{"id":17978,"date":"2017-08-01T20:02:24","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T00:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=17978"},"modified":"2017-08-01T20:02:24","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T00:02:24","slug":"aurora-speaks-through-new-online-engagement-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-speaks-through-new-online-engagement-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora \u201cSpeaks\u201d through new online engagement program"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

In the online world, it can be difficult for your voice to be heard \u2013 but municipal staff are ready to hear you loud and clear through the launch of Place Speak.
\nThe Town of Aurora welcomes the public to head over to its website to become familiar with Place Speak, a new online mechanism for community engagement. With a soft launch held on Monday, the program will be fully up and running by September allowing Aurora residents to use the tool to point out their traffic safety issues and concerns.
\nUntil that time, staff are working out any early bugs asking residents to engage with them \u2013 and each other \u2013 of their favourite places in and around Town.
\n\u201cThis is really allowing us to put power in the residents\u2019 hands to really help us understand their needs and wants so we can make informed recommendations to Council, but it is a citizen-centric approach to improving the consultation process and improving access to feedback,\u201d says Stephanie Mackenzie-Smith, Manager of Corporate Communications for the Town of Aurora.
\nBilled as a free and easy way for members to communicate, they can also control what information they want to receive from the Town and the notifications they receive.
\n\u201cWe know there are a number of barriers to participation in local government and convenience is one of them. A lot of surveys have also said that a few strong voices always dominate so they have concerns that their contributions might not make a difference,\u201d she says. \u201cWe also know that a lot of people who participate in local government do so by completing online surveys or through social media and other online platforms, so this kind of allows us to provide feedback and engage in two-way conversations with people and provide content on decision-making processes and outcomes that may not be available to other people.\u201d
\nThe Town concedes it is hard to get people to come join committees or come out to Council meetings and make a long-term commitment to coming out a couple of evenings every month to make their contributions. Place Speak is intended to not only break down those barriers to increase public participation but also allow staff to become more engaged with residents who have concerns.
\nOnce users are familiar with the new system, Traffic Safety will be the first issue residents will be asked to tackle. Once that is in place, users will be able to drop pins on the map and describe their traffic issues, upload photos, participate in polls, and be a part of identifying the solution.
\n\u201cWe have heard from the community that there\u2019s a lot of concerns about traffic and safety is, of course, the number one priority,\u201d says Ms. Mackenzie-Smith. \u201cWe want to make sure people are engaging and we\u2019re able to have that two-way conversation. It is about working together to come up with solutions. We need to have this open line of communication so that people can ask us questions and we can also provide context and answers they might not be able to get by sitting in a Council meeting or attending an open house.\u201d
\nTraffic and traffic safety are just the first frontier Place Speak might tackle during this one-year pilot project. There is no limit to the number of municipal issues which can be addressed through the online forum and Ms. Mackenzie-Smith says the recent Highland Gate redevelopment plan and the Aurora United Church\u2019s building application are just two examples of community issues which could have benefited from this type of engagement.
\nTo sign up and get familiar with Place Speak, visit www.aurora.ca and select the blue and white Place Speak tab on the right hand side of the webpage, or head over directly to www.placespeak.com\/aurora.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the online world, it can be difficult for your voice to be heard \u2013 but municipal staff are ready to hear you loud and clear through the launch of Place Speak.
\nThe Town of Aurora welcomes the public to head over to its website to become familiar with Place Speak, a new online mechanism for community engagement. With a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17940,"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-17978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/2017-08-03-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4FY","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 18:20:11","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\/17978","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=17978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}