{"id":14138,"date":"2016-05-05T09:27:58","date_gmt":"2016-05-05T13:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=14138"},"modified":"2016-05-05T09:27:58","modified_gmt":"2016-05-05T13:27:58","slug":"public-consultations-set-to-begin-on-mavrinac-park-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/public-consultations-set-to-begin-on-mavrinac-park-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Public consultations set to begin on Mavrinac Park design"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Public consultation on what Mavrinac Park might look like is set to kick of next month, after Council approved a concept plan for the six acre parcel of land last week.<\/p>\n

Council approved a budget amount of $1.3 million to make the park a reality on an 8 \u2013 1 vote while referring the concept design to the Town\u2019s Accessibility Advisory Committee and Parks & Recreation Advisory Committee for further comment.<\/p>\n

The lone vote against the plan was Councillor Paul Pirri.<\/p>\n

Councillor Pirri, who has been consistent in his disagreement with area residents that the land in question should be retained as open space and parkland, said he was opposed to the aggressive timeline set by Town Hall to get shovels in the ground. <\/p>\n

While municipal staff have said the chances are remote, they said they would ideally like to get construction started following public consultation by the end of the year. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is the rush?\u201d asked Councillor Pirri responding to timelines outlined by Al Downey, Aurora\u2019s Director of Parks and Recreation. \u201cI still don\u2019t understand why we are rushing this. It was established [in the Town\u2019s new Parks and Recreation Master Plan] that this park was not needed and now I see Council trying to make Mr. Downey move as quickly as possible to get something done, and I am not sure that is appropriate for us to be doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been a lot of meetings and opportunities where we have spoken about the need to get good, strong public information and we have all acknowledged at one point or another that that just doesn\u2019t happen during the summer. People go on vacation, people aren\u2019t around, so I am not sure why we wouldn\u2019t take our time to do things properly. Granted, residents of this area would very much like to see this park go through, but if we\u2019re going to have a public open house, I think it should be something that everybody in the Town of Aurora has the opportunity to weigh in on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Previously approved parks, he noted, are still waiting for shovels to hit the ground.<\/p>\n

Other Councillors, however, said they did not believe they were rushing to bring the park to fruition having gone out with residents to get a lay of the land in question the previous weekend. The excitement, they said, was in the air and it is momentum they would like to see continue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are looking forward to the public planning process, but they are just ecstatic with the work done by staff and have all the confidence that there will be a great park there that everyone can use,\u201d said Councillor Sandra Humfryes. \u201cIt is full steam ahead. We\u2019re not really rushing this. In terms of how we treat other park developments, it may seem so, but this is one particular case where there is a lot of focus and lots of want, so why delay? I think we have a great basis in front of us on how we can move forward. We have a good conceptual plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Added Councillor Tom Mrakas: \u201cI am looking forward to the community open house where the public will get a chance to get their input in and, at the end of the day, we will all get together and make a decision on how to move forward with this park.<\/p>\n

\u201c[This park] wasn\u2019t recommended by a consultant. My understanding is the majority of this Council recommended that this be a park and as far as the pace we are going, going slower doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re going to do it better or you\u2019re going to do it right. All it means is you\u2019re going to go slow when we have clear, decisive thought on how to move forward. That is efficient decision-making and that is what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

For others, it was important to note this is not the end of the journey. Councillor Michael Thompson, for instance, said the decision on the table simply gave staff the go-ahead to move forward with the open house, work with the community, Council and committees to come up with a revised plan.
\n\u201cStaff are going to report back and say, \u2018Here is the plan, here is the proposed construction date, and if Council is not happy with either the plan or with what the proposed dates are, they can delay it and send it back out and we\u2019ll deal with it then,\u201d said Councillor Thompson.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Councillor Pirri was firm in his opposition. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe political will should discount views of professionals who have studied this, our plans that have been recommended to us should be completely disregarded because some residents in the community want something,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was mentioned again early tonight that there is a want in the community and we should be moving forward on this now. I don\u2019t believe that should suspend us from doing all the due diligence and all the work we could do to make sure we do something right. We are missing that at this point in time.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Public consultation on what Mavrinac Park might look like is set to kick of next month, after Council approved a concept plan for the six acre parcel of land last week.<\/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-14138","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\/p3D2k4-3G2","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-26 05:10:29","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\/14138","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=14138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}