{"id":21581,"date":"2018-09-13T11:57:23","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T15:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=21581"},"modified":"2018-09-13T11:57:23","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T15:57:23","slug":"aurora-votes-2018-gallo-wants-to-fix-a-system-that-is-somewhat-broken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-votes-2018-gallo-wants-to-fix-a-system-that-is-somewhat-broken\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora Votes 2018: Gallo wants to \u201cfix a system that is somewhat broken\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

For the past four years, John Gallo has been watching municipal government from a slight distance.
\nA former council member and mayoral candidate, he used to be in the thick of it, but watching from the sidelines has given him a new perspective, and looking on he has seen a political system he describes as \u201cbroken from the top down.\u201d
\nNow, he wants to get back into the fray and help fix what he sees as problems.
\nMr. Gallo, who ran for mayor in the 2014 municipal election against incumbent Geoff Dawe, is in the race once again, this time vying for one of six Council seats in next month\u2019s municipal election.
\n\u201cHaving sat at a distance for the past four years, and also with the four years prior I was on Council, I am not the type of person to sit back and watch things happen, particularly if they are not going how they should be going,\u201d Mr. Gallo told The Auroran, sitting near a shade structure at Thomas Coates Park, informally known as Mavrinac Park. \u201cI have found there has been a lot of mismanagement, a lot of errors that were made and I am not the type of person to sit back and watch that happen and not do anything about it.\u201d
\nOne of the areas of \u201cmismanagement\u201d he cites is the development of the Joint Operations Centre on Industrial Parkway North. While he supported the project while he was sitting at the Council table, Mr. Gallo said he supported it only when the budget stood at $16 million.
\n\u201cI was in on it and I agreed it needed to be built,\u201d he said. \u201cIt ballooned to $30+ million and way, way out of control and mismanaged from the financial point.\u201d
\nHe has the same view of renovations done to the Aurora Family Leisure Complex over the course of this outgoing Council term, as well as ongoing renovations to the historic Aurora Armoury to make way for a new campus of Niagara College\u2019s Canadian Food & Wine Institute.
\n\u201cI have been in property management for the past 20 years and I have never seen an agreement like that for a building,\u201d he said. \u201cThe amount of money in terms of lease holder improvements we\u2019re pumping into the building seems to be excessive and I just didn\u2019t see a good business plan for that. I think the Hallmark Lands are another issue for me. I delegated to Council recommending, suggesting they take those lands and sell them and reinvest in our current assets.
\n\u201cIt was always instilled in me as a Councillor that our employment lands are sacrosanct. You do not change the use, normally. Typically, developers would want you to change the use from commercial\/retail to residential. We went a step further to wholesale recreational where there will be zero tax [coming] from that property in perpetuity and I have a big problem with that. That is not the place to be building recreational facilities. It is the place to pat yourself on the back, they did a good job buying a piece of land that increased in value, and you should be taking advantage of that and putting those dollars into our current facilities.\u201d
\nCurrent facilities include tennis and basketball courts at Thomas Coats, a greenspace of which Mr. Gallo takes particular pride. As a Council member, he began the process of securing the six acre parcel of land for the Town from developers at terms and prices set in the original subdivision plan after the York Region District School Board nixed its long-term plan to build a school on the site.
\nMr. Gallo rallied residents in the area, many of whom said they paid a premium for their properties because it was going to back onto a school, to fight for the Town to reclaim the land for park space.
\nThis model of communication with residents is something Mr. Gallo promises to deliver once again should residents decide to elect him once again.
\nIf elected, he said he would like to bring forward a referendum-like system that would give the public direct input on major decisions that hit the Council table.
\n\u201c[We need to] make sure we can engage the public, not just neighbourhood by neighbourhood, to make sure people are aware and engaged across Town,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are some significant things that are happening. While we are built out, infill is going to be a big part of the next little while, particularly in the downtown core. One of my initiatives is to work with developers to influence the construction of hopefully residential apartments. Whatever happens downtown, that is the way I would like to see it move because I strongly believe we need to have people down there, we need to have foot traffic for the business. It is not a novel idea, certainly not something I came up with, but it is certainly something I would champion.\u201d
\nBringing people into the downtown core is a mantra repeated by proponents of the Library Square development. As a member of the Aurora Cultural Centre Board, Mr. Gallo has been involved in the stakeholder consultations on the project. While he said he likes the idea, and he believes a new building extending the Church Street School is \u201ca really good idea,\u201d he said he feels plans are being \u201crushed\u201d and he would like to \u201csee a solid financial and business plan to justify where the money comes from.\u201d
\n\u201cYou\u2019re going to find my discussions [this campaign] are going to revolve around kind of fixing a system that is somewhat broken,\u201d said Mr. Gallo, who said he\u2019s in favour of retaining the current At Large system of government until someone can convince him otherwise. \u201cI find that from the top down. The political system is broken. I think and hope that the residents of Aurora look at the candidates, and while it is clear there are going to be some that they don\u2019t know very well or haven\u2019t seen [their positions], I would be asking, \u2018If you\u2019re sitting as a Councillor and there is a significant decision you have to make and the Council Chamber is full,\u2019 \u2013 this is where I say the system is broken, unless you have someone who doesn\u2019t have weak knees \u2013 \u2018and you\u2019re there to make a decision for the broader good, making a decision between losing a whole bunch of votes if you vote one way, and if you vote your conscience, and the reports are telling you to do something that is in the good of the entire Town, what do you do?\u2019
\n\u201cI have always chosen the road of I am going to do what is in the best interests of the Town. People might even point to [Mavrinac] and say, \u2018I don\u2019t know, Gallo, this is pretty local and you fought for this. This doesn\u2019t effect the entire Town and you\u2019re a bit of a hypocrite saying let\u2019s sell Hallmark to get the tax dollars and you didn\u2019t want to redevelop and put townhouses or whatever here.\u2019 There might be a correlation, but I think it is very different. The people that bought here expected institutional use, a school. How do you tell them that you\u2019re going to be backing onto somebody else\u2019s home when they bought it not in that light?
\n\u201cIt is a tough thing when you\u2019re sitting there, a tough decision to make. I believe time and time again I stood my ground and I base my decisions on the facts that were before me and in the best interests of the Town. Unfortunately, I have seen it myself that that is not the case with others. They have to justify that themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past four years, John Gallo has been watching municipal government from a slight distance.
\nA former council member and mayoral candidate, he used to be in the thick of it, but watching from the sidelines has given him a new perspective, and looking on he has seen a political system he describes as \u201cbroken from the top down.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21572,"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-21581","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\/2018\/09\/2018-09-13-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5C5","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 02:26:34","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\/21581","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=21581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}