Aurora Citizen

News & Views from the Citizens of Aurora Ontario

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?

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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.

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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.

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Posted in Community Input, Town Council | 27 Comments »

Did you see the weekend Toronto Star

Posted by auroracitizen on January 5, 2009

Seems we are not the only community that has experienced Code of Conduct issues. We couldn’t resist. Happy New Year!

Click the visual to go to the Dilbert site to see reader comments.

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Posted in Code of Ethics, For Fun | 8 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

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Posted in CAO, Town Council | 30 Comments »

How should the Region use returned tax funds?

Posted by auroracitizen on December 6, 2008

For years the Region of York has been forced to send our tax dollars to Toronto to fund their social programs — often providing residents of Toronto with services that York Region was unable to provide for our own residents. It has been a thorn in our side for many years. This pooling is being phased out. Each year it is reduced until we don’t send any dollars south by the year 2013.

In 2004 we paid $79 million dollars. In 2009 we will be sending $13.2 million less than in 2008, allowing those dollars to be used for service here in York Region.

The question to be answered is what will these funds be used for?

  • Reduced tax burden to residents
  • Enriched social programs
  • More recreation facilities
  • More arts programming
  • More support to seniors
  • More health facilities/programs
  • Reduce infrastructure debt
  • Build/upgrade infrastructure

Let us know what do you think they should be used for? Make some suggestions and we will post a poll to get community input.

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Posted in Community Input, Growth | 2 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.

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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.

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Posted in Town Council, Waste | 2 Comments »

Discussion: Train Whistle

Posted by auroracitizen on November 25, 2008

Seems to be various points both for and against train whistles here in Aurora. The recent poll indicated that 90% of respondents were against banning train whistles.

However there was also a very good letter in the recent Banner. It made the point that possibly a compromise was the better solution. On its surface it seemed like a very sensible proposal. Certainly worth investigation.

What are your thoughts?

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Posted in Community Input | 8 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!

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Posted in Legal, Town Council | 3 Comments »

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