{"id":13488,"date":"2016-02-24T21:34:09","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T02:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=13488"},"modified":"2016-03-09T17:55:26","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T22:55:26","slug":"inside-aurora-pa-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/inside-aurora-pa-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"INSIDE AURORA: PA Meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Scott Johnston<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cGood evening, and welcome to Procrastinators Anonymous.\u201d
\nThe people seated in a semi-circle looked up as the facilitator continued.
\n\u201cNow, we have a few new folks with us tonight. Would any of you like to start? And remember,\u201d he said, with a smile, \u201cWe all get a turn, so there\u2019s no point putting it off. How about you, ma\u2019am?\u201d he said, indicating a lady across from him.
\n\u201cOh, well, I,…\u201d she stammered, before gushing, \u201cI\u2019m never on time for appointments, and personal commitments. I don\u2019t know why, but I just put off leaving the office or my house, and before I know it, I\u2019m late.\u201d
\nA few heads nodded in understanding.
\n\u201cAnd you, sir?\u201d
\n\u201cI can never get things done around the house,\u201d said a man a few chairs over. \u201cMy leaves are never raked up before the first snowfall, the Christmas lights are up year-round, and even my \u2018to do\u2019 list has \u2018to do\u2019 lists on it.\u201d
\n\u201cSee, it\u2019s not so hard to open up. That\u2019s the first step in tackling your procrastinary demons. And what seems to be your issue?\u201d he asked a man sitting quietly to the side.
\n\u201cWell, I\u2019m part of a small group of elected officials,\u201d he said, looking around and shifting nervously in his seat. \u201cThe rest of them don\u2019t know I\u2019m here.\u201d
\n\u201cDon\u2019t worry, sir. No one\u2019s judging. Why have you joined us tonight?\u201d
\n\u201cWe\u2019re always putting off making decisions.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat sort of decisions?\u201d
\n\u201cThere\u2019s planning, to start. In our town there\u2019s a downtown cultural area. Citizens are anxious to have the space redeveloped to meet the needs of the municipality. We\u2019ve looked at it for years. There have been studies, surveys, consultations, expert advice…\u201d
\n\u201cSounds like you have more than enough information to make a decision.\u201d
\n\u201cYou\u2019d think so, but we never do. It seems all we can say is \u2018Can staff bring us a report back on that?\u2019\u201d
\n\u201cWell, if that\u2019s the only example…\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s not,\u201d said the man. \u201cThere\u2019s finances. We have this huge fund of money we obtained years ago through the sale of a public asset. People have been looking to us for years to provide direction on how it\u2019s to be spent to best benefit the town, and we can\u2019t decide. It\u2019s just sitting in the bank earning 0.002%, or whatever interest rates are these days.\u201d
\nHitting his stride, he continued. \u201cThen there\u2019s the clear bag program for curbside trash pickup, the redevelopment of our main street through town\u2026I don\u2019t know,\u201d he sighed, \u201cI guess we get distracted easily by other issues.\u201d
\nThe facilitator nodded. He has seen this distraction excuse before.
\n\u201cSurely you must have made a little progress on something.\u201d
\n\u201cWell, we did recently finalize updates to the tree bylaw; who can cut down how many trees\u2026 that sort of thing. It had been brought forward at meetings many times, before we finally just made a decision.\u201d
\n\u201cYou made a decision? That\u2019s excellent!\u201d
\n\u201cBut after all that time and discussion, it amounted to only a minor tweak. And it didn\u2019t address the main issue it was brought forward for in the first place.\u201d
\n\u201cYes, but it shows you\u2019ve made progress.\u201d
\n\u201cYou really think so?\u201d
\n\u201cOf course. You can build on that, and before you know it, you\u2019ll make another decision!\u201d
\n\u201cMaybe we will,\u201d the man said, a slight glimmer of hope in his eye. With growing excitement he exclaimed \u201cmaybe even on that cultural area!\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s the spirit!\u201d
\nThe facilitator radiated enthusiasm, but based on what he\u2019d heard, he feared there\u2019d be many more requests for staff reports before that ever happened.<\/p>\n

Feel free to e-mail Scott at: machellscorners@gmail.com<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Scott Johnston \u201cGood evening, and welcome to Procrastinators Anonymous.\u201d The people seated in a semi-circle looked up as the facilitator continued. \u201cNow, we have a few new folks with us tonight. Would any of you like to start? And remember,\u201d he said, with a smile, \u201cWe all get a turn, so there\u2019s no point […]<\/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-13488","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\/p3D2k4-3vy","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-13 06:16:51","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\/13488","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=13488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}