{"id":15446,"date":"2016-10-06T13:07:49","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T17:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=15446"},"modified":"2016-10-06T13:07:49","modified_gmt":"2016-10-06T17:07:49","slug":"new-fire-hall-sports-fields-focus-of-auroras-2017-capital-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/new-fire-hall-sports-fields-focus-of-auroras-2017-capital-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"New fire hall, sports fields focus of Aurora\u2019s 2017 Capital plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

A new fire hall on St. John\u2019s Sideroad at Bayview Avenue and new sports facilities are among the top items up for discussion next week as Council gears up for talks on the 2017 Budget.
\nDeliberations over next year\u2019s Capital Budget are set to begin next Saturday, October 15, at 9 a.m. in Council Chambers.
\nThe Capital Budget is the first of two parts of your annual municipal budget focused largely on capital assets. The second half of the budget, which has a significant impact on your tax rate, is the Town\u2019s Operations Budget, which will be tackled later this fall.
\nThe fire hall, which will be overseen by Aurora but shared in cost with the Town of Aurora, is one of six items considered \u201clarge projects\u201d in this year\u2019s Capital Budget for Growth and New Infrastructure, along with a new change room building for the Aurora Youth Soccer Club, road and sidewalk construction on the St. John\u2019s Sideroad East, replacement of a worn artificial turf field, and continued investment in the Town\u2019s Wildlife Park.
\nThe preliminary numbers were introduced at Council last week by Dan Elliott, Treasurer for the Town of Aurora, who said over the past year, the Town has grown to be a \u201chalf-billion dollar organization\u201d accounting for net worth, with assets valued at $400 million, and the balance in cash and investments.
\nA particular factor in this growth, he said, is increased contributions from the tax rate to bolster reserves.
\n\u201cIn the early 2000s, we had a lot of fluctuations and what this caused was a lot of fluctuation in the tax rate increases, so it was volatile,\u201d said Mr. Elliott, noting the years since Council put a plan in place to increase cash to capital reserves by one per cent each year. \u201cIt also made it tough to predict and tough to be a senior manager, and it probably made it difficult to be a politician in that period. In 2010, we began a steady pace. This is where our financial planning kicked it and said we needed increased contributions to reserves and we began increasing it every year since.
\n\u201cIt has been very stable, very steady, a little bit of fluctuation over a couple of years and as we go forward we are looking at that being able to drop down to .6 per cent instead of one per cent, so you can see in 2017 it is down there to . 6. This is allowing everyone in this room to have predictable and stable tax outlooks and assurance there is funding to look after our infrastructure in the future.\u201d
\nAs far as Aurora\u2019s assets go compared to other municipalities, Mr. Elliott said ours are considered relatively \u201cyoung,\u201d giving the Town more time to build up the reserves as needed, in smaller steps than other municipalities. This gives Aurora longer time to plan for assets, he added, and long-term financial planning.
\nBut, as always, there have been some bumps along the road. Since 2014, Aurora\u2019s debt load has increased, largely attributed to shouldering the cost of the new Joint Operations Centre (JOC) recently completed on Industrial Parkway North, which serves as the new home to both the Town\u2019s Parks and Recreation Department, as well as the Department of Public Works.
\n\u201cWe completed the JOC and we had a significant increase in our debt on that, so that is what triggered the change,\u201d said Mr. Elliott. \u201cIt should be pretty stable to begin showing decline [in debt] in the coming years. [Our 10 year plan] includes increases to reserves and without it we would end the 10-year window with a negative 10 year reserve balance. We wouldn\u2019t be anywhere near our targets and we\u2019re not sustainable. That is why it is very important that we have those increments in place and part of our 10-year plan when those needs arise.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new fire hall on St. John\u2019s Sideroad at Bayview Avenue and new sports facilities are among the top items up for discussion next week as Council gears up for talks on the 2017 Budget.<\/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":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15446","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\/p3D2k4-418","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-23 01:41:37","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\/15446","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=15446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}