{"id":21122,"date":"2018-07-11T13:23:09","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T17:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=21122"},"modified":"2018-07-11T13:23:09","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T17:23:09","slug":"aurora-votes-2018-rachel-gilliland-is-focused-on-growth-and-gridlock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-votes-2018-rachel-gilliland-is-focused-on-growth-and-gridlock\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora Votes 2018: Rachel Gilliland is focused on growth and gridlock"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Rachel Gilliland has seen the community grow rapidly over the last 22 years as an Aurora resident, and now she\u2019d like to help continue to shape the community in the years ahead as a member of Council.
\nMs. Gilliland, an entrepreneur, is seeking one of six spots at the Council table in this October\u2019s Municipal Election.
\n\u201cI have been a resident of Aurora for over 22 years now; both my kids have graduated and I\u2019m at a point in my life where I feel I can give back to the community,\u201d she tells The Auroran. \u201cI have been watching a lot of things going on with Council currently. I have participated in a few ratepayer associations [including the Town Park Ratepayers Association] and it has allowed me to become more aware of what is going on in our Town, up close and personal.\u201d
\nNow a regular attendee at municipal meetings, Ms. Gilliland says she is seeing a lot of issues crop up for which she\u2019d like to be the residents\u2019 voice.
\nChief among them, she says, is growth. When she first moved to the community, she said there were cow fields at the end of the street. Those days are certainly gone, but growth, she says is \u201cinevitable.\u201d
\n\u201cWe evolve and we change as we go along,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re at a point now where we have so much change we\u2019re now being faced with more gridlock and [a need for] recreational space, [while] preserving our downtown core and revitalization. There is a lot of attention that is going to be required from someone who wants to commit to making those decisions and I feel I am ready to commit my time and attention to those issues for Aurora.
\n\u201cFirst and foremost is finding the ideal balance between development growth and preservation. Second is investing in and keeping Aurora active while responsibly spending money on recreation facilities and protecting our greenspace. With gridlock, everyone knows Yonge and Wellington. There are still condos being developed and we need to find some good solutions and investigate the best way for traffic flow in Aurora.\u201d
\nOn the subject of gridlock, Ms. Gilliland says there are currently limited options on what Aurora can do to solve the problem, but exercising pressure on the Region could open up many more possibilities. Another solution, she says, is promoting Industrial Parkway as a bypass for Downtown Aurora, which was its original purpose.
\nAnother issue that has particularly captured Ms. Gilliland\u2019s focus is the fight for preserving Aurora\u2019s stable neighbourhoods. She says she is looking forward to seeing what the incumbent Council comes back with this September to find balance within stable neighbourhoods and take a positive step forward.
\nOver the months leading up to October\u2019s vote, Ms. Gilliland says she will be continuing her active community involvement. She describes herself as a \u201cjack of all trades\u201d who is currently operating a yearbook publishing business, the territory for which covers all of York Region. Her work focuses on sales and support, as well as in-school training. This work, as well as her work on the local ratepayers\u2019 associations has sown the seeds of community involvement, something she is looking to expand.
\n\u201cI have dealt with all walks of life, lots of people, and having run my own business\u2026you need to know how to work with people, listen to ideas, be open to opportunity and not have tunnel vision: be able to receive information, absorb it, and execute a decision that makes sense for the community.\u201d
\nThis Municipal Election will see Aurora elect a Mayor and six councillors, rather than the traditional eight members, thus there will be two less people executing those decisions that make sense for the community. When Council made the decision to shrink its membership, many said it was the first step towards Aurora adopting a \u201cward\u201d system of government, with one Councillor elected to represent the interest of a certain area of the community.
\nA ward system is something Ms. Gilliland says she supports.
\n\u201cI think it is time,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re one of the only municipalities at this population level that doesn\u2019t have a ward system. I think it is in our benefit to be able to have a Councillor represent specific areas of your town. I think it allows for a little more personal attention. Although we\u2019re structured as a non-ward system right now, I do think it is wonderful that we have six people who are going to be representing the entire community as a whole and I do feel it is important to listen to all parts of Aurora
\n\u201cWe know what is going on. I have lived in the four corners of Aurora over those 22 years, I don\u2019t know how many people can say that, and each community is different in itself. I think it is important that [all communities] are met in an individually unique way \u2013 such as stable neighbourhoods. Each stable neighbourhood deserves its own attention.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rachel Gilliland has seen the community grow rapidly over the last 22 years as an Aurora resident, and now she\u2019d like to help continue to shape the community in the years ahead as a member of Council.<\/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":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21122","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\/p3D2k4-5uG","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-21 22:39:04","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\/21122","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=21122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}