{"id":10548,"date":"2015-04-29T22:57:20","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T02:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=10548"},"modified":"2015-05-06T16:53:22","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T20:53:22","slug":"politics-as-usual-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/politics-as-usual-4\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICS AS USUAL: Stay Tuned!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was stuck for an idea for a column this week \u2013 not because I don\u2019t have anything to say, but because what I want to discuss I cannot.
\nI would love to talk about a few issues before the current Council, but alas, I am required to refrain from expressing my opinion given that my husband is a Councillor. Rats!
\nSo, I will turn my focus on other levels of government \u2013 in particular, our Regional Government. Regional Council gets rather short shrift, in my opinion, both from media and from residents.
\nWhy, you might ask? Well, it\u2019s because unless you don\u2019t have a day job, and thus have oodles of time to sit around in their monolithic chambers, there\u2019s really no way for you to be informed, or even aware of what transpires during a Regional Council meeting.
\nThey are not broadcast on Rogers (like Aurora or Newmarket). They are streamed (as of May 2014), but only while the meeting is on \u2013 which is 9.30 to noonish on the third Thursday of the month. And apparently only audio streaming, not video. So, I guess you just have to guess who is speaking at any given time.
\nAlso, the audio feed of the meetings are not archived. So, if you can\u2019t listen to the meeting at 9.30 a.m., then you\u2019re out of luck. There\u2019s no way to review it later.
\nSo, there you have it. The level of government responsible for arguably half our taxes provides no real means for the average hard-working taxpayer to become informed as to what exactly they are up to.
\nIt begs the question: why not? Why aren\u2019t the meetings televised and rebroadcast after supper hour?
\nI guess because for the most part it would be more exciting watching paint dry, so why bother airing hours of the tedium? Fair enough. But shouldn\u2019t we get to decide whether we want to watch a meeting and be bored silly or not?
\nI, for one, would like to be able to watch the Regional Council meetings. I would like to know how the items on the agenda are deliberated. There are a number of very important looking issues before the Council. Yes, I read the agendas and whatever materials are made public in advance. More on that later.
\nHowever, the only records of how the matters before Council are deliberated are the minutes. And – no offence to the hardworking staff \u2013 the minutes are useless if one is looking for insight as to how a matter has been discussed and decided upon. Minutes are not a verbatim record. They are a record of motions and votes.
\nWe don\u2019t even have a way of knowing how our own \u2013 and only – Regional representative \u2013 the Mayor \u2013 votes. Unless the vote is recorded, we will not know if or when he supports a particular motion on the floor much less what he thinks about it.
\nGiven that half the various Regional representative\u2019s time is ostensibly spent addressing Regional matters on behalf of, and in service to, the residents of their respective municipalities, I believe as taxpayers we should know what their views are on all matters before the Regional Council.
\nA dry, once monthly, Regional report to their Councils does little to inform residents. It is too high level. We need a bit more meat. More detail. And that only comes from direct knowledge of the proceedings.
\nTo that end, I will now be covering Regional Council meetings starting this month. So stay tuned!
\nUntil next week, stay informed, stay involved because this is \u2013 after all \u2013 Our Town.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas I was stuck for an idea for a column this week \u2013 not because I don\u2019t have anything to say, but because what I want to discuss I cannot. I would love to talk about a few issues before the current Council, but alas, I am required to refrain from expressing my […]<\/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":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2K8","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-13 10:23:02","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\/10548","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=10548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}