{"id":10197,"date":"2015-03-25T17:51:05","date_gmt":"2015-03-25T21:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=10197"},"modified":"2015-03-25T17:51:05","modified_gmt":"2015-03-25T21:51:05","slug":"resident-doesnt-want-politicians-questioning-ignoring-choice-on-council-size","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/resident-doesnt-want-politicians-questioning-ignoring-choice-on-council-size\/","title":{"rendered":"Resident doesn\u2019t want politicians questioning, ignoring choice on Council size"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not a politician, nor am I interested much in politics. I must tell you though, I read, with interest, Brock Weir\u2019s article in last week\u2019s Auroran.
\nApparently, in last year\u2019s 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.
\nSounds pretty clear, right? Not so.
\nSince there is some sort of threshold number (whatever that is) that wasn\u2019t met, the choice made by the voting public is not binding to Council. I get that. What I don\u2019t get is what was reported in the rest of the article.
\nI don\u2019t get that when this item was discussed, there were only seven Councillors present + the Mayor. I don\u2019t 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.
\nOne Councillor noted, \u201cI 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.\u201d
\nAnother Councillor noted, \u201cCouncillors 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.\u201d
\nThese people represent each Aurora resident. However, I personally don\u2019t support Council sitting around trying to determine why I voted a certain way, while ignoring my choice.
\nSeems 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! <\/p>\n

Paul Townshend
\nAurora<\/strong><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not a politician, nor am I interested much in politics. I must tell you though, I read, with interest, Brock Weir\u2019s article in last week\u2019s Auroran. Apparently, in last year\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2Et","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 09:05:54","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\/10197","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=10197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}