{"id":19610,"date":"2018-01-19T21:56:55","date_gmt":"2018-01-20T02:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=19610"},"modified":"2018-01-19T21:56:55","modified_gmt":"2018-01-20T02:56:55","slug":"councillors-defend-lease-deal-costs-negotiated-behind-closed-doors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/councillors-defend-lease-deal-costs-negotiated-behind-closed-doors\/","title":{"rendered":"Councillors defend lease deal, costs negotiated behind closed doors"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir
\n<\/strong>
\nLocal Councillors are defending a decision made behind closed doors to strike a deal with Niagara College for the use of the Aurora Armoury.
\nCouncillors faced criticism from one of their own at the last Council meeting of the year when it came time to firm up the Town\u2019s move to lease the historic building at the northeast corner of Mosley Street and Larmont Street to the College for an offshoot branch of the Canadian Institute of Food and Wine.
\nA long-time vocal opponent to the deal who said he would rather see the building used solely for municipal purposes, Councillor John Abel was firm in his criticism of Council moving ahead with the agreement, which was negotiated in closed session.
\n\u201cWhen we are discussing something like this, we should have it out in the open,\u201d said Councillor Abel on the $4 million agreement, translating to $400 per square foot which he said is \u201cexceedingly high\u201d for any business, and also taking aim at the decision to sole source the deal to Niagara College rather than putting the option up for a public bid. \u201cI think the norm to build new is far less. I am not comfortable with the cost, I am not comfortable with the lease because it really is the taxpayer that is going to pay for that.\u201d
\nIn response to Councillor Abel\u2019s comments, Doug Nadorozny, CAO of the Town of Aurora, said that while initial estimates to refurbish the Armoury came in around $2.1 million dollars, that was just to refurbish the existing shell, properly insulate it, update some of the infrastructure and bring it up to code. The proposal to expand the building is the reason for the expanding budget.
\n\u201cWith the repurposing, we made sure that the renovations\u2026are done so with the idea this is community space first and foremost and even if the day comes where the college doesn\u2019t use it, a very minimal amount of renovations would be required, if any, frankly, to leave it as open community space.
\n\u201cThere is also an allowance for the work to integrate the building into Town Park. There is a significant component of landscaping and patio and those kinds of things. None of the design work has been done yet, but we have thrown a number in there for all of that detail to come back to Council.
\n\u201cSince we were doing this all confidentially at the time for the benefit of both parties, the purchasing bylaw allows under this circumstance to do a sole source. The architect we had chosen had experience doing similar facilities and had worked with Niagara College in the past. It was with that we sole sourced.\u201d
\nThe majority of Council members defended the move to negotiate the details behind the scenes, including Councillor Wendy Gaertner, who said she wasn\u2019t always on board that the Niagara College deal was the best move for Aurora.
\n\u201cI have always been very careful about going into Closed Session and making sure it was appropriate,\u201d she said. \u201cI think it was appropriate and I don\u2019t want to be implied by anyone at this Council table that it wasn\u2019t. It\u2019s a very complicated subject, it was a very complicated negotiation, it took a lot of thought, took a long time for me to come around to the idea, but I think we have made a good choice and I am hoping that at the end of the day the community will feel that as well.
\n\u201cIt is an exciting opportunity and Aurora has always been behind. A bold move? I am not sure. We thought it out very, very, very, very carefully and there was an agreement by eight out of nine people sitting at this table and we have moved forward with that. I really don\u2019t like anyone implying I did anything untoward. I don\u2019t believe that I did.\u201d
\nCouncillor Tom Mrakas followed suit.
\n\u201cI have seen Councillor Gaertner in action many times and she has been one of the biggest proponents to if you go into closed session you\u2019re doing it for the right reasons, so I think if we weren\u2019t following the process, if there was one person who would stand up to say it, it would be Councillor Gaertner. I think we can reassure everyone, all the residents, that we felt we did everything properly,\u201d he said.
\nAdded Mayor Dawe: \u201cI have no doubt that if we were straying [beyond the rules of Closed Session outlined by the Municipal Act] our solicitor and\/or our Clerk or CAO would let us know we were going in a direction we shouldn\u2019t. I have no doubt in my mind that the direction we followed was solid.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Local Councillors are defending a decision made behind closed doors to strike a deal with Niagara College for the use of the Aurora Armoury. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"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":[29,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-56i","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-18 08:19:28","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\/19610","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=19610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}