{"id":15834,"date":"2016-11-16T18:32:55","date_gmt":"2016-11-16T23:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=15834"},"modified":"2016-11-16T18:32:55","modified_gmt":"2016-11-16T23:32:55","slug":"citizen-budget-survey-leaves-councillors-with-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/citizen-budget-survey-leaves-councillors-with-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Citizen Budget survey leaves Councillors with questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Some Council members might find it encouraging that most of the respondents in this year\u2019s 2016 Budget Survey are happy with the bang they get for their tax buck, but it is all in the eye of the beholder as Budget talks get underway.
\nThe results of the third annual online survey, which asks residents to weigh in if they would like to see more or less tax dollars \u2013 or status quo \u2013 spent in various municipal departments while seeing how their suggested surveys would impact their tax bill in real time, indicates more than half of respondents \u201cwant no change\u201d or boost in certain areas.
\nCouncillors, however, questioned whether the numbers presented can actually be taken to the bank.
\n\u201cWe received what we thought was almost 200 survey submissions,\u201d said Dan Elliott, Treasurer for the Town of Aurora. \u201cUnfortunately, after it closed on the Monday we found someone had sort of stuffed the ballot box with the same IP address about 50 times or more, so we have now removed that so that you have a clearer picture of what was represented in those 132 survey responses.
\n\u201cFor these services, 50 per cent of residents [who] responded said we want no change or we want you to spend more money in these areas. It was almost all of our services. Prepared to pay the same or more, more than 50 per cent of those residents said that. What the numbers mean though, 83 per cent of the people fell in that category of wanting to spend the same or more [on infrastructure renewal].\u201d
\nOnce again, however, all was not rosy when it came to respondents\u2019 satisfaction with how much of their tax dollar is going towards cultural services, particularly in light of Council\u2019s impending decision to provide budget boots to \u201ccultural partners\u201d including the Aurora Cultural Centre and the Aurora Historical Society.
\n\u201cThe Town Services where greater than 50 per cent of the residents wanted to decrease the portion of their tax bill going to a specified service, after we filtered out all of the other ones, only one showed up on this side of the ledger,\u201d said Mr. Elliott. \u201cThe Cultural Services were very close with only 51 per cent of the respondents said decrease. Of those, 60 per cent wanted the maximum decrease allowed in a survey. That was an interesting piece of information for Council.\u201d
\nIt wasn\u2019t the only interesting piece of information to Council, and it left Councillors wanting more ahead of further budget meetings. There were more questions that had to be addressed and Councillor Paul Pirri requested a full breakdown of the results at a future meeting.
\n\u201cI am always concerned when we could potentially be skewing numbers,\u201d said Councillor Pirri. \u201cFor 2017 Citizen Budget survey results\u2026we\u2019re including \u2018no change\u2019 with increase and we\u2019re looking at a percentage. I would be interested in seeing how many people would like to see \u2018no change\u2019 or decrease and I think \u2018no change\u2019 could easily fit into either category.
\n\u201cIt is easier to paint a rosier picture if no change is included with the increase section. If possible, it would be appropriate to see how many people don\u2019t want to see anything changed compared to not changed or increased.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some Council members might find it encouraging that most of the respondents in this year\u2019s 2016 Budget Survey are happy with the bang they get for their tax buck, but it is all in the eye of the beholder as Budget talks get underway. <\/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-15834","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\/p3D2k4-47o","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 17:28:58","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\/15834","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=15834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}