Aurora Citizen

News & Views from the Citizens of Aurora Ontario

Archive for the ‘Community Input’ Category

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Bell Sends Rebate Cheques Incognito

Posted by auroracitizen on March 30, 2011

I recently received a letter from Bell Canada.  Logo top left, basic bulk mail indicia and the statement “Important account information” above the window. It looked very much like bulk mail which usually goes directly into the garbage.

But I am glad I didn’t throw it away.

Inside was a letter explaining that as a Bell customer I was entitled to receive a portion of the funds that the CRTC had directed be set aside and attached was my Home Phone Rebate Program cheque for $67.

So it got me wondering. What would have happened if I had put the envelope in the garbage?

Obviously I would not have cashed the cheque and the money would have remained in the Bell bank account. Good for Bell, bad for me.

So was this an intentional strategy to minimize redemption of these cheques by home owners? Why didn’t they simply credit my account so I would get the money. Makes one wonder doesn’t it.

So, make sure you open your mail from Bell this week. There could be a cheque inside.

Posted in Community Input, Local Business | 12 Comments »

Who’s Responsible for Aurora’s Wikipedia Infomation

Posted by auroracitizen on March 30, 2011

The following was received from a reader

My daughter needed info on Aurora, googled it, and found the Wikipedia site.

I was really disturbed to see so much biased and old news about last years council that I was hoping someone could please update this site, and correct it. Not sure who supplied all the one-sided info, but a Wiki site should not be the place to air out political problems. Shame on you who used this for their personal platform.

So what’s the deal?

Prior to the last election a number of comments were added that were skewed towards the benefit of defeated Mayoralty candidate Phyllis Morris and her regime — however since then little has been done.

Aurora now has a person who is managing our social media. Wouldn’t it make sense for them to monitor and update Wikipedia?

Importantly, wouldn’t they make sure it is correct? After all, Wikipedia is supposed to reflect the community — not just one candidate. It should hopefully provide a balanced perspective.

Particularly concerning are comments around the Town Councillor Council Code of Conduct/Integrity Commissioner and the Promenade Study — both which were added for political gain and both are badly skewed towards a particular side. Regardless of your position on events — surely we can all agree that this site should represent the best and brightest that is Aurora, not to be manipulated for political purposes. In fact, on the site it identifies that the Town Councillor Council Code of Conduct issue is disputed.

Let’s get this mis-information fixed so when residents and prospective businesses visit the site they get a positive impression.

On a broader platform — what is our overall strategy? Has one been written? What are the objectives of the strategy? Does it align with our economic development and leisure services strategies?

Lots of questions.

Possibly the social media person at the town would care to comment here (we know from last term they are monitoring the site).

Perhaps Council and the CAO could direct them to update the site so it reflects Aurora in a more positive light.

Posted in Community Input, Local Business, Media | 12 Comments »

Is Aurora Friendlier than other Communities?

Posted by auroracitizen on March 30, 2011

We recently received the following note from a reader.

I have lived in many places with my family, from Scarborough, Unionville, Guelph, and Richmond Hill and never have I experienced more unfriendliness than I have as in Aurora. People rarely smile, say hello and try very much to keep to themselves. I joined several community activities and experience the same feeling.

Does anyone have an opinion why this is so?

Aurora has always prided itself on its community spirit — but have we started to change with the growth?

How do new arrivals feel? Do they still feel the sense of community many longer term resident felt when we arrived?

Is it difficult to get involved in programs due to overcrowding? What about adult programs?

We’d be interested in hearing from both newer and older arrivals. How did you get involved? What tips do you have for new arrivals?

Posted in Community, Community Corner, Community Input, Discussion Topic, Growth, Recreation | 48 Comments »

What is the Appropriate Role of a Citizen Committee?

Posted by auroracitizen on March 11, 2011

There has been some discussion about the appropriate role of a citizen committee in a number of blog comments, so we thought we would ask the question directly.

Currently there are legislated committees such as the Library Board or Cemetery Board which are not the focus of this post– but could provide some ideas about roles.

This discussion is intended to focus around discretionary committees that are set up by Council to solicit and encourage community input — such a Leisure Service or Economic Development or Financial.

Here are some questions to get the conversation started. We are sure you will have more.

  1. Should a committee have a budget? If so, who would be accountable for the budget?
  2. Should Council members sit on advisory committees or should it be only citizens? Will citizens defer to Council members if they are part of the committee?
  3. Who should the committee report to — Council directly or should they go through staff?
  4. What role should staff play on the committee?
  5. Should staff be asked to comment on all committee recommendations prior to coming to Council?
  6. Should committee recommendations be vetted by staff before presentation to Council?
  7. Is Council under any obligation to follow recommendations from an advisory committee?
  8. Who is the committee accountable to? Are they accountable to anyone or are they independent?

Also, what committees do you think Aurora should have? Is there an area that is missed?

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FOOTNOTE: What started as an intelligent discussion quickly degenerated into name-calling and insults. The moderators have removed all such comments. Sorry folks, but our attempts to let everything through continues to backfire.

Posted in Community, Community Input, Town Committees | 34 Comments »

The Elephant in the Budget

Posted by auroracitizen on March 8, 2011

Recently on several blogs in the Town of Aurora, there have been controversial posts about the recent history of the Church Street School, which currently houses the Aurora Cultural Centre.  The ACC is now governed by a board that operates at arm’s length from the Town, but receives Town funding through an agreement that ends next year.

The Church Street School used to be the home of a museum operated by the Aurora Historical Society.  When the building was renovated, it appeared that there would be a Town of Aurora commitment to include a new museum.  Now there is lots of storage of artifacts, but no real museum.

Lots of folks love the Aurora Cultural Centre and want it to continue to be funded.  Lots of other folks want to fund a museum dedicated to Aurora’s history.  Some folks want both.  A few want neither.

Would you prefer to have this new cultural centre supported by your taxes, or would you prefer to respect the heritage of the past?

Would you prefer to have an unelected committee tell you what’s worth watching and doing, or have the funding oversight remain with Council?

Would you like to spend your hard-earned tax dollars housing bits and pieces of antiquity or focus on the future cultural opportunities within our community.

Or are you somewhere in between?  If you are, what does that mean for the Town budget?

Have your say here on this blog.  What should happen in the future?

Posted in Budget, Community, Community Input | 60 Comments »

New Procedural Bylaw Being Discussed

Posted by auroracitizen on March 6, 2011

In Councillor Ballard’s blog he discusses the new procedural bylaw currently under discussion. Possibly this is the type of unbiased reporting that some readers of this blog are looking for.

He  identifies concern with a number of key areas (comments are from his blog);

  1. Limit who can delegate before Council,
  2. Remove the requirement of a delegate’s need to give advance notice, (Council will have no advance knowledge of why a delegate is speaking at a General Council meeting and, therefore, may not be well informed to ask questions, discus the matter intelligently, and be unable to make an informed decision),
  3. Not allow delegates to speak at a Council meeting (which is broadcast on Cable), and only allow delegates to speak at Council’s General Committee meeting (which is not broadcast via Cable),
  4. Drastically shorten a Councillor’s ability to speak to an item from 30 minutes to five minutes. Complex issues may not be fully explored by Councillors before decisions are made,
  5. Only allow residents, not businesses, to speak at Open Forum even though businesses are taxpayers, too.

There seems to be a fundamental flaw in his whole argument — and that is the seeming lack of understanding of the difference between a General Committee (GC) meeting and a Council meeting.

A Council meeting is too late to be gathering information. That is the purpose of committee meetings. That is where delegates should come forward and present various sides of the argument — where and when Councillors have the opportunity to ask questions. Then, Councillors have a week for “sober second thought”, plus the ability to check facts, dig deeper and come to the formal Council meeting ready to debate the issues based on their research. There is no move afoot to limit who can delegate to Council — just to have the delegate appear at a time and place where their information can best be received and considered.

Imagine arriving at a meeting where you are expected to make a decision and only then start to ask questions. That is the whole issue with the ongoing practice by Councillor Gaertner with her questions — she seems more interested in performing for the TV audience versus getting the facts for decision-making. Everyone else has done their research, asked their questions and are ready to debate the merits of various points of view before arriving at the Council meeting. Councillor Gaertner seems to be a week behind.

It is also a key reason why last term reports and decisions were either deferred or sent back to staff so often. It reflected the facts that too many Councillors were arriving without their research completed and ill-prepared to make a decision.

Insisting that the GC meeting be used as the information gathering session and that Councillors arrive at the Council meeting ready and prepared to publicly debate the issue –televised for all to see — make sense. What benefit is gained by having delegates speak at a meeting that is on TV. We are more interested in hearing what our elected Councillors have to say than listening to the biased, self-interested pleas of every special interest group that comes before Council. We want to hear how our elected representatives view the topic — which we hope will be debated on merits they have researched and in the best interest of the entire community — not just the special interest group.

Further, if meetings were shorter, more people might tune in and find out what is going on in town.

Also, has anyone ever heard of a Councillor in Aurora ever speaking for 30 minutes on a single issue at one time? If you can’t make your point in 5 minutes — may be you need to figure out what you want to say before you start talking.

The real basis for his discussion seems to be based on someone representing “the opposition”. This may be standard operating procedure at the Provincial and Federal levels — but many Canadians are finding the “if it’s your idea, it must be wrong” philosophy behind the party system to be a poor use of time and resources. At the municipal level we hope for a more collaborative debate — versus the confrontational environment that Councillors Ballard and Gaertner seem to be striving for.

On another note, if Council demanded that a delegate could only speak if they provided advance notice — Councillor Ballard would probably have said that was limiting input because of the requirement for advance notice. Sometimes you just can’t win for trying — but that’s just our bias 🙂

Posted in Community Input, Town Council | 18 Comments »

Councillors Gaertner and Ballard Against Neighbourhood Network

Posted by auroracitizen on February 5, 2011

Aurora Council finally voted to formally partner with Neighbourhood Network. That is, with the exception of Councillors Ballard and Gaertner.

The always insightful Councillor Gaertner summarized her position with the comment “I don’t really like the idea of sending volunteers to Newmarket”. Possibly one of the dumbest comments we will hear this term.

Imagine, until Neighbourhood Network started, no one from Aurora had anything to do with Newmarket. And heaven forbid someone from Newmarket dared set foot in Aurora to help.

Maybe she thinks we need a big fence around our community so people can’t cross boundaries.

The basis of the concern seems to be that since Neighbourhood Network is supported by Magna, she was concerned that this would create a conflict.

Magna has been a generous contributor to our community and many others. Whether supporting youth soccer with use of fields, supporting the new Rec Centre, supporting the kitchen in the Seniors Centre or organizing the Magna Hoedown, Magna has been a contributing corporate citizen. Based Councillor Gaertner’s rational, should Aurora have declined all of these offers of support?

Many organizations in town, not just Magna, provide support for community groups, whether supporting local teams through sponsorship or financial contributions — or supporting town organized activities like the Santa Claus Parade — and even the Jazz in the Park. Should we also decline their contributions.

As Bart Simpson would say, “Duh!”

Another poorly thought out stance on an issue intended simply to create issues at the Council table.

If these 2 Councillors spent as much time focused on working with Council as they spend trying to hinder Council, we might get somewhere.

It seems in spite of best efforts to sweep the dysfunction out from last term, some remnants remain.

It’s interesting to see who is creating the issues — and who they supported during the last election campaign.

A coincident? We think not.

Posted in Community Corner, Community Input, Leadership | 7 Comments »

Issues versus Personalities

Posted by auroracitizen on January 28, 2011

In our ongoing effort to not filter comments, we have allowed virtually all comments to be posted. We feel that this privilege is being abused.

Recent comments are starting to sound like a Council meeting last term — where issues were rarely discussed based on merits and personalities have become the focus.

This makes it uncomfortable for readers and reduces the willingness for commentators to share opinions that others may not agree.

Soooooooooooooo, moderators will tighten up the criteria. Posts that are not discussing the issues will not be published. Disagree all you want — we actually hope that different POV’s get discussed. But let’s keep the focus on the issues and not the personalities.

We are a volunteer run group — so we welcome any additional suggestions on how to keep the blog a positive forum for discussion and debate.

Folks — let’s keep the debate vigorous and civil. Let’s help put the Aura back in Aurora 🙂

Posted in Community Corner, Community Input | 25 Comments »

Guest Post: Snowploughing

Posted by auroracitizen on January 10, 2011

Here’s a topic that I thought of while driving in the Town today (Sunday) in the mid-afternoon.

As we all know, there was a bit of a snow fall yesterday morning. I had to drive to Scarborough around 7:30am and it was quite bad on the 404. In fact the more south you went, the more snow there seemed to be. By the time I returned around 5:00pm, the highways were bare and wet and the side streets had been plowed. Most sidewalks were as well.

Driving around Aurora today, my street has not seen a plow yet. The sidewalks have not either. Henderson is bare where the traffic has been, but there is clear evidence that the plows have not been out.

What’s going on? Is this the new Aura? It is not normal.

Posted in Community Input, Discussion Topic, Guest Post, Traffic/Parking | 34 Comments »

Reader Suggests Councillor Gaertner Resign Based on Behaviour

Posted by auroracitizen on December 21, 2010

An Open Letter to Councillor Wendy Gaertner.

Councillor Gaertner,

After witnessing first hand your display at the Aurora Council meeting on Tuesday Dec 14 2010, I had to write. You have demonstrated to me a lack of respect to Aurorans, to Aurora Council, and to the oath you swore. You’re alone in this behaviour, and you present yourself in a less than professional manner.

At this meeting I saw that you handed a letter, prepared in advance, to a representative of The Auroran.  I can only conclude from this action that it was your pre-meditated intent to be disruptive and drive a wedge. This type of behaviour serves no good to the town, nor to the people you swore to professionally and respectfully represent. In my opinion, you weren’t being truthful to Aurorans when you campaigned on the promise of serving the people of the community.

Our new council is going to make some process and procedural mistakes as they find their way. Growing pains are understandable and are bound to occur with a new council, however these will quickly fade as council develops their political acumen and we all move forward. I’m certain every reasonable person in town can accept this. What I believe is important to most Aurorans, is that our new council is making every effort to restore good, civil, accountable government to Aurora. Why you remain stuck in the past and focused on the negative, frankly escapes me.

You are opposed to, and showed no interest in taking part in the off-site meeting. What could possibly be your objection to taking part in learning sessions and a key team-building exercise? Teamwork was something sorrowfully lacking on Aurora Council for the last 4 years. Surely you cannot believe that;

  1. You already know all there is to know about municipal politics?
  2. Teamwork adds no value to a functioning council?
  3. You have nothing to learn about your new teammates?

An off-site meeting gives all those who attend the chance to get to know each other better, share ideas, share best practices, grow a deeper understanding and appreciation of your co-councillors, and to learn what issues are important to them. Like a sports team on a road trip, getting away as a group creates a bond that just doesn’t occur when everyone stays in town, and heads for the door as soon as the structured meeting ends. It was encouraging to see that most of the other councillors saw the obvious benefit in attending.

The recent election results showed that the majority of Aurorans want true change. We’re tired of the infighting. We don’t want a fractured council anymore. Why aren’t you listening? Have you no interest in being part of something better?

In my opinion, I believe you may be getting bad advice.

Who stands to benefit by having you act this way? I can tell you that it’s not the taxpayers of Aurora, so who then, are you truly representing? I can’t imagine that anyone could maintain this level of bitterness and vindictiveness without having it create a lasting negative affect on their outlook, their judgment, or their health, for that matter.

Councillor Gaertner, I believe you have no intention of honouring your oath or commitment to the taxpayers of Aurora. And as such, I respectfully ask you to resign your post as councillor. It appears to me that you no longer have the attitude, energy, direction, and focus required to carry out your sworn duties in a positive, fair, and respectful manner.

Matt Maddocks

Aurora

Posted in Code of Ethics, Community Input, Guest Post, Integrity, Leadership, Town Council | 34 Comments »

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