Mayor’s Mailbag – August 2022 Roundup – City Development Projects Webpage, Pickleball, & Tobyn Park Condo Update

Mayor's Mailbag
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Welcome to the Mayor’s Mailbag – August 2022 roundup.The Mayor’s Monday Mailbag is a weekly initiative Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward and the Mayor’s Office has launched to share answers to questions from the public we’ve received through our main email inbox at mayor@burlington.ca or the Mayor’s social media platforms.At the end of the month, we publish a roundup of those most pressing questions we’ve received in the weeks prior.Mayor’s Mailbag – August 2022 Roundup

CITY'S DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS WEBPAGEQUESTION:“The City’s website was recently enhanced — what’s changed with the new design of the Development Projects webpage?”ANSWER:With the newly enhanced and redesigned City of Burlington website, there’s now also a new way to interact with the development projects webpage — burlington.ca/developmentprojectsThe development projects pages have been designed as news feeds to allow an enhanced way to search — by address or search by application status — and by indicating at the top of the application webpage the date that the page was last updated. Also, this new design provides residents the ability to subscribe to any ward-specific application updates when a new application in that ward has been added.Each ward feed can be subscribed to for updates by visiting subscribe.burlington.caPlease note that we are still in the process of updating these pages and configuring the City of Burlington website — dealing with hiccups we’ve encountered and that residents have contacted us about. If you encounter something that doesn’t seem right when you’re visiting burlington.ca or any of the services’ pages, please contact our Service Burlington desk at city@burlington.caWhen it comes to website design, some pages — like the development projects pages — can’t be fully completed before the new website goes live (in a staging\testing environment), so they need to be done on the live website, instead.We are in the process of bringing over and adding the supporting documents for development applications — this is a extensive process as there are almost 60 application pages with, at times, more than 20 large documents for each application. So, if you don’t find what you’re looking for right away, we ask that you please be patient as City staff work diligently to get all the webpages up-to-date.In the meantime, if you require specific documents related to a specific development application, please reach out to the City Planner on file (their contact information can be found on the webpage) and they will be able to assist.We appreciate your patience as we work on implementing these user enhancements to our development application webpages.

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PICKLEBALL FACILITIES IN BURLINGTONQUESTION:“Pickleball is a fast-growing sport — what facilities are available at the City of Burlington?”ANSWER:From July 9-Aug. 28, the City has made available two courts for free use by the community at the Burlington Seniors’ Centre Community (Rooms 1 and 2 – formerly the Auditorium room) for pickleball.

  • Every Saturday, from 2-9 p.m.
  • Every Sunday, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
  • Maximum players allowed in space are 20 per hour, and players will be required to sign-in on the charts that will be provided on the Community room door prior to entry.
  • Please refer to the Voluntary Acceptance Risk Statement for terms of use.

In addition, you can also reserve an indoor pickleball court (for a fee) at Central Arena (519 Drury Lane) or Mainway Arena (4015 Mainway) online with the City’s Book-a-Court. The system is reserved for non-commercial activities. Nets are provided, but users will need to bring their own equipment. For more details on booking and the facilities, please visit burlington.ca/pickleballThe Mayor’s Office has been receiving feedback from the community, including a number from Burlington Pickleball Association (BPA) members, asking the City to create more – or larger – spaces (both indoor and outdoor) that are exclusive for pickleball use.The City of Burlington has limited open spaces in our parks system and a lot of competing priorities for different recreational facilities. The City also takes into consideration how near these spaces would be to existing housing and neighbourhoods, due to the amount of noise the sport can create when individuals are playing.That said, the City will be adding additional outdoor pickleball lines to two courts in Ireland Park (2315 Headon Forest Dr.) tennis facility, resulting in four pickleball courts available for play at Ireland Park. The City will also be removing the pickleball lines at Brant Hills due to their close location to neighbouring homes to address on-going noise concerns. The courts at Brant Hills will be converted back to tennis-only.To make these changes, courts at Ireland and Brant Hills Parks will be closed for use from Aug. 29 until Sept. 2, weather permitting. Signs will be posted and gates will be locked until the paint has dried enough for use. If there is a change in the schedule, updates will be posted online and through social media.Residents wanting to play can still use other outdoor courts, indoor courts, and our book-a-court, as usual. Outdoor courts include:

  • Bolus Garden Parkette: two lined courts within the ball hockey area that are open from spring to fall. You must bring your own pickleball nets.
  • Ireland Park: four lined courts within tennis courts available from spring to fall (closed Aug. 29 to Sept. 2 for repainting).
  • Optimist Park: two lined courts within tennis courts available from spring to fall. Players can bring their own nets during the winter.
  • Sycamore Park: two lined courts within tennis courts available from spring to fall.
  • Tansley Woods Park: three dedicated courts with fixed official height pickleball nets available from spring to fall.

It will take time and planning to implement extra facilities and, unfortunately, the resources at this time at the City cannot allow any immediate solutions. However, Council and staff are exploring this matter more in 2023. Council and staff are also looking at examples the BPA has offered of how other municipalities have added extra pickleball courts and are internally discussing these as potential options. While the City looks at different options, we encourage the community to take advantage of the free weekend pickleball court time at the Burlington Seniors’ Centre.

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TOBYN PARK CONDO UPDATEQUESTION:“Are there any updates regarding the building registration for the Tobyn Park condominium at 4040 Upper Middle Road?”ANSWER:The applicant satisfied all of the City of Burlington’s requirements for the condominium application a few months ago. However, the City continues to await the applicant’s submission of the final hardcopies of their plans for signature by City staff — that the applicant then immediately delivers to the Land Registry Office (LRO) for registration.  This has to be done in hardcopy.Prior to submitting their final hardcopy plans to City staff, the applicant has indicated that they are pre-consulting with the LRO about the registration process. They indicated that this process is ongoing and the LRO has a backlog of files due to an unprecedented influx of registrations province-wide.As a result, the delay in registration is not caused by the City, nor is it something that it has control over. This resides with the applicant and LRO.In addition to the above, the Mayor’s Office has been in touch with the Office of Oakville North-Burlington MPP Effie Triantafilopoulos, whose riding this building falls under. The Mayor’s Office has asked the MPP’s office to advocate for a speedy processing of the pre-consultation that the applicant has with the LRO (as mentioned above). We are hopeful that this might assist in expediting the file in order for registration to take place.The Mayor’s Office is keeping an eye out for any further updates and will be sure to share any new information as soon as we have it with the residents that have already reached out to us with concerns over this issue.

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