{"id":18641,"date":"2017-10-11T16:02:33","date_gmt":"2017-10-11T20:02:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=18641"},"modified":"2017-10-11T16:02:33","modified_gmt":"2017-10-11T20:02:33","slug":"new-focus-on-economic-development-needs-to-be-steered-with-business-expertise-committee-member","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/new-focus-on-economic-development-needs-to-be-steered-with-business-expertise-committee-member\/","title":{"rendered":"New focus on economic development needs to be steered with business expertise: Committee member"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Economic development in Aurora is set to shift gears significantly this fall as the final details are hammered out on a new Board to steer the ship.
\nAurora\u2019s new Economic Development Board, which was approved by Council earlier this year, will carry on the work of the Town\u2019s long-standing Economic Development Advisory Committee (EDAC), but with a new structure, one which will give it a little bit more \u201cteeth\u201d to guide economic development and with money to pursue initiatives.
\nWith Aurora set to begin the recruitment process for Board members, Marilee Harris, a two-term member of EDAC says a business perspective is essential going forward.
\n\u201cI think there is a real risk if you don\u2019t lean heavily on business expertise to do some good bureaucratic things within a municipal environment, but they aren\u2019t necessarily going to give you measurable results,\u201d says Ms. Harris, who has an extensive corporate background. \u201cI think a business perspective needs to be all about priorities and metrics. Numeric metrics are the key for this Board going forward. How are we going to measure the success of any plans, programs, efforts, staffing, and spending in dollars?\u201d
\nLooking back over her time on EDAC, Ms. Harris says her first term was \u201ca very good one\u201d as the Committee benefited from the involvement of the Mayor, a good chair, and a fruitful discussion and understanding of just what EDAC was and its role within a larger municipal system.
\nThe clarification, she says, was pretty simple: the role of EDAC was to assist whatever priorities the Town determined were on its agenda and to provide assistance when asked.
\n\u201cI would say the major achievement in the first four years was to help clarify, based on the strategic plans, work the Town had done, to clarify what were the economic development priorities for the Town and, therefore, the priorities for staff working on economic development,\u201d she says. \u201cThat was a big achievement getting that clear, organized and focused. That was retained through the second term as well: the same priorities and a follow up on a regular basis about what progress was being made against those priorities.\u201d
\nWhile that was retained in her second term, there were some growing pains.
\n\u201cThe second term suffered from some of the new members \u2013 both Council and public members \u2013 having a lack of understanding of the Town\u2019s priorities,\u201d she says. \u201cIn the spirit of making suggestions, which is welcome, there are limited resources that can be applied to stay focused on your big priorities.\u201d
\nThis confusion caused EDAC to be less productive than it could have been, she admits, with some members bringing to the table \u201ca lack of willingness to understand how the priorities were established\u201d and what their role was.
\n\u201cIt caused the Committee to possibly be somewhat less effective,\u201d she says, noting there was not a time where the Committee wasn\u2019t called upon enough for their input. \u201cI would say as a general comment that Council was very supportive of EDAC and appreciated the expertise of the Economic Development Committee and frequently requested that Town Staff lean on EDAC for advice to help Council make decisions.
\n\u201cThe most effective role that EDAC played, and I am speaking as a public member, a business person, we instilled a sense of prioritization and measurements that is important for the Town economic development efforts going forward to stay focused on what is important.\u201d
\nBut that is now a legacy as EDAC has been wound down in favour of the incoming Board.
\nIn recent years there has been a push by the Committee for what Ms. Harris describes as \u201cmore senior expertise applied\u201d to economic development in Aurora, a push she describes as \u201ccontinual.\u201d
\nThe watershed moment came with the hiring of Aurora\u2019s incumbent CAO, Doug Nadorozny.
\nWhile Aurora searched to fill the vacant post, a background in economic development was considered a significant asset.
\n\u201cEDAC was happy their recommendations for increased leadership and expertise in economic development were in fact listened to and, with the hiring of Doug, that is one of the attributes he does bring to the table,\u201d says Ms. Harris. \u201cThe Board will have some new opportunity to access funding that EDAC would never structurally be able to follow up on. I think the big issue with EDAC is leadership and having staff dedicated to working with business leaders as appropriate.
\n\u201cI think it is prudent of Council to want to have some advisory committees on certain subject matters and I am happy they have it for Economic Development. I hope that going forward with the new structure of the Board that there is a requirement for business and financial expertise in the makeup of that Board. I think that is essential in being able to manage progress.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Economic development in Aurora is set to shift gears significantly this fall as the final details are hammered out on a new Board to steer the ship.
\nAurora\u2019s new Economic Development Board, which was…<\/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_feature_clip_id":0,"_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-18641","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\/p3D2k4-4QF","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-10 13:03:41","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\/18641","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=18641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}