{"id":16490,"date":"2017-02-09T13:56:32","date_gmt":"2017-02-09T18:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=16490"},"modified":"2017-02-09T13:56:32","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T18:56:32","slug":"multicultural-festival-committee-nixed-due-to-time-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/multicultural-festival-committee-nixed-due-to-time-concerns\/","title":{"rendered":"Multicultural Festival committee nixed due to time concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

An initial move to make this year\u2019s second-annual Aurora Multicultural Festival a fully citizen-led affair was nixed by Council last week amid timing concerns.
\nEarlier this month, Council members signed off on scheduling two open houses for members of the public to provide input on what they would like to see in this year\u2019s festival, as well as tasking staff with coming up with term of reference for a new Multicultural Festival Committee intended to steer the ship.
\nWhile the two public open houses will move forward on dates yet to be set, the Committee idea was scrapped. Council\u2019s initial motion called for terms of reference \u2013 informally, the purpose of the committee and duties of committee members \u2013 to come back for final approval later this month.
\nSome, however, said this was too tight a turnaround time to recruit members and have them in place to plan for a September festival.
\n\u201cThinking on this last week, I don\u2019t particularly support the idea of having a committee for this,\u201d said Mayor Geoff Dawe. \u201cWe \u2013 and I \u2013 have spoken many times on our very efficient, effective and really good special events staff. I don\u2019t see any reason, quite frankly, [for] terms of reference [to] come back.\u201d
\nThe two open houses received unanimous approval, but the Committee was struck down on a vote of 5 \u2013 3, with Councillor John Abel absent from the meeting.
\nAmong those supporting Mayor Dawe\u2019s call to scrap the committee were Councillors Tom Mrakas, Jeff Thom, Michael Thompson, and Paul Pirri. Councillor Pirri said a week\u2019s reflection on the plan made him question the logistics.
\n \u201cAlthough we did think this made sense last week, once we look at the numbers in terms of the timing, having this committee in place to get this back to us in February and then to go out and get committee members, we\u2019re losing all that time for staff to be planning an event. If we want to talk about having a separate Events Committee in the future, I am happy to have that discussion but [in terms of this event] I think we would be doing a disservice to the community because we would be missing out on the opportunity to go out and get all the work done.
\n\u201cI think this event was run extremely well last year. I think there was fair representation from all cultures in Aurora last year, so I think, on the whole, we need to move forward.\u201d
\nOne member of the community, however, was less than enthusiastic about how the event was run last year. Former Council candidate Anthony Pullano has repeatedly criticized Council and planning staff for not including formal Italian representation in the first iteration of the festival, which highlighted five of Aurora\u2019s many cultures. He appeared before Council in Open Forum on January 24 to once again speak about the Festival.
\nThose in favour of the committee said putting one in place would make everyone accountable for the results.
\n\u201cOur staff did a terrific job of organizing, implementing and executing the Festival last year,\u201d said Councillor Harold Kim whose Notice of Motion saw the revival of the Multicultural Festival last year based on a template from the one-off event held in 2013 to mark Aurora\u2019s 150th Anniversary. \u201cI have no doubt they will do an even more exemplary job given one year\u2019s experience under their belts.
\n\u201cThe one reason why I would be in favour of just maintaining the status quo and not having a committee on this is because of timelines. I do wish this was brought forward in November so the committee would have had more time to organize everything. With that said, we organized the first Multicultural Festival with one methodology and now I would like to see how it would work with just public participation. We have a dedicated group of residents here in Aurora who love to do these things and I would love to see new residents involved and put their names forward for the committee.\u201d
\nA similar view was offered by Councillor Sandra Humfryes, who said the more individuals helping engage the community the better.
\n\u201c[The Town\u2019s] Special Events [staff] are just incredible, but I do like the idea of having a committee,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to waste anyone\u2019s time in doing something like this, but I do believe it allows for an open communication vehicle for staff to consider different ideas from individuals who might want to participate and volunteer that day. I see this as more individuals helping engage the community. For me, it is a great idea to support staff.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An initial move to make this year\u2019s second-annual Aurora Multicultural Festival a fully citizen-led affair was nixed by Council last week amid timing concerns. <\/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-16490","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\/p3D2k4-4hY","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 13:40:23","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\/16490","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=16490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}