{"id":15565,"date":"2016-10-19T16:52:12","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T20:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=15565"},"modified":"2016-10-19T16:52:12","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T20:52:12","slug":"fees-should-be-adjusted-to-get-youth-more-active-say-councillors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/fees-should-be-adjusted-to-get-youth-more-active-say-councillors\/","title":{"rendered":"Fees should be adjusted to get youth more active, say Councillors"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

User fees should be lowered at local recreation centres to encourage kids to get more active, according to Councillors.
\nAhead of 2017 Budget Talks, which got underway Saturday morning at Town Hall, Council members had an early discussion on changes to various fees currently paid by Aurora residents for Town services, including recreation programs and gym memberships.
\n\u201cThe annual review of the Fees and Charges Bylaw allows staff the opportunity to ensure that the Town is recovering the cost of user pay services and make changes, if required,\u201d said Town Treasurer Dan Elliott. \u201cMost of the changes are as a result of a minimum 2.1 per cent increase to reflect the impact of inflation on the costs of service delivery. These inflationary increases are necessary in order to maintain the desired applicable service cost recovery benchmarks.\u201d
\nAs far as recreation programs go, the new bylaw splits off youth activities to maintain existing fees for youth-related activities and boosting drop-in activities, but some questioned whether maintaining the status quo is enough for the year ahead.
\n\u201cAt the SARC (Stronach Aurora Recreation Complex) [Al Downey, Director of Parks and Recreation] has put in some really good basketball drop-ins, but what I have noticed is they are not very well-used in the summer,\u201d said Councillor Wendy Gaertner. \u201cOne of the main age groups where physical activity falls off is teenagers and I am wondering maybe during the summer months [if] we could have a reduced rate and communications to bring out the teenagers. [It\u2019s the summer] and a lot of people are away, but at the same time try to fill those two months in the summer.
\n\u201cAt the fitness centre, I am often there in the evening or on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and it is very quiet. I am wondering if we could look at providing incentives to the 14 to 19 year old age group in keeping with the Mayor\u2019s attempt to Activate Aurora.\u201d
\nMr. Elliott said these comments could have been addressed that evening or brought up once again when the Budget Committee starts tackling the budget. While Council ultimately agreed to postpone the conversation until budget time, Councillor Gaertner was not alone in her concerns.
\n\u201cJust the other day there were a couple of young kids skateboarding,\u201d said Councillor Sandra Humfryes. \u201cHow can they join the fitness club they couldn\u2019t afford? It might be a really good idea to think about how we can do that, especially in the winter months when kids are not doing their hockey or other sports.
\n\u201cThere is an opportunity for them to get into the gym.\u201d
\nAmong the other issues raised by Councillors ahead of budget talks is an estimated $400,000 line item to replace the artificial turf field at Sheppard\u2019s Bush due to wear and tear. Originally intended to last for 15 years, this one has only lasted 10 and Councillor Gaertner questioned whether field fees relate to recovering costs on the replacement.
\n\u201cWhen we originally brought the turf field to Sheppard\u2019s Bush, it was a grass field,\u201d said Mr. Downey. \u201cWhen we converted it to turf, we charged the same fee to our regular use groups as if it was a grass field. The reason or that is if we charged a higher rate, we were concerned that they would continue to migrate to our grass fields, which was the reason we were trying to get them off the grass fields and onto the turf. We didn\u2019t want to put a cost barrier on that field. However, that was during the regular season. During the off-season, the rate goes up substantially.
\n\u201cIf you are a non-resident and you want to use it in the off season, it is substantially more than if you are a resident, non-profit group. The fees do not relate to a replacement of the turf.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

User fees should be lowered at local recreation centres to encourage kids to get more active, according to Councillors.<\/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-15565","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\/p3D2k4-433","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 23:15:49","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\/15565","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=15565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}