Burlington Council Approves Staff Direction to Explore Creating Burlington School Safety & Mobility Committee in 2024 Budget

Burlington City Council has approved a motion memo from Councillor Lisa Kearns directing staff to explore creating a Burlington School Safety and Mobility Committee.The full motion approved is below and the motion memo is available here: CPRM-07-23 - Motion-Memorandum- School Safety 2023.pdfDirect the Director of Transportation to explore the creation of a Burlington School Safety & Mobility Committee for Council’s consideration in the 2024 budget including:

• Confirm the level of involvement with the School Boards and Halton Regional Police Services
• Establishing level of Corporate Supports
• Terms of Reference
• Costing (SD-28-23)

In her motion memo, Councillor Kearns noted, "In our Burlington community, the safety of students when travelling to and from school is a top priority. The purpose of this Motion is to work collaboratively with the school boards, and other agencies, and to review creating an advisory committee regarding school safety and mobility."MY TAKE:Thank you to Councillor Kearns and staff for working to bring this forward. The City has been working on street safety for years, but it shows we still have work to do. It’s important we do everything that we can to ensure safety – and part of that involves our integrated mobility plan, safe cycling and pedestrian routes. In terms of parking lots, we’ve seen serious accidents take place there, so we should look to how we can propose retrofits to private property owners to help make those areas safer. I look forward to continuing the conversation on this and incorporating safety across the city in all public areas.