Letters showed “lack of professionalism”

March 26, 2013 · 1 Comments

I remain extremely disappointed in the lack of professionalism exhibited by Town Councillors John Gallo, Wendy Gaertner and Chris Ballard in their jointly authored letter that ran on page 4 and 6 of the February 12th edition of the Auroran.
In it several factually incorrect statements were made regarding the proposal from Lucid Community Development Group. Thankfully this misinformation was clarified in a follow up letter that ran on page 6 of the February 26th edition by Mayor Dawe.
One outstanding issue I have with the letter of February 12th has to do with three elected officials soliciting public input and then providing personal email addresses for such a purpose.
Considering how the three Councilors’ letter spoke to the themes of “transparency” and “acting in the community’s best interest” I find it both conspicuous and hypocritical that these same Councillors would provide personal email addresses to communicate town business.
How circumventing corporate email could be construed as being in the Town’s best interest is beyond me, especially when it appears to contravene my understanding of all four objectives laid out in staff report : CS08-038 dated October 7th 2008.
Emails sent to personal email accounts are not subject to the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act which is one reason municipalities, the Town of Aurora included, provides and maintains at a cost to tax payers, a secure email service along with mobile devices to all members of council.
As recently as last month the entire issue of email communications was reviewed by Council suggesting to me that the decision to include personal emails in this letter wasn’t some honest mistake, and makes me question the motivation behind it.
Back in May of 2010 the City of Vaughan’s integrity commissioner provided direction through a series of guidelines that spoke to accountability and transparency with regards to corporate email.
Surely it doesn’t require a code of conduct, an integrity commissioner, and/or a full on policy review by staff here in Aurora for these three Town Councillors to realize they should use their corporate email accounts when acting in their capacity as Councillors.
Council members are either doing the town’s business or they’re not and email accounts should be used appropriately.
Going forward when communicating to members of council by email I would encourage fellow Aurorans to pay extra attention as to where exactly your concerns are being directed.

Christopher Watts
Aurora

George Roche says:

I agree with Watt’s findings again. “Hypocritical” “factually in correct”.
These two ideas define our experience with Aurora quite well. Mayor Dawe’s clarifications had no impact on Cllrs Ballard and Gallo’s distortions and left the truth untold to the community. This confirms how thick the walls of social dysfunction are leaving the town unable to host a Lucid plan because of these self serving Cllrs who delusionally believe the are working in the best interests of the community; what hubris! Added to that , is the secrecy to which these Cllrs engaged while denying the community it’s fair share of transparency. The community can’t know that the people they elected to represent them are breaching their agreements unless they know what those agreements contain. The outer manifestations of incomplete planning register as a result of the inner hidden agendas concealed by the undermining practices of these Councillors. This gives further rise to the writings found in other distorted “factually incorrect” references such as Catherine Marshall’s March 26th rant. I too would encourage fellow Aurorans to pay extra attention as to where exactly your concerns are being directed since most of you have been excluded.

9:03 am on April 4, 2013

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