{"id":13685,"date":"2016-03-16T16:53:06","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T20:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=13685"},"modified":"2016-03-16T16:55:36","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T20:55:36","slug":"13685","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/13685\/","title":{"rendered":"Politicians question whether too many politicians could spoil Canada’s 150th"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

They don\u2019t yet have Federal funding to help throw the biggest party Canada has seen since 1967, but there is already jostling on who around Council can come forward as a party planner.<\/p>\n

Tensions erupted at Council this month over the unlikely issue of just how many Council members should be on the recently-established citizen committee struck to first lay the groundwork for what the 2017 party to mark Canada\u2019s 150th anniversary might look like and, should Federal funds be approved, to carry the party planning over the finish line.<\/p>\n

The bone of contention was the recommendation before Council in mid-February calling for the appointment of the Mayor, plus one other member of Council, to sit at the Canada 150 table. The brouhaha continued at Council last week. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe should all participate,\u201d said Councillor Jeff Thom, at Committee. \u201cWith the Mayor being there as a conduit for Council, he can also chair the meetings to make sure there is some flow. It means we can all participate and it can be as inclusive as possible and those members of Council who would like to attend meetings and participate can.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was a view shared by Mayor Geoff Dawe who said the planning would benefit by having an additional member there so the reporting back to Council could be very specific.<\/p>\n

In the opposing corner was Councillor Tom Mrakas, who said the purpose of striking a community-led committee was to \u201ctake Councillors out of the equation\u201d and let this group function in the same way as the Committee which led Aurora\u2019s 150th Anniversary celebrations in 2013, with no Council involvement. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see how on the one end we had people put on a great show, but didn\u2019t have anyone [from Council] there,\u201d said Councillor Mrakas, whose wife, former councillor Alison Collins-Mrakas, chaired the 2013 committee, \u201cand on the other hand we are saying we need someone to be a conduit for the rest of Council. Clearly we didn\u2019t [need this] before and we didn\u2019t need that conduit, and we didn\u2019t need the interference from politicians.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was a view shared by Councillor Sandra Humfryes, who said the Town\u2019s Sesquicentennial Celebrations \u201cWere beautifully done without any politicians in the mix.\u201d<\/p>\n

Councillor Thom, however, said the previous Committee benefited from having a former council member in the mix, someone equipped to chair and steer a meeting.<\/p>\n

From the perspective of Mayor Dawe, the entire discussion was tinged with a bit of irony: \u201cpoliticians suggesting we shouldn\u2019t be having a politician on a committee because it will be too political.\u201d This, he said, followed an update on this spring\u2019s Community Recognition Awards committee, a table at which Councillor Mrakas sits, and Mayor Dawe questioned, without naming the Councillor, whether Council should \u201cask that person\u201d to step down from the committee.<\/p>\n

This prompted an objection from Councillor Mrakas, who said Mayor Dawe was insinuating he was \u201cplaying politics.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI was pointing out that the concept we\u2019re suggesting, that some committees can have a politician on it, that\u2019s okay, and some committees can\u2019t have a politician on it because it is too political strikes me as ironic and I don\u2019t follow that,\u201d replied Mayor Dawe. \u201cI don\u2019t agree with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heated debate continued between Mayor Dawe and Councillor Mrakas, with Councillors Thom and Paul Pirri joining the mix, each weighing in on the words of the other. <\/p>\n

Ultimately, Council voted to just appoint the Mayor to the committee.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They don\u2019t yet have Federal funding to help throw the biggest party Canada has seen since 1967, but there is already jostling on who around Council can come forward as a party planner.<\/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-13685","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\/s3D2k4-13685","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-03 16:43:43","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\/13685","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=13685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}