{"id":1226,"date":"2013-04-02T14:53:41","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T18:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=1226"},"modified":"2013-04-09T13:07:22","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T17:07:22","slug":"decision-on-historical-collections-delayed-for-cultural-master-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/decision-on-historical-collections-delayed-for-cultural-master-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Decision on historical collections delayed for Cultural Master Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The future of Aurora\u2019s historic collections could be decided this fall as Council postponed acquiring items from the Aurora Historical Society until a wider-ranging plan is drafted.<\/p>\n

The delay will see \u201ccontinued interest\u201d expressed by the Town in taking ownership of the thousands of items donated over the years to the Society (AHS) until the completion of Aurora\u2019s Cultural Master Plan, which could be completed as early as the autumn. <\/p>\n

The Cultural Master Plan will be a long-range plan devoted to guiding cultural, historical, and artistic endeavours in Aurora. According to terms of reference which will be considered by Councillors this week, it will cover topics ranging from raising awareness of cultural assets to residents and visitors, looking at investment opportunities in what is described as \u201cAurora\u2019s Cultural Sector\u201d, to \u201crecommend approaches to protect, support, and enhance the cultural diversity and assets of Aurora\u201d and look at coordinating \u201ccultural assets, including partnership building between Cultural organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am really interested in knowing\u2026how this will fit into the overall Cultural Master Plan,\u201d said Councillor Chris Ballard, in favour of delaying the acquisition. \u201cI think this is an opportunity to take seven months and make sure we identify all the pieces of the puzzle and how they are going to fit together in a way that best suits the taxpayers of Aurora.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others, however, were not quite as convinced. Among some Councillors, such as Councillors John Abel and Michael Thompson, there was a concern that the delay wasn\u2019t sending the right message to the AHS and giving them a \u201cpositive indication\u201d they were ready to move forward with the plan when all was said and done. Councillor Evelyn Buck, for instance, said expressing continued interest was enough and deferring it contingent on the completion of the Cultural Master Plan was muddying the waters. <\/p>\n

The original recommendation from Town Staff was to execute a transfer agreement between the Town and the AHS and an exhibition and management agreement with the AHS, allocate $179,470 from Council\u2019s discretionary reserve account for the operating costs of the collection, and a further $50,000 from the same account for capital costs.<\/p>\n

While he was reluctant to set a dollar figure to the motion, it was this clause Councillor Michael Thomson said was the right way forward. Under the terms of the recently signed Cultural Services agreement between the Town and the Aurora Cultural Centre, the second floor Aurora Room will be allocated as permanent museum space for the collection. With the room ready to go, there has to be something to fill it beyond a one-off exhibition this spring and summer to mark Aurora\u2019s Sesquicentennial. <\/p>\n

\u201cI fear as we continue to wait upon the Cultural Master Plan, the end result will be we miss out having a museum established in our 2013 year for Aurora\u2019s 150th,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had a consultant and they spoke to the care of the collection, the status of it, and that is part of it. It is great that we\u2019re going to put an exhibit up and start exhibiting these artefacts, but what about all the artefacts that are not going to be displayed?
\n\u201cWe can\u2019t just pick and choose pieces of being stewards and say it is great and promote this aspect of it, but those objects need some care, need to be properly conserved, and some resources dedicated to them to ensure the long-term preservation. If we wait to have all those pieces fall into place until after the master plan, some of those object are posed to be at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another Councillor who was reluctant to assign a dollar figure to the transfer was Councillor Evelyn Buck who said the items in the collection were largely donated by the community as a whole. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe collection is already owned by the people of Aurora,\u201d she argued. \u201cThey have already contributed to it, they have already paid for it, and they are being asked to pay another $179,000\u2026for something they already created over 50 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Councillor John Abel shared similar thoughts to Councillor Thompson on the matter and said waiting until the Cultural Master Plan is drafted and implemented is \u201cdragging [Council\u2019s] feet\u201d and delays getting a museum into the Cultural Centre.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have an agreement that they will [allocate] a room for the display of heritage artefacts that have been dormant for almost 10 years now,\u201d he said.
\nCouncillor Wendy Gaertner, however, said she objected to the comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t look at this as dragging our feet,\u201d she said. \u201cI look at this as doing sound planning for our community and also sound fiscal planning because there is a lot of money involved here and we need to know about how we\u2019re going to go about that to really benefit the community.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir The future of Aurora\u2019s historic collections could be decided this fall as Council postponed acquiring items from the Aurora Historical Society until a wider-ranging plan is drafted. The delay will see \u201ccontinued interest\u201d expressed by the Town in taking ownership of the thousands of items donated over the years to the Society […]<\/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":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1226","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-jM","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-02 13:34:45","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\/1226","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=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}