{"id":10054,"date":"2015-03-11T18:10:18","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T22:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=10054"},"modified":"2015-03-11T18:10:40","modified_gmt":"2015-03-11T22:10:40","slug":"council-rejects-motion-to-reduce-size-from-eight-to-six","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/council-rejects-motion-to-reduce-size-from-eight-to-six\/","title":{"rendered":"Council rejects motion to reduce size from eight to six"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you were one of the nearly 8,100 residents who voted last fall to reduce the size of Council from eight members, plus the Mayor, to six, you\u2019re likely out of luck. <\/p>\n

Council is set to reject the idea this week following extensive discussions at the Committee level last Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The proposal to reduce Aurora\u2019s Council complement from the current eight members to six was one of two referendum questions on last year\u2019s municipal election ballot. Although the majority of those participating in the election voted in favour of the reduction (8,060 votes in favour to 4,427), too many eligible voters stayed home, rendering the decision non-binding on Council. <\/p>\n

Although this threshold wasn\u2019t met, Councillor Paul Pirri, who moved in the last term to have these questions included on the ballot, said the majority still spoke.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think [with] the votes cast in that direction we do have a very strong indication of what the residents in our community want to see as the composition of Council,\u201d said Councillor Paul Pirri. \u201cAs a two-time eighth place finisher in the elections here in Aurora, it is not about what I think works best for me, but what I think works well for our residents. Ultimately, I think the residents have the right to choose how they are represented, and they spoke very clearly about how they are represented, in my view.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, however, Councillor Pirri was the lone vote where it counted.<\/p>\n

Speaking against the motion, Mayor Geoff Dawe and the other six Councillor in attendance at the meeting cited a number of concerns about proceeding with the reduction, ranging from not meeting that all-important threshold, to questioning why residents voted the way they did. <\/p>\n

While he conceded the majority of those turning up at the polls voted in favour of the reduction, a reduction itself would be \u201cshort sighted\u201d, according to Councillor Harold Kim. Consultant studies have shown municipalities of more than 50,000 are best served by a system of Mayor and eight Councillors, he said.
\n\u201cI submit the public needs to focus not so much on the cost of elected officials, but the quality of elected officials,\u201d said Councillor Kim. \u201cI think people need to do their homework and know who they are voting for, and not the price or cost. I suspect when people were contemplating that question, they were recognizing the immediate cost savings, or lack of knowledge for the amount of work that goes into being a member of Council.\u201d
\nCrunching the numbers, Councillor Kim added the total cost of Council is $5.02 per year per Aurora resident, and he said he believed residents were getting \u201cvalue for the eight people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more resources you put into your Town and Council, the better performance and better quality of life you\u2019re going to have,\u201d he said.
\nA similar argument was made by Councillor Jeff Thom. Councillors have \u201cno indication\u201d why residents voted the way they did, although a perceived cost savings would be the \u201cmost logical explanation\u201d, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is hard to get into what the mind of the electorate was, and maybe that is the fault of the question itself,\u201d he offered. \u201cThe results should definitely be taken into consideration, but 64 per cent of 32 per cent of the eligible electorate voted for it. In the grand scheme of things, the majority of voters didn\u2019t. That\u2019s semantics, but I am sticking with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Serving as a Councillor in Aurora is a part-time job, he added, and there was no indication of making Councillors full time if composition was ultimately reduced. This, he said, would not serve as an incentive for people running for Council outside of public service. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not changing the pay, we\u2019re not changing the amount of hours the Councillor is expected to work, and most Councillors do hold other jobs. How are you going to attract young people who have families, who would already find it difficult to sit on Council with more work? It pushes away people we want to bring into the electoral system.\u201d<\/p>\n

As one Councillor who has been a long-time proponent of discussing whether or not Aurora\u2019s Councillors should be full time, Wendy Gaertner concurred. In the lead-up to the election, there wasn\u2019t enough education for residents to fully consider the question. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think all new Councillors, including myself, are shocked by the amount of work that needs to be done if you want to do the job well,\u201d she said.
\nSpeaking against the motion, Mayor Geoff Dawe said he believed Council needs to \u201cdifferentiate\u201d between cost and value, something they don\u2019t do quite enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am, quite frankly, ambivalent as to whether or not we drop two because I don\u2019t think that is the real issue,\u201d he said. \u201cI believe [the real issue is how do we attract quality people and make sure we\u2019re making quality decisions at this table? I think that is a far more important discussion to have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Added Councillor Michael Thompson: \u201cI see a reduction in the number of Councillors as arguably a reduction in the service we would provide to the community. It is a reduction in access. I am also not in favour of the reduction.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, however, although his motion was unsuccessful, Councillor Pirri insisted it was the right way forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can sit around the table and try to rationalize the decisions of the public,\u201d he said. \u201cThey can say it was because they wanted to save money, or they did it for this reason, but I think that ultimately does a huge disservice to our residents. We asked them a question, they responded to the question. If we want to reject their response to the question based on us not meeting the threshold, I think that is a perfectly fine reason to do so.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut when we start questioning why somebody might have done something, ultimately they made a choice\u2026and we shouldn\u2019t be questioning the rationale behind that choice.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you were one of the nearly 8,100 residents who voted last fall to reduce the size of Council from eight members, plus the Mayor, to six, you\u2019re likely out of luck. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2Ca","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-03 05:48:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}