Aurora Citizen

News & Views from the Citizens of Aurora Ontario

Archive for the ‘Town Council’ Category

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

Open Invitation to Mayor Morris

Posted by auroracitizen on February 2, 2009

Much has been said about the activities and behaviour of the current Council under your leadership this term — some positive and some negative. Now that you have started to write a column in the Auroran, it would appear you are trying to communicate more regularly with the citizens of Aurora. We wanted to offer you the opportunity to engage in a true 2-way dialogue and interact directly with your constituents.

You can do this either by sending comments to be posted to the site or we can set you up as a guest author so you could post on any topics you feel are important at anytime.

In every case your comments would be posted without editing or censorship — so you will also be assured that your comments are expressed exactly as you desire.

We think the citizens deserve access to their government if it is to be truly open and transparent. One of the things we learned from the campaign of President Obama is the importance of the online channel in communicating with people. We are offering you this vehicle as a means to facilitate this open communication.

Will you accept our invitation?

Use the envelope and pencil icons immediately below to forward this post to friends or leave a comment.

Posted in Community Corner, Community Input, Town Council | 67 Comments »

2009 will be an important year

Posted by auroracitizen on January 17, 2009

This year will be the last year of action for the current Council. Starting early in 2010, the politicians will start thinking even more about getting re-elected than they already do now. Some might say that is all some politicians think about.

Eventually they will become what is referred to as a ‘Lame Duck’ since they will stop making decisions they feel are more appropriately made by the incoming Council. Usually this starts in late spring, but given the track record of indecision by the current Council, it will probably start much sooner.

We have already started the year with the loss of another senior team member, John Gutteridge our Treasurer, leaving just Al Downey as the lone survivor since this Council took office. You would have to look long and hard to find another Council that has burned through an entire senior team in less than 1 term. Quite a legacy!

Hard to believe that the entire team wasn’t up to standards. Somehow the Town survived — and thrived — under the leadership of many of these same people. And this is just the people who are in senior roles. It is difficult to determine what pool of talent has been lost at other levels of the organization — often these are the leaders of the future.

CAO Garbe has a tough job ahead and we wish him the best. He has the job of building a new staff and rebuilding their moral. A tough job at the best of times, but given the current situation it would seem almost impossible. Time will tell whether Council will give him the latitude to make the necessary adjustments.

It will be interesting to see what agenda this Council chooses to pursue this year. Stay tuned.

Use the envelope and pencil icons immediately below to forward this post to friends or leave a comment.

Posted in Staff Turnover, Town Council | 29 Comments »

Start, Stop, Do Differently

Posted by auroracitizen on January 17, 2009

Every year at this time people tend to review the past and look forward to the future. In business, a performance review acts in the same manner. We have already seen a number of “Year in Reviews” for our current Council, but what about the coming year? What you think Council should be focusing on?

If you were providing a review for Council, what would you say to them for 2009? What would you tell them to Start doing, Stop doing or Do differently?

Share your thoughts.

Use the envelope and pencil icons immediately below to forward this post to friends or leave a comment.

Posted in Community Input, Town Council | 27 Comments »

Aurora Welcomes New CAO in January

Posted by auroracitizen on December 6, 2008

Aurora will welcome a new CAO in January. Neil Garbe is currently at the Region, so he should be fully aware of the situation here in Aurora.

His first job should be to start rebuilding trust in the ranks of the Town staff. In the current economic climate, hardly a day passes without the newspapers commenting about the importance of motivated staff to achieve the best results. Countless research studies have shown that unless staff is positive about their jobs they do not perform effectively.

Why is that important? Until that is achieved, the residents will never receive their full value of their tax dollars. In other words, our taxes are higher because the town does not operate as efficiently as possible.

One example is the amount of time and money that gets spent by Council’s inability to make a decision about issues and continually revisit them. The waste in staff hours and impact on moral must be staggering.

The current Council needs to ensure that our scarce dollars derive the most benefit and the first steps is to rebuild relationships with staff.

We will all be watching with great interest to see how he manages the situation he has inherited.

Let’s wish him best wishes and good luck

Use the envelope and pencil icons immediately below to forward this post to friends or leave a comment.

Posted in CAO, Town Council | 30 Comments »

Integrity Commissioner

Posted by auroracitizen on November 30, 2008

Now that Council has hired their Integrity Commissioner, it will be interesting to watch how they are utilized. There have been a number of accusation made about integrity that would be worthy of consideration.

There has been the refusal to sign the Code of Conduct by Cllr. Buck, and possibly some citizen members. Is it even appropriate to force citizen members to sign? Or the Conflict of Interest accusations around the appointment of Ken Whitehurst? Or even the dismissal of the CAO?

Will the new position be used as a weapon to try to quiet dissenting opinions? Will it be used for a little self-evaluation of their own conduct?

Most importantly, will this third party be able to render third party opinions without having to vet them through Council under the cloak of “In Camera” meetings because of the personnel nature of the issues?

How broad or narrow will the scope be? Remember, they are not full-time. Will they only be used at the discretion of Council, or will citizens have the ability to contact the Commissioner to investigate and report on the behaviours of Council or specific members?

All of these are important questions that need to be answered. Stay tuned, I am sure that activities will shortly start to tell the story.

Use the envelope and pencil icons immediately below to forward this post to friends or leave a comment.

Posted in CAO, Conflict of Interest, Town Council | 5 Comments »

5 cent Plastic Bags

Posted by auroracitizen on November 27, 2008

Big news today was that Toronto is trying to implement a 5 cent fee for all plastic bags used by stores as part of their strategy to divert materials away from landfill sites.

In Aurora, Councillor Al Wilson initially took a stand about garbage and recycling as a private citizen and included it as part of his election campaign.

Mayor Morris generated considerable personal press on her Right to Dry campaign.

It will be interesting to see whether either champions this program, or whether some other Councillor will take it on. If Toronto can initiate a significant change like this, why can’t Aurora. Maybe we can lead the fight for York Region.

This is as big an issue as the packaging issue that was raised in an earlier post. Regardless it will be interesting to see how our Council manages this issue.

Use the envelope and pencil icons immediately below to forward this post to friends or leave a comment.

Posted in Town Council, Waste | 2 Comments »

Discussion: Legal Fees

Posted by auroracitizen on November 23, 2008

One reader asked whether the Mayor would consider placing an ad about the legal fees and what they were spent on.

This Council seems on the way to a record for external legal expenses. Shouldn’t we know what they are being spent on? Then we can decide whether the dollars (our tax dollars) are being spent on issues of importance to the Town — or those of importance to Council.

Hopefully this will be part of the budget process and we can all see it broken down by issue and dollars spent. Bouquets to the Councillor who insists on it!

Use the envelope and pencil icons immediately below to forward this post to friends or leave a comment.

Posted in Legal, Town Council | 3 Comments »

Discussion: Aurora Traffic Woes

Posted by auroracitizen on November 23, 2008

The northeast quadrant is proceeding with new speed humps along Mark Street. However, there doesn’t seem to any real consensus on whether the residents want these or whether they are having the intended impact.

What role will citizens have with the Traffic Advisory Committee on this issue?

What other traffic issues are we concerned about. Former Council Ron Wallace used to complain bitterly about Yonge and Wellington — is this still an issue. The new Dundas and Yonge traffic signals may have some learning we can benefit from.

What about the speed zone on St John’s where it drops for approx 300 yards from 60 to 50 kms. Most regular travellers along that stretch are well aware of the situation.

What is Wellington and Leslie starting to look like now that the stores are starting to open. Will it end up like in Newmarket leading to/from the big box area?

Traffic flows like water — to the path of least resistance. Whenever changes are made to one area to lower traffic just moves the traffic elsewhere and becomes someone else’s problem.

Until we reduce the cars on the road, the problems will not disappear — just become someone else’s.

Use the envelope and pencil icons immediately below to forward this post to friends or leave a comment.

Posted in Growth, Town Council, Traffic/Parking | Leave a Comment »

Discussion: Unauthorized Spending by Staff

Posted by auroracitizen on November 23, 2008

This issue has been one of the most widely commented posts. Possibly because it has raised a number of new and old issues — all of which have different levels of importance by different people within the community.

In spite of the letters in the local papers from Council, there are many questions still to be asked and answered. There will be more, but these are the ones that immediately come to mind.

  1. What is the role of Staff vs Council. Are Council too involved in day-to-day management of the Town affairs versus setting policy? Did staff follow procedures or did they blatantly disregard established procedures?
  2. Impact of Council actions on staff morale. Are we getting the best performance from staff or are they hunkering down until the next election?
  3. Are some of the issues tied to the loss of so many senior staff since this Council took office? Would the same situation have arisen if we had more seasoned senior staff in place and resultant less burden on the CAO?
  4. Why does Council claim to only have found out recently about this issue when The Auroran communicated the issue months ago. See copy of staff memo here courtesy of Cllr Buck.
  5. If the repair issues were a matter of safety, how much impact did Council’s demonstrated difficult making decisions have on staff actions. Were they damned if they did – damned if they didn’t?
  6. What is the confidence in Council by the community?
  7. What facts are correct and which ones are being manipulated to satisfy different agendas. Shouldn’t there only be one agenda — what is best for the Town?
  8. Why do Council keep talking about getting the money returned — implying that the town is out approx $442,000. The newspapers have reported that the bulk had already been paid by the insurance company and just a smaller amount was still outstanding. Are the papers wrong and if so, why did the letter from Council not clarify this issue. If the newspapers are right, why the implication by Council. How much money is really outstanding to be repaid to the Town?
  9. Why has the outstanding dollars for the repairs (which should be pursued by the Town) been tied to inappropriate behaviour by the staff? Staff actions don’t appear to have anything to do with this subject, but the message has implied that staff behaviour has lead to this lawsuit. The shouldn’t be any connection.
  10. It re-opens the CAO termination issue. Was this used a “justification” for firing the CAO? If so, why was there a reported termination package versus dismissal with cause. Is there really cause fore the dismissal, or was this just an excuse? When will the citizens know the facts?
Many of these issues have been the subject of separate posts — some which are listed at the right side because they were already the Most Popular Posts based on number of comments.

Openness and transparency is used by this Council regularly, it has become their mantra. It was used in both recent letters. However, how open and transparent are they being? Let’s continue to push for the full story – then we can make our own decision.

What other questions need to be answered? What is Council doing to answer these questions? The letters are not enough, more information needs to be communicated.

Share your thoughts. What are the important questions/issues to you and how do you think they should be handled.

Use the envelope and pencil icons immediately below to forward this post to friends or leave a comment.

Posted in Community Input, Town Council | 2 Comments »

Diversity is Good!

Posted by auroracitizen on November 22, 2008

We teach our children that we live in a diverse world — one where different points of view are welcome and encouraged. Municipal politics should be no different

The comments on the latest post showed that this blog has started to evolve as a conversation and that is what is intended.

  • We had saw some great points made about different side of various issues. Hopefully we will see more.
  • We’ve questioned the facts — what is really happening at Town Hall and what is the spin — from either side of the issue. And importantly, we are demanding more transparency.
  • We saw people use pseudonyms versus anonymous, so people could track individual perspectives and address their responses to specific people. Thanks “Not Walt” for making that suggestion. So pick you nom de plume and start contributing.
  • We’ve all become bored with “anonymous” who’s only contribution to-date has been to complain about the anonymous posts — while making all their own posts anonymous.

So folks — congratulations.

Over the weekend, we will start conversation threads on a number of topics that have been discussed, so people can weight in on whatever topics they want.

Also, if there is another topic you would like to see discussed — send a note or post under your new pseudonyms and we will start a new discussion.

Please take the opportunity to tell your friends and neighbours who share your interest in town affairs to get in on the conversation.

Have a great weekend.

Use the envelope and pencil icons immediately below to forward this post to friends or leave a comment.

Posted in Community Input, Town Council | 14 Comments »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »