Resident doesn’t want politicians questioning, ignoring choice on Council size

March 25, 2015 · 0 Comments

I’m not a politician, nor am I interested much in politics. I must tell you though, I read, with interest, Brock Weir’s article in last week’s Auroran.
Apparently, in last year’s municipal election, 8,060 people voted to reduce the size of the Aurora Council from eight members to six, while 4,427 voted to keep it at its present size.
Sounds pretty clear, right? Not so.
Since there is some sort of threshold number (whatever that is) that wasn’t met, the choice made by the voting public is not binding to Council. I get that. What I don’t get is what was reported in the rest of the article.
I don’t get that when this item was discussed, there were only seven Councillors present + the Mayor. I don’t get that the big discussion item was that Council assumed that the reason people voted the way they did was because they wanted to reduce costs.
One Councillor noted, “I think people need to do their homework and know who they are voting for, and not the price or cost I submit the public needs to focus not so much on the cost of elected officials, but the quality of elected officials. I suspect that when people were contemplating that decision, they were recognizing the immediate cost savings, or lack of knowledge for the amount of work that goes into being a member of Council.”
Another Councillor noted, “Councillors have no indication why residents voted the way they did, although a perceived cost savings would be the most logical explanation. It is hard to get into what the mind of the electorate was, and maybe that is the fault of the question itself.”
These people represent each Aurora resident. However, I personally don’t support Council sitting around trying to determine why I voted a certain way, while ignoring my choice.
Seems to me that this costs me money. I would far rather have had an answer to the question: Why did only 32% of the electorate vote in the first place? All the Councillors, plus the mayor, should be out banging on doors, trying to get an answer to that one!

Paul Townshend
Aurora