to trust staff to translate into reality our vision of a more livable Oakville. We know that our people are the most important part of our success as a town.

Those are the ten most directional sets of our decisions, from a mayor’s perspective. You may have others. Our vision and our plans are living documents. Part of the current state of the town is that we are now engaged in municipal elections. At every municipal election, you the voter judge our decisions. Your decisions can change anything or everything. You can have large or small impacts.

• A different council can sell off assets we depend upon to carry the town’s up to $130 million donation to the hospital next year.
• A different council can reverse our increase to fire protection that sped up fire fighters’ response times to rescue people and save property.
• A different Council could cancel our new Children’s Festival that’s a big hit with families who enjoy the waterfront fun.
• A different council could reverse our unanimous protection of heritage districts.
• A different Council could reverse our expansion of transit into a grid system that has increased personal mobility for everyone.
• A different council could turn away from our prudent fiscal management that has kept tax increases at 20 per cent less than inflation. We were on a very different path before eight years ago.
• A different council can reverse our support of the police and our resulting six years of being Canada’s safest place to live. There are seven members of this Council who serve on the Regional Council that funds and oversees our police:
• Councillors Tom Adams, Keith Bird, Cathy Duddeck, Allan Elgar, Alan Johnston, and Jeff Knoll. Oakville has had a central role in the police with me as the chair of the police board and Councillor Knoll as a board member.
• All of this Council, including town councillors Pam Damoff, Dave Gittings, Marc Grant, Max Khan, Roger Lapworth, and Ralph Robinson supported our move to shift development costs off of the property tax and on to development charges where they belong. A different council can change the development charges bylaw to shift the costs of infrastructure back on to property tax payers.
• A different council in short can take us off the path we decided to follow for the last eight years.

So now it’s your turn to make decisions. For four years, you have trusted this Council to make the good decisions that have kept us on the path towards a more livable Oakville and a more sustainable Halton. We will see next month if you feel that we have delivered.

My verdict is that the town is in a better place now than four or eight years ago. That’s my judgment. We on council await your judgment of our work. And your judgment counts more. But I hope we can all agree that the town is in a better place now than it was in 1976 when Councillor Keith Bird began his career of service to you as a member of our elected councils. Councillor Bird takes great pride in the progress in his terms on the police board and the conservation authority, as well as the downtown BIA.

There are many other contributions by Councillor Bird too numerous to mention here. And I urge you to watch for your invitation to his retirement dinner later this year to really celebrate his career. As a Council we worked together with creativity and a growing mutual respect to always find agreement and consensus on your behalf.

To each member of Council let me say, it has been great working with you. To you, the residents we serve, on behalf of everyone on Council, let me say, thank you for your trust.

Chair Carr, former Mayor Barrett, fellow residents, invited guests, esteemed staff and respected Council colleagues. These annual Status of the town speeches began seven years ago. They update you on our progress toward our goal of being Canada’s most livable town.

Last year, this speech focused on the long-range plans guiding us forward.

This year, we focus on the results we are achieving. And what a year it’s been!

All share the credit for our success

Every year, thanks to the efforts of so many dedicated people, our town is getting ever closer to being Canada’s most livable town. Who are these dedicated people? You who are here tonight and there are many more where you came from. You who are leaders of our many volunteer groups of residents. You who are business leaders. You who are members of our dedicated professional civil service staff at the town, the police, and the region. You who are members of Council.

You each have a starring role in our town’s success this year.

Consider these five accomplishments:

First, our Official Plan, Livable Oakville, passed its first acid test at the Ontario Municipal Board. The OMB dismissed outright a developer’s appeal of our refusal to approve a too-dense in-fill sub-division in an established neighbourhood.

Second, we kept our overall property tax change to within inflation again this year. We achieved this level of tax control even while we increased and improved services and facilities. We did it by harvesting the dividends of our relentless pursuit of efficiency.

Third, this year again we successfully enforced our policy of acquiring waterfront for the public. We acquired new, significant pieces of Oakville’s waterfront for public access and enjoyment. This brings us to about 33 per cent of the waterfront open to the public.

Fourth, we have measurably cleaner, healthier air to breathe. Our Health Protection Air Quality By-law has reduced air pollution. We are the only government anywhere in Canada that regulates PM2.5. PM2.5 is the deadliest kind of air pollution.

Fifth, for the fifth year in a row we're the safest community in the country. Our police force is effective and efficient.

So how good was this year? We even had good weather for the Canadian Open.

A culture of engagement

Our record of success shows we can be trusted to do the best for Oakville.

When a decision is being made, we do more than just notify you – we engage you. We trust you to help us make the best possible decision.

We as a Council believe in public engagement. In Oakville public engagement is democracy in action between elections.

In other words, what we do is all about you.

A greener and cleaner town

And when it comes to asking for things to make Oakville the most livable, you are remarkably consistent.

You tell us you want a town that’s green and clean. We are united in this goal.

To make Oakville greener, we plant trees, thousands annually, far more than we lose.

Someone once said, “Trees are the best monuments that you can erect to your own memory. They speak to your praises without flattery, and they are blessings to children yet unborn.”

Children yet unborn will enjoy the 40 per cent urban forest canopy we will create by the year 2057.

And if you’ve got 44 more years left in you, you’ll be here to enjoy it, too. The rest of us will enjoy the ever greener path that will take us there.

We are also working hard to protect our existing woodlands. Here are three ways:

1. First, the town’s Forestry staff is waging one of Canada’s most aggressive fights against the Emerald Ash Borer.
2. Second, Council recently approved a plan to protect Oakville’s NHS with natural trails standards.
3. Third, we are piloting a project with Oakvillegreen for public education and awareness to respect and protect our trails and Natural Heritage System.

Our Natural Heritage System is a municipal greenbelt. The NHS has 900 hectares, 9 square kilometres across North Oakville. We’re working to control impacts on our preserved green space while we provide for walking and cycling for our nearby neighbourhoods.

But protecting our environment is not just about trees and trails. It’s about making Oakville a cleaner place, too. This may lack some of the poetry of trees and trails. But, we must work to minimize waste. And this year our town won three Gold Ontario Waste Minimization Awards.

Facilities for all

You also tell us you want upgraded, improved and expanded town facilities for community activities.

Across the north, we have updated our three community centres. We know other parts of town have waited decades for community centres. We know the role such facilities play in the life and spirit of our town.

We know you want a new community and health centre on the old hospital site. You want a new community and seniors centre with a restored and revitalized Oakville Arena on Kerr Street. You want a reinvigorated and updated Centennial Square. You want a community centre for North Park.

Each of these projects will be designed with you to make our town more livable. Each will cultivate our town’s soul and spirit.

This year we are finishing the planning and public engagement for our next new facilities. Our Ten Year Capital Forecast plan will lay out the path to completion of our facilities needs. Council expects to finalize that plan next year on a pay as you go basis to avoid tax-paid debt.

We are also taking special care in working on enhancing the role of our downtown as a social and cultural hub. We will create conditions for our famed downtown to become more attractive, resilient and successful. We will break new ground in community planning for this area. Downtown has been called the jewel in the crown of Oakville. We will make it shine.

And while we are on the topic of public facilities, when the new Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital opens at the end of 2015, we will be able to make our donation of up to $130 million without using taxes.

New revenues from Oakville Hydro from green energy and other business projects across Ontario will carry the cost of our donation. Please acknowledge Oakville Hydro’s board and President Rob Lister and his team for this. And let’s congratulate them for being awarded Large Company of the Year honours last month by the Ontario Energy Association.

There’s more good fiscal news.

Lower tax increases with more and better services and facilities

We have continued to cut our tax-paid debt. Since 2006, we’ve cut it 43 per cent. We are on track to eliminate tax-paid debt in ten years.

And, we’ve been keeping total tax increases to the level of inflation.

At the same time, we have responded to your demand for higher quality town services.

We have more police and fire and faster response times. We have better road quality. We have more parks and green spaces. We have more resources for public libraries. We have better snow clearing. We have more and faster transit. We have more household leaf collections. We have fully-funded infrastructure depreciation. Funding our infrastructure needs has been our single biggest increase in spending and taxing. We doubled it.

Even with what we’ve had to take care of and added, we have a good news story on the tax front. You can see how well we’ve doing on taxes by looking at how just one number has moved over the last 12 years.

From 2002 to 2006, the total property tax levy increased by an average of 7 per cent a year.

In my first term as mayor, from 2006 to 2010, we cut the annual rate of increase from 7 per cent to 5 per cent.

This term, we’ve cut the rate of increase from an average of 5 per cent a year to 3 per cent a year.

Everyone tells us 7-5-3 is a good direction.

As a direct result, out of Ontario’s 84 largest municipalities, Oakville has the sixth lowest tax rate.

We’re sticking to the path of tax control. Earlier this year, we unanimously set our 2014 budget direction of keeping the overall tax change to no more than 1.5 per cent.

Council and management pay freeze

To set an example, in December we froze our own pay on Council. We froze the pay of our non-union management staff.

We are committed to sound fiscal management. We deliver first-rate public services. We attract and retain the best and the brightest for our civic staff. We protect and enhance our town’s natural beauty. We are proud of our public facilities. We are as excited as you are for our new facilities. These are what make Oakville so livable.

Livability determines our future

Our livability attracts other people and families to want to move here. Therefore, our livability keeps our investments in our homes safe – and appreciating. We keep our town in good shape for the same reason we keep our homes in good shape.

Even better, our livability is why businesses want to invest and locate here.

So the engine of our economic growth is our livability. Why, last year 1,200 new jobs were created in Oakville.

Our unemployment rate is well below the provincial average. And in 2012 we had more than 1.1 million square feet of non-residential construction in our town. That’s a total value of more than $221 million.

Our livability is growing our economy, and we all want that.

You also tell us you want Oakville’s population growth controlled.

Growth control has reduced growth rate 33%

Well, our population growth rate since the 2006 Census is 33 per cent lower than it was before. We won’t let growth change the essence of what we are environmentally, economically and socially.

We will keep Oakville a friendly, warm community; we will keep Oakville’s unique spirit alive.

My friend, mentor and former Mayor, Harry Barrett captured the essence of that spirit when he coined the expression, “Oakville is a city that calls itself a town and feels like a village.” Since the last Status of the Town Report, we’ve named our waterfront trails system after him. He created our policy for our trails system. He created our policy for our public access to the Waterfront. These are today signature pieces of our identity as a town. It was time to identify them with him, their author. Please join me in thanking former Mayor Barrett.

Is it any wonder if others see our town as special?

This year, for the second year, MoneySense Magazine listed our town as one of the top five best places to live in the entire country.

Mind you, it’s not really the opinion of the national media that matters to Oakville.

What matters to Oakville is what the people who live here think.

And according to our surveys the people of Oakville believe their town is on the right track.

Our surveys say 85 per cent of you believe Oakville is more livable than other areas in the GTA.

Surveys say, 90 per cent of you say you are satisfied with your town and police and regional government.

We know a huge piece of your satisfaction comes from the way you know when you talk with us we listen.

Five challenges ahead

And we need to talk. As much as we’ve achieved in the last year, there are five major challenges that are commanding our concern and attention as leaders of our community. These five challenges should attract your concern and attention, too.

1. Our first challenge is the continuing one from residential developers. They want property taxpayers to finance their infrastructure; they want us to take on debt that should be theirs. Call it subsidizing newcomers or call it subsidizing developer profits, we can’t afford it. That would endanger our AAA Credit Rating. It would undermine our economic strength.

For now, we seem to have overcome this challenge. The developers have just withdrawn the legal attacks they filed last year. But this was only one battle.

The war over who will pay for infrastructure to support new homes is continuing. The developers are lobbying the provincial government to shift the costs of growth to you, the property taxpayer. We must and will stay engaged in this struggle.

2. The second challenge facing Oakville is the financing for the proposed GTA transit plan known as the “Big Move.” Unfortunately, the “Big Move” plan has a big hole in its funding. In fact, there’s a $34 billion gap. On a GTA-wide basis, that’s an average $1000 a year for every home, for almost 20 years.

How will this gap be paid for? Right now, we still don’t know. Our Council believes the property tax is over-worked already. That’s what motivated me to work so hard – and successfully – this year to get the Province to pledge that they would leave property taxes out of any funding of the Big Move.

We still have to see where the money will come from, that is, if Phase 2 of the Big Move will be built at all.

3. The third major challenge we face is the on-going appeal to the OMB by developers against our Enhanced Natural Heritage System.

Our 9 square kilometres Natural Heritage System is our town greenbelt across north Oakville. It’s not under appeal. We see our NHS as being protected and extended by the 492 square kilometres Enhanced Natural Heritage System we have created across the rest of Halton. That's 51 per cent of Halton.

4. The fourth and fifth challenges we face are opportunities. We will lose out financially as tax payers if we do not succeed with these challenges.

Let’s look at the fourth challenge. Oakville has assets worth $1.6 billion.

We need to ask ourselves, are our assets performing as well as they can for us?

Consider the town’s land in Downtown Oakville. Can we make better use of these lands? Could we add office and retail spaces to create both more parking and more customers for downtown shops? Our answer to this will determine if we can create a new level of vitality and success in our historic downtown. Can we create a new streetscape and new partnerships to make downtown the social and cultural community hub of our town?

This will be among the most important work our town staff has embarked upon.

5. The fifth challenge is to stick to our plan for developing our employment lands. This land will create the 30,000 jobs Oakville needs for the future.

This is an on-going challenge because Councils in the past, before 2006, had to let 500 hectares of employment lands be converted to residential. They let space for 25,000 jobs go and added population instead. One way we are controlling population growth now is by not permitting conversions of employment land to residential development. We have strict laws in place now to block conversions.

Because any Council in future can change any law, the challenge that remains is yours, as voters. Sometimes it seems as if the question should be, do you want to be crowded or do you want to be green and employed? Any way you look at it, this has been your green Council, focused on environmental lands as well as jobs lands.

Our jobs plan includes for our businesses to get out in the world more. More of our businesses need global dimensions to increase our town’s prosperity.

Economic development in a global frame

We are working with our business leaders who are pathfinders globally to encourage other Oakville businesses to “get out more.”

That’s why we conducted our well-attended business leaders’ forum this summer on doing business successfully with China.

At home, our Life Sciences Business Park is getting off the ground faster than expected. We thought our new hospital would have to open first before the Life Sciences Business Park would start to take off in 2016. Delightfully, it’s already starting taking off.

And advanced manufacturing, one of the pillars of our strategy, is almost a billion dollars stronger now.

Last month Ford, Ontario and Canada announced that the Oakville Assembly Plant will become one of Ford’s global platform centres.

Later this month, we will host the first major gathering in five years of Ontario’s Auto Mayors Group with provincial and federal officials at Ford. We’ll consider ways to ensure Ontario continues to be home to North America’s most significant auto-making industry.

So far, we have met or are overcoming each of the challenges we face. We’ve had no defeat, no surrender.

With our seven years of success, everyone is entitled to a sense of optimism about our way of keeping our town on the path to success. You can trust us to keep working to do more and more with less and less of a tax increase because we’ve shown for so long now that our way is to set goals for efficiencies and effectiveness.

• Our way is to protect the environment and to promote economic growth and social development for the benefit of all.
• Our way is to control growth in the community.
• Our way is to keep alive the Oakville spirit of a small town whose warm and friendly welcome speeds newcomers to successful roles in our town’s life.
• Our way is to provide first-rate, trusted government services from a professional civil service at the town, police, and region that is the best and brightest anywhere.
• Our way is to create and maintain top-notch public facilities, without overburdening taxpayers.

Partnering for success

Our way is to work cooperatively with higher levels of government. We are a two-level municipality. Halton Chair Gary Carr has been a great partner to coordinate municipal goals and fiscal impacts with us.

All municipalities are creatures of the Province. MPP Kevin Flynn has been a great partner at Queen’s Park to represent us through thick and thin times.

And when the federal government has been able to partner with us, we have benefitted as a community, too. Think of how they and the Province split the cost of half of our $60 million transit facility. The way we work, they’re welcome back at the table anytime.

Our way is to engage you in the decisions that directly impact you and to work together with you to get those decisions right.

And when necessary, our way is to defend our decisions at the OMB or in court.

A previous mayor once said in this place that we had to give developers what they wanted because Oakville always lost at the OMB.

Oakville wins

Now, developers and the OMB respect Oakville’s vision of our future because we do the hard work to make sure our decisions stand when tested at the OMB.

One example is our decision in 2009 to impose an interim control bylaw to set aside power plant applications for a year. We took the time to conduct good planning on where power plants can go. We followed due process and the law. We were upheld by the OMB. We did our duty.

This is important. Tomorrow the Provincial Auditor General reports on the Oakville power plant cancellation costs. The old argument in the media about whose cost estimates to believe will be replaced with tomorrow’s Auditor General’s estimates.

Surely, what matters now is how to prevent so dangerous a site selection decision again.

What matters now is how everyone can be protected from such dangerous and ultimately costly decisions in the future.

That decision four years ago to put a power plant in a place so dangerous was caused by a bad process at an arm’s-length agency which produced an indefensible decision. We responded to that decision by following due process and the law. Then TransCanada told the government they could not defeat Oakville’s by-laws. You can read their email if you don’t believe me, but I think everyone's seen it.

I still hope the legislature will fix the process, once they can’t argue anymore about how much it cost.

Earlier this year, we and Citizens 4 Clean Air made submissions to the Minister of Energy for improvements to the process. We hope to prevent such dangerous power plant location decisions from ever happening again, anywhere.

The Oakville way works

Our approach to the defence of our town and the cause of good government could be called the Oakville Way. In the Oakville Way, we realize we aren’t powerful or perfect – and we resolve to work with each other harder than our opponents and it gives us the edge.

Whatever you call it, you can trust us to keep doing things the right, responsive way. We'll keep doing things the smart, sustainable way. We'll keep doing things the Oakville Way.

Friends and neighbours and fellow residents, you see before you a Council and a professional staff who are unequalled at turning your hopes and dreams for our community into reality.

To each and every member and leader of our town’s vibrant residents groups, we say, simply, thank you for your engagement and guidance. You help us stay on track to meet your needs.

To each and every one who volunteers your time for Oakville, we give our heartfelt thanks for your spirit. This is the spirit of Oakville.

Everyone contributes

In a similar spirit, this speech, just like the rest of our work together, has benefited from group effort. Each member of Council contributed to the assessment tonight of our strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities.

• Ward 1 (Bronte) Councillor Alan Johnston knows how important the health of Lake Ontario is to us and future generations and as our voice on the Bi-National Great Lakes St. Lawrence Cities Initiative he sees our concerns are heard and acted on.
• Ward 1 Councillor Ralph Robinson identifies as our biggest threat the on-going campaign by Ontario developers to get the provincial government to shift costs of growth from them back to you the tax payer.
• Ward 2 (South Central Old Oakville) Councillor Cathy Duddeck says what stands out is the success we've had at the OMB defending the Harvest Bible site on Lakeshore and the strength of her ward’s six residents groups.
• Ward 2 Councillor Pam Damoff points to the distance we have come in becoming a bicycle friendly community – and the distance we have to go to fully implement our Active Transportation Master Plan.
• Ward 3 (South East Old Oakville) Councillor Keith Bird spotlights our creation this year of Oakville’s newest heritage district for preservation of our jewel of a downtown.
• Ward 3 Councillor Dave Gittings points to several of our newly established strengths: our future of lower tax increases, our increasing attraction of clean additions to our non-residential tax base, and, unique in Ontario, our full coverage of depreciation in our finances.
• Ward 4 (North West Oakville) Councillor Allan Elgar has kept our attention this year on our work to identify the limits of development for the Merton lands between Third Line and Fourteen Mile Creek. The Province is preparing to sell some of its land holdings in Oakville.
• Ward 4 Councillor Roger Lapworth identifies the role of council members such as himself in community groups such as the humane society, TOWARF and our business improvement areas for their importance to our success.
• Ward 5 (North Central Oakville) Councillor Jeff Knoll is proud of the way Oakville councillors take leadership roles at the Region of Halton, where he is chair of Administration and Finance, one of the two standing committees with an Oakville chair.
• Ward 5 Councillor Marc Grant notes the resilience of our many community groups and their involvement in our town’s active participatory life.
• Ward 6 (North East Oakville) Councillor Tom Adams from north-east Oakville as our Budget chair tells us we are on track to achieve our 1.5 per cent over-all tax increase, debt-reduction, and other fiscal targets.
• Ward 6 Councillor Max Khan takes pride in his resolution that established free transit Mondays for seniors.

Our future calls us

As proud as we may be of our record, all of us are more excited about Oakville’s future.

We are the people and this is the time in our history when we make the big, long-lasting choices about our future livability as a community. Working together the Oakville way with creativity and imagination and hard work we can and will keep Oakville on the path to long-lasting success as Canada’s most livable town. Thank you for your commitment to the Oakville way and to Oakville’s future.

To our regional, provincial and federal colleagues and to each member of Council, let me say, it’s good working with you.

To each and every resident of Oakville, let us who serve you say, it’s good working for you.

My fellow residents, invited guests, staff, Members of Council, thank you for your interest in this, the 6th Annual Town Status Report Address to Council. Our town is on a path to become Canada’s most livable town. This requires outstanding short term and long term strategies and plans.

Map of our path forward

It makes sense to speak not just of our status now but also of the plans we have made for our future. It has been popular to criticize business and government for short-term thinking. The next quarter. The next election. In Oakville, we like to keep a long-term perspective, as well as the short term. 2057 is the year that will be the 200th anniversary of Oakville’s Provincial charter. Our Vision 2057 document unites all our plans. Vision 2057 is the map of the path forward to becoming Canada’s most livable town.

Vision 2057 and all that it contains will be our legacy, a set of guideposts to a more livable and sustainable future for future generations. If some of us may not be here to join in the bicentennial celebrations, more than half of us it looks to me, have a very good chance.

The actions and decisions we all make today will help ensure the Oakville of 2057 will be the most livable town in Canada. Now this is an aspirational goal and it’s meant to be. Daniel Burnham, the great urban planner of 100 years ago or more, said, “Make no little plans….make big plans; aim high in hope and in work.” And in Oakville, it is my experience that high is exactly where we aim.

Vision 2057 guides us

It is important to know how all our plans fit together. Vision 2057 maps out and organizes the four strategic areas of our focus to create, preserve, live and afford our shared future.

The Creating it section of Vision 2057 includes our official plan, our new zoning by-law, our Midtown strategy, the new communities of Oakville implementation, urban design guidelines and community improvement plans.

The Preserving it section of Vision 2057 refers to our Heritage Conservation Districts, Environmental Strategic Plan, North Oakville East Trails Plan, North Oakville Urban Forest Strategic Management Plan and our Energy Management Plan.

The Live it section of Vision 2057 includes our Strategic Directions for Culture, Downtown Studies, Economic Development Strategy, Fire Master Plan, Harbours Financial Strategic Business Plan, our Parks, Recreation and Library Facilities Master Plan, and the Switching Gears – Transportation Master Plan.

The Affording it section of Vision 2057 incorporates our Operating and Capital Budgets and Long Term Financial Forecast, our Development Charges Study and By-law, the North Oakville Financial Impact Study, our Rates and Fees Strategy, and PB2 (or Performance Based Program Budgeting, which we also call Budgeting for Outcomes).

Creating our path

As we follow the “Create It” section of Vision 2057, we will keep controlling growth. Our new zoning by-law will fully implement our acclaimed new official plan, Livable Oakville. The new Plan and the new zoning by-law will represent, together, over six years of hard work by our staff and this Council. Along the way, we have established a reputation for vigorous public consultation that has strengthened the quality of all our decisions. Public consultation has guided and will guide us throughout our work to create the best ideas for the future uses for the sites of the old hospital, the old post office downtown, Oakville Arena, the Kerr Street Seniors Centre, and Brantwood, Chisholm and Linbrook schools, as well as renewal of Centennial Square for Canada’s sesquicentennial year in 2017.

Preserving our legacy

As we follow the “Preserve It,” section of Vision 2057 we will ensure future generations can enjoy the benefits of our built and our natural heritage. In recognition of our work, this year the Federation of Canadian Municipalities gave us their Sustainable Communities Award. We received 11 other awards for sustainability and social responsibility from community groups, and professional associations. In Oakville, we know that much of our future will come from preserving our heritage.

Living our vision

As we follow the “Live It” section of Vision 2057, we will enjoy community facilities that support our dreams and aspirations of an active, creative and healthy population. Queen Elizabeth Park Community Cultural Centre is a building that breaks new ground on two fronts. It’s the first community centre featuring cultural and artistic work and display space. And it’s the first community centre south of the QEW. It will not be the last as we re-purpose our other public lands.

Affording our future

And as we create, preserve and live it, we will follow the “Afford It” section of Vision 2057. We have the best net financial position of all the municipalities in Ontario and we will continue to improve our positive balance sheet. We have reduced the average rate of increase of the property tax levy from 7% a year in 2002-2006 to 5% last term and 3% this term. Residents tell us everywhere across town that 7-5-3 is the right direction and we achieved it with PB2, lower tax-paid debt, higher development charges and uploading of the pooled service contribution to the City of Toronto. Yes the City of Toronto for all its bragging about its low tax rate only has it on the backs of a gigantic hundreds of millions of dollars subsidy that they enjoy first from the regions around them and now much of that taken over by the province but still subsidized. We will keep our tax increases under control.

When we make our contribution in 2015 to the cost of the new Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital, we are on track to be able to carry the entire cost of that donation with new, non-tax revenues from green energy projects and other new business income generated by Oakville Hydro Corporation. When the donation is paid off, these revenues will be there for other needs in our future. Our goal of a more sustainable future must include continued creation of new town revenues as alternatives to the property tax, we need diversity of revenue for town services, programs and infrastructure.

Oakville Hydro Corporation is the holding company created in approximately 2000 to own the old Oakville hydro public utility. OHC’s success with this mission so far shows we are on the right track. All of Oakville will join me and Council in appreciating your success at Oakville Hydro as the results will be continued moderation of property tax increases. I hope at the appropriate time you will be carried on their shoulders through the streets as it is nothing short of a financial miracle.

Our tax rate is falling

And on a related note, our actual tax rate has been falling for several years. Now that’s partly because of increased efficiency and productivity at the town, but it’s also because the total value of all taxable property in Oakville goes up, and when the value of taxable property goes up, we are required to reset our tax rate so that it is revenue neutral and there is no windfall to the tax collector. I mention this because with MPAC’s new assessment notices going out just now, I’ve seen some confused stories in the media suggesting that municipalities were going to enjoy a windfall harvest of new tax revenues from this increased assessment, but in fact we have to reset to achieve revenue neutrality and we will.

Our staff excel

Now, Oakville-quality plans guide us in what we do. But we on Council work through others. We are fortunate to have Oakville-quality staff, and we’ve worked to make that so. Six years ago, we agreed on a mission statement with these words: “We ensure our staff receives the same level of respect, commitment and caring that they are expected to deliver to the community.”

And our hard work and our commitment to this has paid off ---- our staff really do deliver. We always hear from residents and others about outstanding work by our staff: Dave Elliott is the transit driver who spotted someone lying on a pathway in need of medical help. He provided a warm shelter aboard his bus and called for help.

Our Communications team received awards for their work to engage the public in the fight against the Emerald Ash Borer.

Our Environmental Policy team won thanks from MNR for their creation of an online coyote reporting tool in this, what seemed at times to be the year of the coyote rather than the year of the dragon from the Chinese calendar.

This year, in Portland, Oregon, home of green and smart growth, our directors of planning and environmental policy were honoured to present a paper on Sustainability Planning.

And a parent recently wrote to us, saying, “My 8 year old son has had PA day programs, library programs, sizzler camps and more. He looks forward to these and has specifically requested some of the Town’s programs over others that are offered. Many thanks to your staff for making these experiences wonderful for our children.”

And with the Town’s newfound corporate presence on social media, we got this Tweet: “Kudos to Alexandra and Meghan from @townofoakville Parks & Rec Turf Division for coming to the aid of a lady who fell on Navy Street.”

If all the flowers of all our tomorrows are in the seeds of today, as the Indian proverb puts it, we can be sure of many future bouquets for our town staff.

Our economy thrives

We know for employers to attract and keep the best and brightest nowadays you have to make the work better than the money and these examples that I have recounted show you that we are in fact on the right track. We also know that it is our livability that attracts and keeps the best and brightest of employers for our local economy. Ford, Siemens, PricewaterhouseCoopers have all made significant new investments in our local economy and added hundreds of jobs to our local economy. Our Prime Minister and our Premier have both led, what I consider to be, a vital and game-changing new focus on developing new trade and other business. That’s why many mayors, including yours, will participate in a special trade delegation next month to China. Oakville’s internationally acclaimed Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning has years of experience in developing economic and educational links with China. My visit will help their president in his vision of creating a campus in China.

Our Council is strong

If you will permit me to say so, we are also blessed with an Oakville-quality Council. Our greatest skill is our ability to listen to each other. Our greatest strength is the diversity of our backgrounds and beliefs. Our greatest instinct is to engage and expand each other’s appreciation of all the facts. Our greatest decisions have been unanimous as a result of our diversity, our engagement, and our respect for each other’s positions. A community and its Council who care as much as ours do about planning ahead and achieving our goals can really keep a mayor on his toes. It often makes me think of something said by the late Barbara Ann Scott, who inspired generations of skaters. She said, “The most important thing about skating is that it teaches you to do the things you should, before you do the things you want to.” It seems apt to quote Barbara Ann Scott, Canada’s first Olympic medallist for skating, in our town of Maria and Otto Jelinek, Canada’s first Olympic ice-dancing medallists. Oakville has an Olympic medal heritage that grew to include Larry Cain and Donovan Bailey. This summer, thousands of kids and moms and dads came to our parade for our latest Olympic medallists, who won four of Canada’s 18 Summer Games medals. If the rest of the country had our Olympic medal links, Canada would have had to have had 750 medals! We’re proud of all our Olympians and our new medallists, Diana Matheson, Doug Csima, Adam van Koeverden and Mark Oldershaw, by adoption.

Getting the fundamentals right first, as Barbara Ann Scott advised, works and you, my Council colleagues, have shown your understanding of her wise remark in our work together to make Oakville Canada’s most livable town.

We, too, have worked hard to make our basics and our fundamentals strong so we can create a sustainable future for our town.

Oakville is on track

Now, at the halfway mark of this four-year term of Council, we can be proud that we are more than halfway toward our goals for this term. We can be even more proud of our careful plans for our town’s successful future. Our town is on a path to become the most livable town in Canada. We control growth, taxes and debt. We save and protect our green space. We keep up with our town’s needs. All of this flows from strong plans, from land use rules to operating and capital budgets. Just as we promised to control growth, we’ve been clear in our promises of all that we would do for our town. Together, we have kept and we will keep our promises and achieve our goals. We have had to adjust a few of our goals to respond to developments and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The new hospital for example will not be the spark that creates a lower-pollution, more economical and sustainable district energy system for its area. But the Life Sciences Business Park that will surround the new hospital can still have such a system to attract businesses and jobs to Oakville.

We got nowhere with our goal of working with the Province to create a new, greener and more sustainable Ontario Building Code. My position - we’ll try again next time.

And we decided to wait to adjust representation at the town level to reflect population changes until the region is ready to do it, too, to minimize disruption.

Most of the rest of our goals for this term are already achieved or are about to be. A few of our goals for this term remain ahead but within our Town’s reach. We set a goal of 40% urban forest canopy by 2057, even as we now fight the unexpected attack by the Emerald Ash Borer which threatens 10 per cent of our trees. Others across Ontario are beginning to follow our lead on PB2 fiscal management, on energy conservation, the Emerald Ash Borer and on using development charges, not taxes, for growth costs wherever possible. And we have been assisted by others in our work together to establish new rules for trail making and tree planting. We live on a 2-way street, others are helped by us and we have been helped by others, sometimes through very careful recruiting by Councillor Elgar. Although the Province refused this year our 2-year old request to regulate airborne fine particulate matter, it only took 5 days for them to implement all our suggestions to make drilling for geo-thermal safer.

Our community inspires us

In all that we do, it is the amazing people of Oakville who inspire us. Think of how Oakville rose to the increased challenge set by Sheridan President Jeff Zabudsky last year for United Way: $4 million! And Oakville met this challenge. Now, this year, former Councillor Chris Stoat has set a target 5 per cent higher: $4.2 million! I believe Oakville will rise to the challenge yet again.

Think of how Jean Grieve inspired generations of orchestra musicians and then still had a gift left over when she gave the Oakville Symphony and the Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts that beautiful acoustic shell to enhance the acoustics of that hall.

Above all, we in our town have shown that when we work together with creativity and imagination, the only direction for our town, for our Oakville, is onward and upward to being Canada’s most livable town. The people of Oakville, today and tomorrow, expect and deserve nothing less.

The following remarks were delivered to Council, staff and residents at the October 3, 2011, Council meeting, where Mayor Rob Burton also presented his Oakville Status Report.

Our increasing livability

Fellow residents, invited guests, staff and Council. Welcome to the fifth annual Status of the Town Report. Our path to a more livable and sustainable future is clearer than ever. We have the civic engagement we need for Oakville to make more progress on the path we set out on five years ago. We on Council can lead, but we work through others. And the work others do is making a difference in our town.

Look at the Oakville Community Foundation's grants of $1 million last year to community causes, from a fund balance of almost $35 million. Or look at the grants generated by the May Court Club last year of $288,000. Their donations are the equivalent of having another $10 million endowment in our community for Oakville. The 202 volunteer members of May Court make a difference with their service.

Look at the ambitious $4 million target just announced by the Oakville United Way. Clearly, Sheridan Institute president Jeff Zabudsky's leadership style is to inspire us to do more. If we do, our social safety net will be stronger for Oakville. The level of engagement of Oakville residents on civic matters is strong, too. We have more residents groups than other places, from neighbourhood-based to town-wide.

As the great activist and urban planner Jane Jacobs once said, "Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody." We of course in Oakville are a city that calls itself a town and acts like a village. Because we work together in Oakville, it seems at times that we are a safe and sunny island in a sometimes savage, stormy sea.

That's due in large part to the fact that we agree so much on what we're doing together for Oakville.

Our unanimous plan

With consultation from all interested parties, Council unanimously approved our next steps ahead on our path to a more livable and sustainable town with our new four-Year Strategic Work Plan. Our first four year strategic work plan in 2007 was also unanimous. It put us on the path to success for Oakville. We achieved almost every goal we aimed for in that plan.

Now town staff are fully engaged in translating this new plan into budgets and specific goals for each program and service. More public consultations will take place this month on three concerns. Professor Robert Williams of the University of Waterloo is working on improving Council representation. On October 18, he hosts a public meeting on ward sizes and boundaries.

On October 24, we'll start town-wide consultations on a new Town protocol on new cell towers. On October 27, here at Town Hall, we will host a public consultation on excessive motorcycle noise. Our consultative style is one of the reasons our residents have consistently given us high marks for our work. In 2010, voters graded Council, in the ultimate grading, and all but one incumbent candidate was re-elected. That's a success!

Another measure of our success is the 2011 Citizen Survey. The survey said, "Oakville residents are clearly satisfied that the town is on the right track in addressing and managing the local issues that they care most about." All of us on Council are dedicated to keeping it that way!

Our facilities catch up

Our high marks are in part based on how we invested in catching up on civic facilities. Just wait until you see the Queen Elizabeth Park Community and Cultural Centre when it opens in January of next year! It will do for arts and culture what North Park and Sixteen Mile Arena are doing for sports. We heard the needs of our arts and culture community. We acted to put arts and culture on a path of greater creativity and community - for Oakville.

For Oakville's healthcare to catch up with the 21st Century, construction on our New Oakville Hospital has begun. This hospital is the largest hospital build in the province's history. It will be a state-of-the-art facility. We'll have enhanced services for the highest level of care for Oakville. And as we heard only last week, it will be a major economic boost to our local economy.

We have more to do for Oakville. We are developing a vision for revitalization of Centennial Square. We are launching Phase 2 of North Park, which will involve a community centre and library facility. Many of us are committed to having a 50 metre pool as part of it. Together, I'm sure Council will work hard to try to make that happen.

We are working to determine the best use for Oakville of surplus public sites. We seek to control the future of the five schools, the old hospital and the old post office. Over the next three years, our public consultations will identify the best outcome for each - for Oakville. All of Council agree the disposition of the post office will be a major event in our downtown's history - and in its future.

I thank each member of Council for advice on the future of the old post office. I'm especially grateful to Councillors Alan Johnston, Ralph Robinson, Roger Lapworth, Keith Bird, Dave Gittings, Jeff Knoll, and Marc Grant for our shared vision. We also are working hard on other town facilities, such as the road renewal program we have adopted and the new trails and bike lanes we are creating at every opportunity.

The new bike lanes are already getting raves. Petrina Tulissi wrote to us: "I use Royal Windsor to ride my bike in to work in Toronto and home again throughout the year. I would like to thank the Town of Oakville for creating this bike lane." The email complimented the special features that make it safer and easier to use. "It's exciting, she says, to live in a community with forward thinkers.

Our employment gains

Our forward thinking identified that livability would be our best economic development asset to attracting the new offices and jobs we want. Executives and leaders of the new businesses we are attracting are telling me that it is our livability that makes them want to locate here. Even when it costs more to locate here than other places. They know that their employee attraction and retention are driven by livability, livability, livability.

Siemens Canada has broken ground on their new corporate head office for Canada here in Oakville. That's 800 new jobs for Oakville. Our economic development strategy is working. We owe a debt of thanks to Councillor Max Khan for this success. Councillor Khan was a keen supporter of Siemens' initiative from the outset. He was instrumental in creating the opportunity. He saw it through to success - for Oakville.

Siemens has a reputation as outstanding corporate citizens. Already they are starting to contribute to our future. They recently shared with us their Light Rapid Transit technology. At a future meeting of Council, they will share it with everyone. Incorporated into our transportation master plans, their technology would make public transportation world class - for Oakville.

The Siemens head office joins new offices by other significant companies: Canadian Tire Financial Services and Javelin Technologies. There will be more. The presence of these dynamic corporations speaks to the winning economic conditions we have created for our town, and the robust fiscal health of our town. We are working to assure success at the street level of business too.

Our downtown business area is about to enjoy an increase in parking capacity on Lakeshore with our soon to be installed solar-powered pay and display machines. The Kerr business area continues to benefit from its BIA, the town's youngest. In Bronte we look forward to an expert panel analysis of ways to improve business conditions there from Dorothy St. George, our director of economic development.

Our financial strength

The Town of Oakville is in a strong and stable financial position. Our credit rating is triple-A. Our reserve funds are at historically high levels. Our tax-supported debt is low relative to our capacity. For the fifth year in a row, we've received a clean audit from our auditors. The overall property tax increase for 2011 was 2.6 per cent, which was below inflation. Council is determined to stay within CPI for the future too.

At 0.96, the town's tax rate continues to be one of the lowest in the GTA. Yes, at 0.79, Toronto's is 20 per cent lower, but they enjoy a subsidy from that the rest of Halton, Peel and York have been forced to subsidize them since 1998!

One of the reasons the town is in such good financial shape is Council's adoption three years ago of performance-based program budgeting, or PB2. PB2 focuses on programs and services and results instead of departments. It's also called "budgeting for outcomes." It's a culture shift. We ask, what are we making happen? How much of it do we need? How much does it cost? How can we do it more effectively and more productively?

The 2012 budget and its outcomes will be the subject of our work for the next few months with completion in the New Year. We will continue to create new levels of public engagement under the direction of our Budget Chair, Councillor Tom Adams. Councillor Adams holds an MBA in Finance and worked for a major bank as a senior risk manager. These are good credentials for a budget chief in these times.

Our growth controls

Council will keep its focus on controlling Oakville's growth over the next 20 years. It is the immediate goal of Council to complete our catch up with our growth by updating our master plans. We are beginning a new development charges by-law study. We will continue to make growth pay for itself - to the limit we can. The 1997 Development Charges Act forces a subsidy of developers unfortunately.

Our key growth control tool, our new official plan, Livable Oakville, received Ontario Municipal Board approval in May of this year. OMB approval means that finally we are masters of our own community. We now control growth to our vision. We'll be just as successful with our zoning review. That is the next part of the implementation process of the Livable Oakville official plan.

Our environmental commitment

As Oakville grows, albeit at a slower pace than before, Council and town staff recognize that our natural environment and environmental sustainability are fundamental. Council is building on major victories with the implementation of Canada's first health protection air quality by-law to control harmful PM2.5 emissions.

Our new "Do No Harm" official plan policies and regulations for assessing infrastructure applications in our town have created a level of protection no other community has. These measures will be our key tools if anything like the 950 megawatt power plant is ever going to come in our direction again.

We also are creating an Oakville Climate Change Adaptation Plan. Our energy consumption at facilities across the town continues to decline. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario says we were the first community with an Energy Management Plan. And we are doing everything possible to save our 180,000 ash trees from the Emerald Ash Borer to protect our tree canopy. We recognize we will need a replacement strategy too.

Earlier this year, Council unanimously asked the provincial government to launch a pilot project within our air shed to reduce air pollution and improve air quality for families. On August 17, the provincial government made the announcement in Oakville that it would grant the request. Clean air is fundamental to Oakville's livability. It has been a long time since our last smog days. We all want to keep it that way.

Our work will continue to create an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan for Oakville. The community will be broadly engaged. We will encourage participation and partnership with key stakeholders on environmental issues. We owe a great deal of thanks to Councillor Allan Elgar, the pathfinding founder of Oakvillegreen, for his constant leadership to create an ICSP for Oakville.

Our challenges ahead

There may be challenges ahead. The greatest challenge is to our budget. The question is will Oakville property tax payers have to keep subsidizing Toronto to the tune of almost $5 million a year or will our property taxes be for our own local priorities? There will be a giant hole in our budget if we must continue to subsidize Toronto almost $5 million a year from our total municipal property tax levy of $225 million.

We have had a strong and productive working relationship with the MPP who represents most of Oakville. As many know, he was a member of this Council for 18 years. No matter who wins the Provincial Election on Thursday, we can be sure that the outstanding results MPP Kevin Flynn has delivered for Oakville have set an outstanding example to live up to - for Oakville no matter who wins in the election.

For our part, we will continue to create efficiencies and productivity across our programs and services wherever we can. We created ServiceOakville to make it easier for the public to do business with the town. This streamlining public service to a one town one window framework is being paralleled online with a redesign of the town's website. We will perform in an ever more efficient and effective way.

Our staff performance

Town staff bring our public policy to life. Theirs are the faces the public sees. They provide the services we all know and appreciate. It is their hard work and dedication that have brought the town recognition in significant awards over the past year. Oakville received the 2011 PRO Excellence in Design Award for the Sixteen Mile Sports Complex from Parks and Recreation Ontario.

The town also won a Youth Friendly Community in Ontario Award. We received High Five Accreditation from Parks and Recreation Ontario. We salute and thank our Community Services Commission and our Facilities Management department for these honours.

Council adopted a mission statement five years ago that concludes with these words: "We ensure our staff receives the same level of respect, commitment and care that they are expected to deliver to the community." You can tell that's happening from the hundreds of emails we receive from Oakville residents to praise the service provided by town staff. I want to share just a few of the examples that stand out.

In April of this year, Oakville Resident Lisa Shapiro wrote: "I've just spoken with Neil Gallant from the Clerk's department and received the best customer service I've ever had when dealing with any government organization." Neil had expertly helped Ms. Shapiro navigate online information about civil wedding ceremonies that meant a lot to her.

In another email the Halton Police Services praised the quick thinking of Parking Operations staff member John Mattocks, when he located a missing person. "Quick action by the by-law officer saved the (police) service countless hours of search time, thousands of dollars in equipment resources, and essentially saved a life," the police said.

This year the staff at River Oaks Community Centre also helped to save a life. A resident suffered chest pains. The staff responded without hesitation. They provided CPR. They activated the defibrillator. And, even though the man's heart had stopped, the team revived him. You cannot put a value on this kind of service?

Both service and value combined in another individual who passed this year, in February. Councillor Fred Oliver made many contributions to our community for more than 50 years. Police chief. TOWARF founder. Long-serving member of this Council. Councillor Oliver's passion and love for the Town of Oakville are very much still present in our continued ability to work together in this term of Council.

His place on town and region Councils has now been taken by his longtime ward partner, Councillor Cathy Duddeck, while new Councillor Pam Damoff serves Oakville from Councillor Duddeck's former seat.

Our council commitment

As a Council we are individuals who know, as coach Vince Lombardi said, "individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work". We are on the right path for Oakville. We can be confident that our creativity and imagination will keep moving us closer to creating - for Oakville - our vision of becoming the most livable town in Canada.

The following remarks were delivered to Council, staff and residents at the September 20, 2010, Council meeting, where Mayor Rob Burton also presented his fourth annual Town Status Report.

Every year I deliver a report and an address on the state of the town. I deliver it every year at this time and this evening is no exception. I want to thank the many members of the public who have given me suggestions for this speech. I want to thank the many members of Council who have forwarded suggestions for this speech. I hope you will be happy with the way I have incorporated your suggestions and I hope you will allow me to say that, in that regard, this is your speech.

Samuel de Champlain, as he explored Canada in 1615, wrote, "I labour always to prepare a way for those to follow." For the last four years, our Council has prepared a way toward a more livable and sustainable future for everyone in Oakville. As the chosen representatives of our community we have parked party labels at the door. We've worked together for the good of the town we all share. Four years ago, we created a unanimous four-year strategic work plan to guide us forward to our vision to become the most livable town in Canada. Since then, the phrase "Livable Oakville" has become known across our community. Those words have resonated with you, our residents.

You hold us to the promise of those words when you contact us. Oakville never before had a strategic four year work plan with specifically named outcomes. Our plan has served us like a good business plan. It kept us focused. As a result, we accomplished almost all of it.

Council is not alone in our dedication to the whole community. You residents who are here tonight with us and others across town or on TownTV share our care for Oakville. We're all working to make Oakville the dynamic, engaged, inviting community it wants and needs to be for our kids, our families, our working people and our retirees.

Our greatest achievement over the course of this term of Council was the creation of our new official plan. It controls growth. It protects our existing neighbourhoods from unwanted developments. It directs growth to carefully chosen, controlled locations. Gone are the old loopholes and contradictions.

With our new Official Plan, we will continue our record of success this term at the Ontario Municipal Board. Our legal and planning team is now defending our new Official Plan at the OMB from the developers who are trying so hard to turn back the clock to the days when they always seemed to win at the OMB.

Throughout the creation of our new official plan public consultation was unprecedented and so was public praise. And we unanimously adopted the related Downtown Oakville Strategic Review to assure our downtown a bright future in the framework of our new Official Plan. This visioning work also featured the public consultation we've become known for in this term.

We now have a planning department that gets Oakville. Council, the community and our planners are united in our common vision of Oakville. This is a huge change from what it felt like before. And this is a key part of our chances of keeping our unbeaten record at the OMB in future.

We also have listened to the clear voice of Oakville's heritage groups. Heritage Oakville. The Bronte Historical Society. The Trafalgar Township Historical Society. The Oakville Historical Society. We unanimously supported funding to hire the heritage staff the town had needed for so long.

We completed the listing of properties of heritage interest. We increased the number of designated properties to more than 500. We're designating our first Heritage tree. The Great White Oak on Bronte Road.

This year, Oakville received the Lieutenant Governor's Ontario Heritage Award for Community Leadership. At that ceremony former mayor Harry Barrett received a lifetime achievement award for his 55-year commitment to our heritage protection and on October 1, we'll get Canada's highest Heritage honour, the Prince of Wales Award.

As sharp-eyed as we have been for protecting our heritage, we kept focused on our future challenges too. We know that energy costs are forecast to rise by 30 per cent over the next five years. Personal mobility will be more and more expensive. As we age and give up our cars and as we face those rising costs, we will need transit for personal mobility.

Our youth need transit now. So do many employees of Oakville businesses. This Council voted unanimously to change our transit system to a grid pattern for easier and quicker cross town travel. Ridership rose all this year. We have no empty routes. We do have empty stretches, we do have empty times, but that ladies and gentlemen is normal for transit.

We improved connections for GO Transit. We added hundreds of GO parking spots to assist commuters. Next year, a 2,000 car parking structure will be built by Metro Linx at Trafalgar and Cornwall Roads. The PRESTO fare card now works on all Oakville Transit buses.

We have worked to improve all aspects of transportation, not just transit. We adopted a plan of continuous improvement for road resurfacing and repair. We will finally have 100 per cent of our roads at our quality standard by 2023, if future Councils stick to our plan. We have reversed the old, downward direction on local road quality.

A strong transportation system that's roads AND transit is vital to support our local economy. We now have that strong transportation plan. We still need to be sure that there are areas in town in which to create jobs for our residents. We fought and won two OMB cases to protect vital employment land from being converted to alternative uses.

And we beefed up our official plan policies to strongly protect employment land from being converted to residential use. Before this term of council, conversions of employment lands to residential uses robbed Oakville and our future of at least 500 hectares of employment land.

The loss of those employment lands destroyed forever the space for 25,000 or more jobs and $12 million or more in business property taxes per year. We cannot afford to see such job destruction again. We need to use wisely the employment lands that remain. Our unanimous stance as Council on this policy point is the major foundation for the success of our unanimous job creation plan.

Our plan is to attract and retain jobs in the professional, technology and financial services sectors. We will also work to create opportunities for international collaboration. Our plan's good, but you don't have to take my word for it. The plan has received praise from the Chamber of Commerce AND it won national awards, too.

We are also implementing our job creation plan. The 100 hectares called the Great Lakes Business Park in west Oakville recently confirmed the tenancy of Canadian Tire Financial Services. In Winston Park West we have taken steps to bring online 100 more hectares of high quality employment land.

We expect every 100 hectares of employment land to generate about 5,600 jobs and about $2.5 million a year in business property taxes for the town. These funds reduce pressures on residential property taxes. Each $2.5 million for the town is the equivalent of a two per cent property tax increase on residents without raising your residential taxes!

And there is no question that Oakville is an attractive community for job creation. We have one of the lowest business tax rates in the GTA. Throughout the past four years we have created winning conditions for our local economy and we've benefited in working alongside some excellent partners.

The Oakville Chamber of Commerce. The Bronte, Kerr St. and Downtown BIAs. Golf Canada. The Tourism Partnership. And the arts community. I include them as partners in our economic work because research shows that high quality businesses seek a high quality of life, with a vibrant arts and culture scene, when they choose new locations.

When it comes to arts and culture, Oakville has never had so much sparkle. For two years now, the annual Mayor's Arts Gala has celebrated the arts in Oakville. Last October we created our first municipal cultural plan. The heart of our cultural plan is to enhance and build community capacity for arts and culture.

We are grateful to the arts community for collaborating with us to achieve the consensus we achieved for the cultural plan. The Oakville Arts Council. The Oakville Arts Society. Community Arts Space and Art Works.

We moved forward to fill our community's facilities deficit. Our new Queen Elizabeth Park Community Centre will open in 2012. A dream of generations of Oakville parents will finally come true. At last, the community will have a proper community centre in Bronte.

The Queen Elizabeth Park Community Centre is just one of many facilities we've acquired or built to catch up on the town's facilities deficit. We celebrated one of our biggest catch ups when we opened Sixteen Mile Sports Complex to rave reviews just this past weekend but we looked after our small facilities, too. Kinoak Arena is getting an upgrade to its building with stimulus funding.

Minor Oaks Hockey Association, the Hornets, the Blades, Oakville Speed Skating and Oakville Skating Club and others are all benefitting from more ice time and we can now see the day when adults will also benefit from good town ice time and rates!

Other recreational advancements were outdoors. Our new sports fields at north park and Bronte Athletic Park will help meet the needs of our kids and sports teams for generations to come.

We've also partnered with community groups to add needed community facilities. During this term we've seen a big success story at our new indoor soccer complex in partnership with the Oakville Soccer Club. The Pine Glen soccer facility is fully self-supporting and ahead of its projections financially. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is something we can all be proud of.

When the Kerr Street Ministries Dream Centre opened this year, another dream came true. Young and old alike in the Kerr Village community now have a small community centre. It may be smaller than others, but it has a big heart. And the Kerr Street Ministries has the support of the entire town.

In fact, Kerr Village has had a renaissance over the last 20 years, steered by Councillors Fred Oliver and by Cathy Duddeck. The Kerr Village BIA is now our second largest BIA. Kerr Village now has terrific renewal and reinvestment in housing and businesses! This Council's Kerr Village Plan won a prestigious national award, so others have noticed, too.

If other towns and cities that you read about in the news are having trouble meeting the stimulus deadline next March we don't have that worry. Our new transit facility was our $45 million stimulus project. It is on budget and on time. We are proud of our success and grateful that the provincial and federal governments cooperated with us to make this project happen.

I'm also proud that our strong fiscal management gave us the financial strength to be able to contribute our one-third share! So when the dust settles, in one term, we are adding 775,000 square feet to the approximately 1.15 million square feet the town owned when we began this term. And we did that while cutting debt paid by taxes to less than when we began this term!

Our budgeted debt payments cut town tax-supported debt to only $22 million this fiscal year. It was over $24 million in 2006. It was $10 million in 2002. I wish that we could all keep a clear head about debt. Our town could afford, under provincial rules, to borrow over $250 million. We are a long, long way from any kind of debt crisis. We have great fiscal health!

We achieved so much this term and we kept the Town in strong financial condition. We were fiscally responsible in addressing our needs. You only have to look at how we managed the 2008-2009 recession with spending controls to avoid any deficit. And I think everyone on Council enjoyed the newspaper editorial praising us at the time for that achievement.

We have the financial strength we need to deal with the school properties that are being sold by the school board. If Council wants, we can afford the debt to buy them. If we buy them, we control their future use. Look at Queen Elizabeth Park High School for an example. In this way, we could keep public space in our neighbourhoods and we would prevent bad development in our neighbourhoods.

The town has always borrowed to finance the infrastructure projects that we have needed because of growth. We've always been repaid by developers as they build. They pay the interest, too. This is using other people's money that's a good thing for the taxpayer. The alternative is we use yours. My vision is to do more of it using other people's money.

Now, because of our strong cash reserves, we will be able to lend to ourselves for growth related projects. This is good because WE collect the interest instead of a bank! We create new non-tax investment revenue for the town. I'm proud of getting our cash position to this point because my vision is to meet our needs with new revenues rather than property tax.

This Council shared a unanimous vision on fiscal management. Our town's fiscal management is on a new, more business-like basis. We have fully implemented performance-based program budgeting or PB2. PB2 should be our most powerful legacy to the future.

Councillors and residents will be able to see the cost of our programs and services that they want with an all-time high level of accountability and transparency. PB2 also found millions of dollars of savings each year during its implementation. We held the rate of tax increases this term to the same as the previous four years! And we did more this term, too!

Our overall property tax increase was 2.6 per cent a year, close to the rate of inflation for the period. This year it was just 1.6 per cent. At .98, we have one of the lowest property tax rates in the GTA. It's the same tax levy rate coincidentally that we started this term of Council with.

And we have a lot more to be proud of financially. Four years of clean audits from our auditors KPMG. Four years of unanimous audit committee reports. Councillors Knoll, Bird, Oliver, Lapworth, Khan, Johnston: your work is appreciated. No challenges to our financial statements or audits in four years! That's good work. Congratulations!

Tax payers received more financial relief this term when we unanimously agreed to make developers pay more for the facilities and infrastructure that will be needed to support their developments. Growth will pay for more of growth's costs because we raised development charges to the maximum, we raised them 60 per cent. The result: lower pressure on your taxes.

Our new higher DCs are being fought in the courts by the developers who want to prevent us from moving forward. I am confident of our legal team in defending our position. Our financial strength has been a crucial part of the success story of this term of Council. It allows us to be able to provide what we need to survive and thrive.

This year the town was asked by Halton Healthcare Services to make a $230 million donation to their local share plan for the new Oakville hospital. Council resolved by 11 to 2 to commit a maximum of $130 million in 2015 to the hospital's local share plan. We know we need the safer, modern hospital we're lucky to be able to afford.

To protect ourselves, we will not provide any funds until the new hospital is built and operational. We also resolved that we will also consider another $40 million donation stretched out over the 30 years after 2015 if or as it is proven to be needed, from our operating funds. Over that 30 year period, our Town will spend over $30 billion.

We will be able to find a few million every few years of the way to be sure we have the hospital that we need. And the exact amount of our donation could be less. Only when the Request For Proposals is answered by bids next year will the exact amount of the donation be known. Regardless, our donation is capped at no more than $130 million in 2015 after it's built.

The donation in 2015 can be lower, because unlike all other cities and towns, in our case we are last in and first out. If the RFP bids come in lower than the gross estimates, all the savings to the Local Share Plan go to reduce our donation to the hospital. We don't give them more than they prove they need.

Other cities and towns are already adding tax levies on their taxpayers to fund money commitments up front and without conditions even though they have no guarantee the Province will approve and fund their desired hospital.

We have not passed any such speculative tax levy. And I have a plan to fund our donation using new, non-tax green energy business and financial revenues instead of taxes, by the time we get to the donation year in 2015. One of those is the "district energy" project in the new hospital district.

As the 100 hectares around the new hospital become home to a successful life sciences business park, each building will be able to draw heating, cooling and backup power from one small, cleaner, cheaper, central source, replacing perhaps 100 dirtier individual furnaces and coolers, and generating new income for the town.

We also secured the old hospital site as a condition of our donation, so that we can control its future development and make sure it's in keeping with the local neighbourhood. And we have already begun public consultation with you, Oakville's residents, about what to do with it. The hospital expects to turn the old site over to us in 2015.

We have time to decide how to use it. I get asked what my vision is, I try to be the leader who helps you implement your vision but I'll seed the discussion with my own vision for the place. My own vision for the site is to rent it back to the Province to create a Seniors Healthcare Centre of Excellence. Imagine 330 new long term care beds which are greatly needed in our town, imagine programs designed to help seniors stay in their homes longer, and clinics, and even an Emergency room. The rent would help pay for our donation to the new hospital!

Inside town hall, we have focused on improving service. Our new one-stop Service Oakville operation, those staff are the first voices that residents now hear or meet when they need help from Town Hall. I'd like to recognize Jane Liu, Manager of Service Innovation, for her success in getting Service Oakville up and running so successfully.

Other staff have done us proud, too. Staff in Recreation achieved the prestigious HIGH FIVE accreditation for the town's children's programming this year. Jane Arnett, Manager of Parks Maintenance, received the very rare honour of membership in the Sports Turf Association.

Planning and development staff received two Excellence in Planning awards from the Ontario Professional Planners Institute. These awards speak to our staff's high skill and dedication. We on Council value even more the many compliments our staff receive from our citizens for the quality of their service.

One resident wrote to express her thanks after she asked about her parking ticket, she wrote:

"A very helpful person explained the parking bylaws, I was completely blown away by the excellent customer service I received from the moment I wandered into the building to the moment I left. Each and every person I dealt with was courteous, professional, and most importantly, genuinely interested in helping me." And that is certainly what Council's goal for staff service to you.

We on Council who care so much about service quality and you among our residents who care about service quality must be concerned about the growing labour shortage that lies ahead. This challenge to maintain our service levels is one that must be addressed.

When I became Mayor, my first question was to see the staff development and retention program. Staff told me Oakville didn't have one. Now, we do. I'm proud of that. We are now ready to compete with other employers for the best employees.

Now of course the elephant in the room, the biggest environmental issue for the community this year has been TransCanada's decision to build a gas-fired electricity generation station here. I learned that 103 of the last gas-fired generators licensed under US President George Bush were cleaner and safer distances from homes and schools than what TransCanada proposes.

In 2009 Council unanimously enacted an interim control by-law. We held up any power plants over 10 megawatts from being built in Oakville until the appropriate planning rules for locating these facilities could be developed by our staff. The OMB upheld our by-law when TransCanada and Ford appealed it.

We unanimously extended the control by-law this year. Planning staff have worked hard on the Land Use Study on Power Generation and the proposed zoning and Official Plan amendments. We will consider that work at the Planning and Development Council meeting a week from today.

The environment has been this Council's priority for the entire term even before we heard of TransCanada. We made protection of woodland, marsh and green space high on our priority list throughout the course of our four-year term. A growing tree canopy and extensive green space continue to help improve Oakville's air quality.

When complete, our tree inventory will help us care efficiently and effectively for our urban forest. It will help us reach our unanimous goal of growing our tree canopy from 29% to 40%. So will our plan to combat the emerald ash borer. Our plan is one of the most innovative and aggressive in the province.

We have more trees to lose than many of our neighbouring communities. Trees clean our air, but they can't do the whole job. So our Council unanimously passed Oakville's (and Canada's) first by-law to protect the health of our citizens by regulating air pollution in Oakville.

A staff team led by the town's Director of Environmental Policy Cindy Toth and our Town Solicitor Doug Carr created this ground-breaking initiative. They are guiding its implementation, now. Their vision and dedication to this vital work has been for me, inspirational.

TransCanada has applied to Superior Court for an order to quash it. That case will be heard in December. The result is that we are severely limited in what we can say about TransCanada, since we are before the courts.

We continue to consult with key environmental groups on green initiatives within the town. Oakvillegreen. The Halton Environmental Network and Its affiliated Solar Rooftops Project. The Oakville Community Centre for Peace, Ecology and Human Rights. Greentrans. Citizens for Clean Air and Transitions Oakville.

All of these organizations are working on behalf of the community to help lead us towards an improved standard of living and sustainably. Think of the global challenges facing us in the future. It's clear we need to learn to live regeneratively - and resiliently. It may be a long way to that goal, but we need to take steps now.

We are moving forward on that path with Oakville Hydro's installation of solar panels on the roof of Hydro's building. Oakville Hydro will now be able to assist businesses and residents to do the same. You get to sell power back to the Ontario power grid, too!

One of the first residents to install solar panels wrote to us last month with joy she didn't try to hide. "I've been paid!" she wrote. "Thank you all for your part in getting this accomplished over the past year and a half." She and others are helping to point more residents to the way to a more sustainable energy future.

We also benefitted by continuous improvement of public engagement in our community. We've innovated and expanded the ways we create and use public engagement to guide us. Public participation in 9 Mayor's Advisory Groups has strengthened my ability to offer advice and information to council, one of my key duties.

Private tree protection, led by resident, Glen Herring. A vision for Bronte, led by the Ward 1 councillors, Alan Johnston and Ralph Robinson. Recycling or reducing plastic bags and bottles, led by Ward 6 councillor, Max Khan. The economic potential of Creative Oakville, led by Ward 3 councillor Mary Chapin.

A lobbyist registry, led by Ward 1 councillor Alan Johnston. Natural trail standards, led by Ward 1 councillor Ralph Robinson. Sustainability, led by Ward 4 councillor Allan Elgar. Rooftop Solar power, led by Lisa Seiler and Hart Jansson, with Ward 4 councillor Roger Lapworth and Ward 1 councillor Alan Johnston.

Unifying public notification standards, led by Ward 2 councillor Cathy Duddeck. Ward 6 councillor Tom Adams represented us on the Association of Municipalities of Ontario sustainability committee and, as our budget chief, he guided implementation of PB2 to strengthen our fiscal management and he delivered two budgets to unanimous council support.

I thank you all for the way you enriched this term of Council above and beyond the call of duty. The Community Leaders Roundtable I created has also been invaluable to my work as Mayor. Leaders of Oakville's residents groups meet together with me monthly. We hear each other's concerns and exchange ideas seek solutions and we see how our town is greater than the sum of its parts.

Councillors Tom Adams, Keith Bird, Mary Chapin, Cathy Duddeck, Allan Elgar, Marc Grant, Alan Johnston, Max Khan, Jeff Knoll, Roger Lapworth, Fred Oliver, Ralph Robinson, and I have served the whole Oakville community together now for four years. Councillor Adams and I never missed a council meeting. No one missed very many.

Some of us have served our community for many terms, such as Councillors Bird, Oliver and Robinson. Some of us are finishing our first terms. Councillor Oliver, his last. All of us made this term count. This term, we have paid attention to each of Oakville's parts and how they work together. We have preserved and protected what makes Oakville great and we cherish.

We have prepared a way for those who will follow. And we moved the town forward toward a more livable future. Next month, you the voters will give us your verdict on our work together. For now, I reflect on something Casey Stengel said. "Gettin' good players is easy", the master coach said, "gettin' 'em to play together is the hard part."

You, the residents and voters of Oakville, chose the players of this team four years ago. The players you chose for this Council worked together very well for the benefit of the community as a whole. I congratulate you, Oakville, for your good choices.

Many of you have told me how much you appreciate our success over these four years. We have made good progress together on our vision of creating in Oakville the most livable town in Canada. Our economy is strong. Our town is poised for ever greater success.

Tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. This is what we on this Council have done with our term. I thank you and I thank Council for having been able to help you get what you wanted done. We've shown that when we all work together with our best interests with creativity and with imagination, our direction is onward and upward! Thank you very much for your time and attention.

The following remarks were delivered to Council, staff and residents at the September 21, 2009 Council meeting, where Mayor Rob Burton also presented his third annual Oakville Status Report:

This is the third Annual Town Status Review of this term of Council. We've seen a recession come and go. We're not here to talk about weathering the storm. We already took decisive corrective steps for economic conditions, thanks to active management, last April. As a result, we are here to talk about success. We've made great strides toward our goal of becoming the most livable town in Canada.

This term of council began 1026 days ago. We're proud to say we've done just about everything we said we'd do in our four-year Strategic Plan. We've created a strong spirit of alignment between Council and planning staff. We listen to each other, and our new planning rules mean what they say. As a result, we're undefeated at the Ontario Municipal Board in this term of Council.

We've improved services we provide our residents. We mow our grass more often. We clear more snow - and sooner. We even pick up more leaves. We run more buses and go more places with them. We expanded fire protection. We rebuilt major roads at Fourth Line and the North Service Road. We added over four kilometres to our network of walking and biking paths. We planted 4,500 trees.

The most exciting accomplishment of 2009 is the completion of our new official plan, Livable Oakville. Made with unprecedented public input, Livable Oakville received high public praise and acceptance. It will control growth to preserve our established neighbourhoods, parks and woodlands - and employment lands. It comes into force upon provincial approval later this year, unless it's appealed.

Livable Oakville is a historic achievement, not just of Council and town employees, but of Oakville residents too. Residents were heard at over 100 public meetings in the past two years. We have a stronger, more defensible plan because of public input. Oakville will remain a residential community, but we will capitalize on the potential of our employment lands to deliver high value to our residents.

So in 2009 the Town of Oakville had its sights focused on the future, not just the present. We're now ready to control growth. Our economy is healthy. We've created the foundations of what Oakville will be for future generations: a vital, sustainable, forward-thinking community.

We heard the requests from our arts community for a space of their own. This spring we finalized plans to build dedicated space for arts and culture groups into the QE Park Community Centre. This fall we will complete our Strategic Directions for Arts and Culture, which will further clarify our strategy for supporting and encouraging the arts in Oakville.

We've built a new Youth Centre in Bronte. We opened a State of the Art indoor soccer building everyone's proud of. We have four new soccer fields and two new softball diamonds. Construction of the quad pad arena at North Park is on track for completion next spring. Eventually, North Park will include outdoor sports fields and trails, a recreation centre and a library, too.

Our new Environmental Sustainability Policy, Sustainable Green Fleet and Sustainable Green Purchasing procedures will improve the town's overall energy efficiency, reduce our resource consumption, and lower our greenhouse gas emissions. Eighty-nine per cent of our Environmental Strategic Plan is now underway or complete. Our Energy Management Plan will track the town's yearly energy performance.

We're not done: we are developing a Sustainable Green Building Procedure to cut back on energy use and emissions. In December, council approved Oakville's first State of the Environment Report. Environmental health here is good, based on key indicators such as natural resources, community engagement, energy use and transportation. We will track our future progress in each of these areas.

New homes north of Dundas Street will be built according to strict environmental sustainability regulations. These walkable "transit first" neighbourhoods will be connected by our Natural Heritage System of parks, open space, wetlands and woodlands. Our goal of growing Oakville's tree canopy to 40 per cent by 2057 will shape the new streetscapes, parking areas and green space.

As part of our focus on Fiscal Sustainability in 2009, in August, Council updated the town's development charge by-law with a 63 per cent increase. We have ensured growth will pay its full legal share of its costs. This is an important achievement for our town, because it allows us to manage our future growth in a controlled, fiscally sustainable way, as our residents expect.

As a community, Oakville received generous amounts of stimulus funding from the provincial and federal governments for a total of almost 130 million dollars' worth of shovel-ready infrastructure projects. As a result our essential new transit facility will be completed in 2011. Without it we could not have supported our transit expansion to a grid service this month.

Our stimulus spending and careful fiscal management have us poised to benefit from the economic recovery that is now underway, as the TD's economist, Don Drummond, described at last week's Chamber dinner. One of my economics professors, Douglas Hamilton, taught us to say, "recessions are Nature's way of telling us to do something new." That's as true now as it has been in the past.

This week, Ford, our major employer, is launching its exciting new vehicle, the EcoBoost Lincoln MKT. And I took my professor's words to heart when I launched YTV after the recession of the 1980s. This year, we took the professor's words to heart in our 10-year economic development strategy.

Economic recovery from a recession always brings new opportunity. We have opportunities for a life sciences business park by the New Oakville Hospital. We have potential for an international hub for digital media and animation to leverage the expertise at the Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning. Our economic environment is also boosted by our three Business Improvement Areas: Bronte, Kerr Village and Downtown Oakville.

Our fiscal sustainability is Council's most important objective. Over the past two years we have worked to implement performance-based, program-based budgeting, otherwise known as PB2. When fully deployed in 2010, PB2 will not only give us better financial management, it will make us a fiscal leader in Canada: We will be the only government, anywhere in this country, at any level, to be using PB2.

PB2 makes it possible to measure the efficiency of the money we spend. PB2 will allow residents to judge value for money on a unit cost basis. PB2 will deliver the promise everyone looked for and never got from ZBB 40 years ago. PB2 performance measures for all town programs will be included in our 2010 budget discussion document in November.

When you work hard for three years and produce progress and results with mutual respect and harmony, you can hope for some positive feedback. The results of our 2009 Citizen Survey told us 88 per cent of residents are satisfied with town programs and services. Eighty-nine per cent of residents are satisfied with the key attributes or qualities of the town. Eighty-five per cent of residents said Oakville is more livable than most places in the GTA.

Now, 85 per cent is pretty good, but Oakville is a town that aims high. We'd like every one of our residents to be able to say Oakville is the best place to live, period. So in 2010, we'll be focusing again on enhancing our natural and economic environments, while working to ensure our programs and services are fiscally and environmentally sustainable.

As always, we'll work to improve our programs and services while keeping taxes low. We're proud to still have the fifth lowest tax rate of the 26 GTA communities and we're working to keep it that way.

As we turn the corner towards the last year of this term of council, let's look at one of the questions a mayor gets asked the most on visits to schools and other groups: "What does a Mayor do?" A mayor listens. You listen to council. You listen to town staff. You listen to residents. You listen to their ideas and their problems. Listening could be the most important part of the job.

Oakville residents are smart, successful folks. We learn from them when they have their say. We see the benefit in better decisions. That's why we like to create Mayor's Advisory Groups - so much so that we have five of them operating now.

Over the past three years, we've concentrated on building new facilities and upgrading our services to catch up with the growth Oakville has already experienced. We've prepared for the growth that will come again, but in a new, controlled, sustainable way. Next, we will focus on improving the way we interact with our residents.

Our new customer service initiative, ServiceOakville, is now the first point of contact for residents coming to visit town hall, and our partnership with the region on 311 telephone service provides one phone number that directs residents to the information they need. Our goal is one-window, no-hassle service for our residents.

We will extend that same goal of high quality of service to the Internet. Over the final year of this term of council, we'll improve the level of engagement between residents and the Town of Oakville. We'll bring municipal government, programs and services closer to residents using new, interactive ways of connecting through our website. Residents won't have to leave home to use all our services.

Whether they're starting a small business, enrolling their children in swimming lessons or paying a parking ticket, we want to give everyone a quick and easy way to reach us and get what they need done. We are also working hard to be able to guarantee the accessibility of our services and facilities will comply with the Ontarians with Disabilities Act.

This Council's record of teamwork and respectful collaboration is unmatched anywhere. We build on each other's strengths. We listen to each other. We've created a unified vision of where we want this town to go - and we're making it happen. The work we've done would be impossible without the intelligence, flexibility and hard work of our professional and dedicated town staff.

We know that together, Council, town staff and our residents will continue to surpass expectations as we work to become the most livable town in Canada. We'll plan, create, evaluate and operate the facilities, roads, programs and services that make and keep Oakville a great place to live.

And we'll continue to guide our decisions by our values of accountability, dedication, honesty, innovation, respect and teamwork. We've learned that when we work together with respect, creativity and imagination, the only direction for our town is onward and upward!

The following remarks were delivered to Council, staff and residents at the September 29, 2008, Council meeting, where Mayor Rob Burton also presented his second annual Oakville Status Report:

Two years ago Council unanimously adopted our Four-Year Strategic Work Plan. This is the Second Annual Status Report on the work we decided we needed to do to achieve our shared vision of creating in Oakville the most livable town in Canada.

Our Mission is to enhance our natural, cultural, social and economic environments. We know our town wants continuously improving programs and services. We want programs and services to be accessible, and fiscally and environmentally sustainable.

Council's aim is a town government that is valued and celebrated for the way we satisfy the needs of our residents, our businesses and our employees. We want town staff to receive the same level of respect, commitment and caring we expect them to deliver to the community.

We chose the values of accountability, dedication, honesty, innovation, respect and, above all, teamwork to guide our work together on our Plan. Together, these make a powerful strategy for success, and it's working so well because we've become so good at working together.

We wrote our Four-Year Strategic Work Plan in a spirit of doing "home improvements" on our hometown. As with all "home improvements," we aren't starting from scratch. We're making repairs and enhancements to make the place we call our hometown more attractive and keep it in better condition.

Oakville already had a strong foundation to work with. The elements that made up that strong foundation are our natural environment, our dedicated town employees and the spirited and talented people of our community.

There's an old carpenter's saying . "measure twice, cut once." We measure twice every step of the way. We measure first by checking the strategic plan to see if our planned actions are environmentally and fiscally sustainable. We measure a second time by asking for and listening to public feedback.

First area of focus

The first area of focus this year was to be accountable in everything we do. Since taking office, we've boosted two-way communication. Surveys, roundtables, Mayor's advisory groups, ward meetings, and Council "points of presence" at town events are just a few examples of the techniques we've applied to this area. The public has been just as willing to engage in the conversation as we have been. And we say "thank you." Just look at the level of public consultation we have built up in our work on the new Official Plan, Livable Oakville. Clearly everyone cares about the future of our Town just as much as we do.

Our new Official Plan will set out how we control growth in the future. Provincial legislation gave the Town of Oakville and Halton Region until June of 2009 to decide how we will control the growth that will be coming to our area between 2021 and 2031 (and taking our population from 230,000 to 280,000).

Public input and feedback are reinforcing our understanding of the public's concerns about growth and how to control it. Together we are creating a plan that will control growth so we can maintain our stable neighbourhoods and our strong sense of community.

The public can keep up with Livable Oakville and other Council initiatives in our new town-wide newsletter, Let's Talk Oakville. This shift from six individual ward-specific newsletters highlights the way we on Council share one vision for the town and care about every part of our town.

Our commitment to community consultation was recognized by the provincial Minister of Culture. Minister Aileen Carroll praised Oakville's cultural planning process calling it "visionary and an example other communities would be wise to emulate."

Claire Lougheed, the town's Manager of Culture and Heritage Services, and our thriving arts community who have made this process a success, can all feel proud.

This Council also has consulted the public on our youth strategy, and on our master plans for economic development, tourism, transit and fire services. Big public response supported converting the Town-owned former QE Park High School into a recreation centre with community shared art and music space.

And we're expanding access to all Council meetings and key committees such as budget on our TownTV website. It's accessible at www.towntv.ca, as well as on www.oakville.ca where we post all official information for public use.

Second area of focus

The second area of focus for 2008 was to enhance the natural environment. An Urban Forest Strategic Management Plan for the period from 2008-2027 has been adopted to achieve our goal of 40 per cent tree coverage for the Town of Oakville . creating a legacy for Oakville's 200th anniversary in 2057.

The Provincial Conservation Officer, Peter Love, congratulated us for appointing the first Municipal Energy Conservation Officer in Ontario, Suzanne Austin. The Town has established greenhouse gas baseline and reduction targets. Oakville is so green, we won the Earth Hour contest.

We've also completed a town-wide flood study to identify areas that are at risk for flooding during major storms, and we've notified the home owners whose property might be in jeopardy. We've started implementation of Storm water Management Pond water testing and monitoring.

And after extensive consultation with the public, and the input of a Mayor's Advisory Group, later tonight Council will consider adopting a Private Tree Protection By-law to prevent wanton destruction of important trees, without getting in the way of homeowners and their landscaping.

And we added more than 2 kilometres to our trail systems this year. We've built new bridges to connect top-of-bank trails and create crossings of Fourteen Mile Creek and its tributaries. And early this year our 900-hectare Natural Heritage System was confirmed and ordered by the Ontario Municipal Board.

Third area of focus

The third area of focus for 2007-2008 was to continuously improve programs and services. The enthusiastic reaction we are getting from the public tells us we are on the right track. Our moves range from appointing an Integrity Officer, to dredging our harbours.

Recently, Charity Gasper wrote about the Library's new website, "I can't believe how much I use this website! With the OPL website, I actually feel my comments and ratings are going to be read and considered. Thank you so much for this upgrade - it really adds to the sense of community."

We've also taken big steps with Oakville Transit. We've added 16 buses. We're running buses more often where we can. Our Uptown Core Transit Terminal has opened for operations. Our bus fleet now has bicycle racks. We're in year two of our Five-Year Transit Master Plan implementation.

Council's goal is that Oakville residents still will have mobility through public transit as the energy cost crisis forces ever-higher the costs of operating individual automobiles.

This is the second year of the two-year phase-in of the Town's Fire Protection Master Plan. Oakville is moving to four firefighters on a truck, like all of our neighbouring cities and towns. This creates a faster fire attack team, to save move lives. It also brings Oakville in-line with provincial guidelines.

Our parks and recreation programs have also been given the green light on some exciting projects. In five parks we are adding soccer fields, ball diamonds, children's playgrounds, splash pads, parking, a leash free area and connections to the trails.

We started building Oakville's first indoor sports field building, in a partnership with the Oakville Soccer Club. Earlier this summer, we celebrated the ground-breaking for the North Park Quad Pad Arena, set to open in two years.

We extended library service to Clearview. We're glad finally to have brought a municipal presence to the area. And a second much-needed youth centre will open this year in Bronte. It will be like our successful existing youth centre on Cross Avenue.

We are working with the Accessibility Advisory Committee and making steady progress removing physical barriers from town facilities so all residents have access to Town services and programs.

Our aim is to make sure we provide programs and services that the public wants and benefits from. Our efforts run from more safe biking/walking places, to initiatives to convert harmful landfill gases into clean electricity. What we aren't big enough for alone - such as an Olympic pool - we explore with partners.

Fourth area of focus

The fourth area of focus for this year was to ensure programs and services are fiscally sustainable. Council adopted a 10-Year Capital Financial Plan for the town. This is the financial plan for catching up on Oakville's community facilities deficit. It maps how we will deliver all major capital projects.

We're also mid-way in our three-year transition to our new fiscal management and budgeting system, called PB2, which already is in wide use in governments outside Canada. We are the first in Canada to adopt it.

PB2 means Performance-Based, Program-Based. When fully activated in 2010, it will allow us to measure the productivity and efficiency of what we do. And it will allow us to make certain that the services and programs that residents want will be as cost-effective as possible.

We've also obtained federal and provincial funding for important improvements in Oakville. Two $50 million, 2,000 car parking garages are in the 10-year capital forecast of the GO system. Several hundred new GO parking spots have been added already thru land purchases and more are coming.

Later this year, Council will allocate our share of the provincial surplus, which is almost $7.5 million, to bring forward an item or items from our 10-year capital plan and make it happen sooner than we could have.

All plans are tested by unexpected events. Our test was . snow . lots of snow . record amounts of snow. We have fine-tuned our snow control operations with what we learned from last winter. We know we will have even better service this winter.

The amount of snow we endured last year created a record number of potholes on our roads. We laid on extra crews to repair them. The result? Challenges on the operational expense side. In the 2009 budget, we'll have to make careful choices for service improvements and hope for a lighter winter.

Fifth area of focus

The fifth and final area of focus for 2007-2008 was to ensure our staff receives the same level of respect, commitment and caring that we expect them to deliver to the community. The people of Oakville are telling us that's happening, too, and staff tell us it is more fulfilling than ever to work here.

Our 2007 Citizen Survey said:

• 86 per cent say services are dependable and accurate.
• 91 per cent say town employees are respectful.
• And 87 per cent expressed overall satisfaction with the Town of Oakville municipal government.

Consider the recognition two of our outstanding employees brought the Town this year:

Cathie Best, our Town Clerk, was honoured by the Association of Municipal Mangers, Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario with their Prestige Award. The award recognizes Cathie's outstanding commitment to the ideals of the association and her contributions to her municipal profession, such as her innovation of circulating public information by e-document.

The International Association of Business Communicators "Merit Award" went to the Oakville 150th Souvenir Brochure, which was designed by Jeff Smalley, our Graphic Designer.

In addition to the awards our staff has received, we've also received many positive comments from residents. Here are just three:

Hugh Marks wrote: "The Town looks fantastic this summer. The cleanliness, the flowers, the shrubs and trees all look vibrant and alive; the colours are beautiful. It seems impossible to believe that a few years ago my wife and I picked up more than 20 large bags of garbage along Third Line. Kudos to those who have the vision and are coordinating the effort, and thanks to the volunteers and municipal employees who are getting the job done."

Mark Verdun, a new resident of Oakville, took the time to call CAO Ray Green to compliment Town staff's response to him. As a new resident, Mark had had questions about parks, fencing, by-laws and grading. He said Town staff had reinforced what he called the "enjoyability" of living in Oakville.

Annmarie Donaldson was Executive Producer of the Oakville Skating Club's annual ice show. She sang the praises of arena staff Guy Hold, Doug Carey, Wayne Butt, Josh Goulart, and Mel Houston for their part in the success of the Club's ice show.

Council is proud of the level of commitment and dedication of our staff but we don't take great staff for granted. We invest in training as part of our goal to attract, develop and retain employees who will be the best and brightest. When they give their best, they leave a lasting positive impression.

It takes leadership to achieve objectives successfully and well.

Ray Green, our Town Manager and the Town's executive management team (Dave Bloomer, Jane Clohecy, Gord Lalonde and Domenic Lunardo) have provided outstanding leadership, energy and ability to work together as a team, in translating Council's goals into reality.

As we continue to work to achieve the rest of our strategic plan, there will be four new areas of focus in 2009. Enhancing the natural environment and keeping programs and services fiscally sustainable will continue to be areas of focus.

In addition to those two areas, we will also focus on enhancing:

• the social environment
• the cultural environment
• the fiscal environment
• the environmental sustainability of all our programs and services

This is a town full of people who aim high and achieve goals. There can be no doubt that Oakville will become what Oakville wants to be. Our environment will be better off . our community will be better off . and our lives will be better because of our commitment to our vision and our plan.

The reason we're aiming to make Oakville the most livable town in Canada is not just for us. It's for our children, and their children, and the generations after them who will call Oakville their hometown. Because what we plan . what we plant . what we put into place will be inherited by them.

We want the Town of Oakville we pass on to them to be more than just the most livable town in Canada. We want Oakville to be the place they're as proud to call home as we are.

The following remarks were delivered to Council, staff and residents at the October 1, 2007, Council meeting, where Mayor Rob Burton also presented his inaugural Oakville Status Report:

It is a pleasure to give you the first annual Town status report for this term of Council.

In only 10 months, together we already have a lot to be proud of, because:

• Oakville was named 2007 Urban Forest Capital of Canada.
• We are going to be the first municipality in Ontario to introduce mission-driven strategic planning with measurable goals.
• Oakville was recognized by the Energy Conservation Bureau of Ontario for its leadership in energy conservation.
• Our community has come together to celebrate our 150th anniversary and take stock of our progress with a new appreciation of the importance of our heritage and our future.

Your Council has used the past 10 months to lay the groundwork for a successful term. Let's define successful as delivering on our promises in the election 11 months ago and making significant and measurable progress toward our goal of creating in Oakville the most livable town in Canada.

We live in a community that already is one of the most blessed in Canada. Our Town's civic life has so many volunteers who enrich the quality of life in our community. We have active business leaders who create jobs and opportunities for our residents. We have fully engaged citizens who understand the issues facing our Town and share their valuable ideas and passionate feelings with us and with staff.

We have employees that demonstrate a level of respect, commitment, caring and concern for our community that impresses me every day. Vince Lombardi once said, "The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined efforts of each individual." This is especially true when it comes to such a diverse organization as the Corporation of the Town of Oakville.

The Town of Oakville runs more than 70 different services and programs - businesses, if you like. The Town's dedicated employees and valued services touch our lives every day. As Members of Council, we have chances every day to witness the dedication and quality of Town staff. There are too many to spotlight all who make us proud.

Let these 12 give you an idea about all the rest:

• First, Brian Bell from the Oakville Public Library was named as Canada's Librarian of the Year for his leadership and commitment to innovation to advance library services for all.
• Second (and third!), two of our Roads and Works staff, John Suave and Mike Manning, took quick action to save a life and prevent a tragedy when, early one morning, they encountered a distraught individual on the Fourth Line overpass.
• Fourth, Hillary Balchand in our Engineering Department provides outstanding customer service to our residents. She and other frontline staff go the extra mile every day to show their commitment to the people of Oakville. Hillary does it so well, we hear about it, but customer service will be a focus area in the term ahead to extend the example she and her colleagues provide.
• Fifth (but really many more), when a local arena went bankrupt Nina de Vaal and her team sprang into action. Their success in that contest brought a 28 per cent increase in the size of the Town's fleet of public ice arenas available to our residents at about half the price of the ice arenas available in the private, commercial fleet. This year, 6 a.m. practices are optional in Oakville. Hockey moms and dads and kids are pleased.
• Sixth (and seventh!), once we won the bidding competition, John Da Silva and Michael Brennan worked miracles in a tight period so there were "soft landings" for users and their programs caught in the turmoil of the unexpected arena bankruptcy. PS, the restaurant will reopen and the arena experience at all our arenas will brighten and improve as we continue to catch up with our needs.
• Eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh, congratulations to the North East Oakville planning team of Charles McConnell, Robert Thun, Sean Galloway, and David de Groot! Our secondary plan for North East Oakville has been selected as a pilot project for the LEED-ND rating system. LEED-ND stands for "Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design - Neighbourhood Development." This planning team now will translate our vision for North Oakville into an implementation plan that will produce a reality of which we can all be proud, integrating the principles of smart growth, urbanism, and green building standards across North Oakville.
• Twelfth, Ray Green, our Town Manager, exemplifies professionalism and leadership for our more than 1,000 employees. With his 32 years of experience here, he is a professional engineer whose problem-solving and people skills are among the highest calibre you can find. And he lives in Oakville, so he doesn't just talk the talk and walk the walk, he lives it, too!

When this Council officially took office 305 days ago, we knew we would need a strategic work plan if we were to achieve our many goals. This plan was our first and highest priority. We created a unanimous vision for our work together as your Council during this term from 2006 to 2010. We want each day to count.

Our plan aims high because Oakville is a town of people who aim high. Our guiding vision for Oakville is to create the most livable town in Canada. Someone has already suggested that our vision should be higher, to be "most livable in the world." And why not? A vision should be something to inspire us, something worth working for.

As we go, we will keep applying the power of positive listening for everyone's benefit and the best results. We will be measuring our progress towards our goals. Every year we will be reporting our results to you, as tonight. This is our new way of doing public business at the Town of Oakville. We will be goal driven, performance based and results-oriented to meet the diverse needs of our community.

Public transit is critical to the ability of all to be able to get to work, to go shopping or even to visit family and friends and is a key measure of "a livable town." Recreation, cultural, seniors and youth facilities are essential parts of daily routines. A vibrant downtown keeps our Town attractive and our values up, as does a healthy natural environment. These are key factors when we measure how livable Oakville is.

As Council, we balance these priorities and keep our eye on the bottom line. We're proud Oakville has very competitive property tax rates. We are working hard to keep it that way and we also work hard to keep up with our responsibilities. In Oakville, our municipal tax rate of .72 per cent is well below the provincial average of 1.1 per cent. And we had the lowest property tax increase in the GTA this year.

Everyone on Council understands the need to keep property taxes affordable. We will seek to diversify revenue sources and manage costs by seeking productivity gains and efficiencies. But we will not impoverish our future, or our children's future, if to cut or avoid something would damage our livability and cost more later to fix the damage. We had that ugly lesson in the 1990s.

To achieve our goal of financial planning strength and stewardship of our revenues, Council and staff have been implementing a new fiscal planning framework for the Town. We will be the leader in Canada for comprehensive, results-driven, multi-year financial planning and management, for both operations and capital, with performance-based, program-based budgeting and reporting.

This approach goes beyond focusing on what is spent to also plan and measure what results are achieved. Our move to multi-year strategic and financial planning will put the Town's management systems and processes on a par with the world's leading businesses. It will provide our citizens for the first time with a complete picture of where we stand financially as we work together to achieve our goals as a Town.

Council and staff at the Town are already enjoying the benefits of a new era and new style of working together at Town Hall. Over the past 10 months, we have established new cooperative and productive working arrangements both inside and outside Town Hall. We have created new working relationships with our three Business Improvement Areas and our Chamber of Commerce.

We have a new, more energetic and focused approach to Oakville's economic development. Council and Town staff will be taking a stronger leadership role in attracting and retaining businesses and ensuring we create the right conditions for success in our community. Business roundtable forums and executive secondments will assure we get the most out of our business community.

We are getting solutions and progress through the new public advisory method of ad hoc Mayors advisory groups and roundtables. We are and will be working more closely with all community and charity organizations and volunteer groups to help achieve our goal of creating in Oakville the most livable town in Canada.

Last week, we announced a proposal for Council to set an ambitious goal to achieve a 40 per cent tree canopy for the Town's bicentennial celebration in 2057. At 29 per cent now, we know we will need everyone's help to achieve this goal, and we are very fortunate in this community to have partners who, we know, will rise to the challenge.

Our Town's relationships with the members of the development community are changing, too. A new vision for development is emerging in the Town of Oakville and this is reflected in the people-centered, sustainable development proposed for North Oakville. Speed and certainty await those who work with us to achieve our goals.

We are moving to build new relationships based on mutual respect and principled negotiation. Where possible, we are settling OMB cases that we have inherited from previous terms of Council. Costly and contentious hearings at the Ontario Municipal Board are going to become a distant memory.

To assure this much-to-be-desired brighter future, we are creating a new Oakville Official Plan. Along with our strategic plan and financial management tools, the official plan is the third leg of the stable foundation that our town needs to guide us for years to come. We welcome all our residents to participate in shaping the new planning framework for Oakville.

We will no longer have an official plan often described as the worst in Ontario. We will have an official plan ("Livable Oakville") that will be the first in Ontario to be celebrated for its dedication to sustainability and livability as well as neighbourhood values and economic strength. It will dovetail with the Region's new official plan, "Sustainable Halton."

As we near the end of our first year in action as a Council and the 150th year of our Town, Oakville is enjoying economic health that is robust and strong. We have plans that aim to create an even brighter and more livable future. And we will continue to share a belief that the Town we have is important to everyone, but the Town we will have is just as important.

If we dream a little, and focus and work together a lot, we can and will create a golden era for Oakville. This Council with our staff has accomplished no less than the creation of a strong foundation for that shared vision since the election 11 short months ago. In a few days, the North Oakville OMB case will be behind us and finished, a finish that will be far less costly than was once feared.

Our Council is fun to work with. No other mayor in the country has created and run a successful and popular television network. Probably no other mayor is a member of the Directors Guild. So far, directing and mayoring appear to be remarkably similar. In both you work with the most talented and energetic people. In film and TV, everyone has a very good idea of their importance and their value. That's true here, too.

Whether you are a director or a mayor, you need to know and value the unique talents of each member of the team if you're hoping to inspire them to deliver the best possible performance.

We have gotten to this point where we are thanks to the many skills, perspectives and backgrounds that each Member of Council brings to the Council table. Our diverse talents have enhanced our problem-solving and our vision-making and made us stronger as a team.

Just a brief highlight about each one will give you the picture:

• Ward 5 Local and Regional Councillor Jeff Knoll has brought both local and provincial perspectives to the table. A project-oriented person, he persuaded us to ask staff to develop a by-law to restrict cosmetic use of pesticides. Our resulting bylaw is now a model in the country and has inspired our neighbours to follow our example.
• Ward 5 Local Councillor Marc Grant goes out of his way to bring the community together to help its most vulnerable citizens. His compassion and concern are valued by Council, but his results are directly appreciated by the recipients of his attention, too, and his skills as a communicator are respected by all of us.
• Ward 4 Local and regional Councillor Allan Elgar brings a wealth of knowledge on financial, environmental and planning best-practices to the Council table. A businessman with a strong financial background, he found the way to achieve the 2100-acre Natural Heritage System in North Oakville while saving the Town hundreds of millions of dollars in doing it.
• Ward 2 Local Councillor Cathy Duddeck understands the important role played by volunteers and residents' associations in our community. She is a hardworking Councillor who also is a tireless volunteer. She is an eloquent advocate for many of the community organizations that enhance our quality of life. But her passion for people is matched by her love and knowledge of our Heritage, too.
• First-term Ward 3 Town Councillor Mary Chapin brings long public service experience as a school board trustee in Eastern Ontario and Halton and as School Board chair to our Council table. She shares a focus on culture and museums and her tireless curiosity and illuminating questioning play a key role in our efforts as a group to create in Oakville the most livable town in Canada.
• Our longest serving Councillor, Ward 3 Town and Regional Councillor Keith Bird, brings seasoned advice and the longest experience to Council. If you enjoy the way Oakville has less sign pollution than other places, as well as a safe and vital downtown business area, it's to him you owe the best part of your thanks. If you want to know why or how things happened in the last 30 years, it's to him you bring your questions.
• First term Ward 6 Town Councillor Max Khan brings a sharp legal mind and expertise to the table. His probing questions and knowledge of the law alone are valuable to our debate. But he brings a charm and consideration to everything he engages in, and no one has ever more courteously and effectively made others more aware and appreciative of cultural diversity as he is doing.
• Ward 6 Town and Regional Councillor Tom Adams is both an engineer and a finance MBA. He adds power to our financial ability as a group. But he takes on unique and valuable projects, too. He agreed to design the new Mayor's Index of Oakville's Economic Health. Now every quarter we know where we stand economically.
• First-term Ward 4 Town Councillor Roger Lapworth has both expertise and commitment to fiscal accountability and he enhances Council's consideration of finances. If all he brings to the team were his sharp eye and quick-thinking for matters financial, we would be well-enough served for high praise. But he also has a keen instinct for assumption-testing, as we all saw in a recent Planning Public Hearing.
• Long-time Ward 1 Town Councillor Ralph Robinson is a tireless advocate for his constituents. Now in his 9th term, he generously shares his awareness of the nuts and bolts of Town operations with all. His vast knowledge of municipal affairs helps many of us. After more than 24 years of service on Council, he knows more than most about our history, our heritage and our environment.
• First-term Ward 1 Regional and Town Councillor Alan Johnston brings political expertise at the provincial and federal levels that keeps him closely in touch with the public. His transport industry expertise will be valuable for the economic growth we want in the years ahead. He also has a tremendous ability to listen to all sides of issues and find the points of congruence where compromises that satisfy all and work can be created.
• Long-time Ward 2 Town and Regional Councillor Fred Oliver has given over 50 years of service to this community, more than 22 of it on this Council. Whether we look at his career in the police services or his time as a member of Town council, he has always aimed point-blank at the heart of issues. Considering how long and well he has served since retiring, it's clear that if he has ever failed at anything, it's only at retiring.

We have a strong and inspired team on Oakville's Council.

We have a strong and organized professional team on our Town staff.

We have a large set of strong and well-informed, fully engaged and highly skilled citizens' groups.

We have a strong and visionary 4-year work plan.

We have economic and financial stability and strength.

We have strong new powers in planning and development.

We have a strong determination to use our new powers for the good of our community.

We have strong and positive relationships with the other municipalities in our regional government.

We have a strong and productive working relationship with the MPP who represents most of Oakville.

As many know, he was a Member of this Council for 18 years. No matter who wins the Provincial Election next week, we can be sure that the outstanding results MPP Kevin Flynn has delivered for Oakville have set an example to live up to.

Thank you all for your shared commitment to our community. There is no more enjoyable way to be a mayor than to lead a community that knows where it wants to go and knows how to get what it wants, and if ever a community were so blessed, it is Our Town, Oakville.