{"id":11395,"date":"2015-07-22T16:29:36","date_gmt":"2015-07-22T20:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=11395"},"modified":"2015-07-22T16:29:36","modified_gmt":"2015-07-22T20:29:36","slug":"aurora-needs-to-know-where-communications-are-falling-short-says-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-needs-to-know-where-communications-are-falling-short-says-council\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora needs to know where communications are falling short, says Council"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Nearly two-thirds of residents surveyed say they are largely satisfied with the way the Town of Aurora is communicating with them but, for many Councillors, the larger question is why they\u2019re falling short of the mark with the balance.<\/p>\n

Council considered a report from Michael Kemp, Aurora\u2019s Manager of Corporate Communications last week which indicated a general satisfaction with how Aurora\u2019s message is getting out to the community. In a survey of 110 residents carried out by students from York University\u2019s Schulich School of Business, just about two thirds of residents indicated they were content with the status quo, with the Town\u2019s website and local newspapers, receiving the most frequent hits. <\/p>\n

The survey was largely carried out with intercept interviews at municipal facilities, over the phone, with additional surveying being carried out by municipal staff at the Town of Aurora\u2019s booth at last month\u2019s Aurora Street Festival.<\/p>\n

But the report contained a significant gap, according to Councillors, in not delving into why one third of the community believes Aurora is missing the mark and questioned the methodology behind the findings.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was on the Library Board we did a strategic review and we did surveys as well,\u201d recalled Councillor Michael Thompson. \u201cOne of the things we were very interested in was that percentage of people who didn\u2019t use the library. It [was] the segment of the population that didn\u2019t use the Library that we were really trying to understand. What is it we weren\u2019t doing? When I look at this report and the findings, I am\u2026more concerned with the one third that didn\u2019t. Why?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re doing these kinds of surveys you\u2019re trying to dig in and understand why they don\u2019t feel the website or how the communication is working. You look at these failings as opportunities to learn and to address the issue. Always talking to people who are using our facilities, you\u2019re preaching to the converted.\u201d<\/p>\n

This past spring, Council approved a public workshop to discuss future communications strategies and, for Councillor Thompson, it is important to emphasise Council wants the public to participate and highlight where they are hitting and missing the mark.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are fortunate to have a number of people who are very much actively involved in communications and different things and have unique perspectives [that] can add value to the conversation. Then we can ultimately do a better job. It ultimately goes back to the same conversation we have every time we start the budget: that accountability framework. Are we doing the right things? That is what this is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Councillor Paul Pirri said he too was concerned with the stats in the report. Only 110 people were reached in the survey, and that is not enough for a community of over 60,000 people.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would be concerned about moving forward and developing a policy and having a policy based around us having spoken to 110 people,\u201d said Councillor Pirri, underscoring the general population.<\/p>\n

According to Mayor Geoff Dawe, however, there was an opportunity missed when Council signed off on setting out to find out these answers. <\/p>\n

Recommendations before Council initially called on outsourcing this survey to a professional company, but Council ultimately opted to take the matter in-house.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Council turned down going out for a professional survey,\u201d said Mayor Dawe. \u201cThere is one way to get your data and that is you go out and ask for it. We have to be conscious of both sides of the argument.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Mayor Dawe said Councillor Pirri\u2019s arguments were \u201cextremely valid\u201d, the Mayor\u2019s response was questioned by Councillor Thompson who said he was either \u201cinferring staff are incapable of conducting a survey or the only way to get good data is to pay for it.\u201d Mayor Dawe, on the other hand, said his intent was not to \u201cinsult anyone at this table\u201d but going to an outside firm to conduct the survey, a company that does this type of thing on a regular basis, would have provided \u201cthe most solvent data.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nearly two-thirds of residents surveyed say they are largely satisfied with the way the Town of Aurora is communicating with them but, for many Councillors, the larger question is why they\u2019re falling short of the mark with the balance.<\/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":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11395","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\/p3D2k4-2XN","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 06:32:42","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\/11395","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=11395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}