{"id":21651,"date":"2018-09-20T10:36:15","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T14:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=21651"},"modified":"2018-09-20T10:36:15","modified_gmt":"2018-09-20T14:36:15","slug":"aurora-votes-2018-lajeunesse-wants-to-bring-smart-principles-to-council-table","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-votes-2018-lajeunesse-wants-to-bring-smart-principles-to-council-table\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora Votes 2018: Lajeunesse wants to bring \u201cSmart\u201d principles to Council table"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

As he worked towards his first Ironman triathlon this month, Daniel Lajeunesse set a challenge for himself: using only municipal facilities to train.
\nIt was an \u201ceye-opening experience,\u201d he says, in that a lot of planning had to go into being able to use available resources at just the right time. The raw materials are there, he says, but it is a matter of planning to make sure they work right for local residents.
\nMr. Lajeunesse, a 12-year resident of Aurora, works in the field of efficient urban planning, and he hopes to bring this expertise to the table as a member of the 2018-2022 Aurora Council.
\nHe is one of sixteen candidates vying for six Council seats.
\n\u201cI have always had a little bit of a taste [for municipal politics] based on my family history, growing up in Ottawa with a father who was heavily involved in the beautification of the National Capital,\u201d he says. \u201cAs time went on, I developed my own career and path, and over the last 10 years, my focus has been on intelligent urbanization.\u201d
\nSince then, he has worked for an initiative that leverages technology and other advances to \u201cmake a city run efficiently, cheaper, but provide a mindset to move forward.\u201d
\n\u201cWhen I was working on the Federal Government\u2019s $300 million Smart Cities initiative, I realised that not only didn\u2019t Aurora get shortlisted, they didn\u2019t even compete,\u201d he says. \u201cI realised that was something I could do and support locally. I realised I could help my community by providing those services as part of being a Councillor.\u201d
\nMr. Lajeunesse is running on a three-prong platform. Intelligent urbanization is one, along with Health & Fitness, and business. They might seem like three desperate platform planks, but they are all interwoven, he says.
\n\u201cLet\u2019s look at the obstacles that are coming up,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have that 15-minute train coming up shortly, relatively speaking, and if we don\u2019t do this right, we\u2019re going to end up with two towns because those gates go down for a minute or two every 15 minutes. That could be a horrible problem. One of the main issues I see as a sports fanatic \u2013 doing them, not watching them \u2013 is how we maintain our roads and sidewalks. We still prioritize roads.
\n\u201cYou walk down a sidewalk, trees are at least four feet down, making it very difficult for anyone to use them and you will see people walking down the street when there is a sidewalk there unmaintained. Yonge Street takes two weeks to repair the sidewalks. Why do we not prioritize our pedestrians? If we want people to shop on Yonge Street, why do we make it so hard for people to talk on Combine that with parking, there are a lot of things we can do there.\u201d
\nIf elected on October 22, one of the items Mr. Lajeunesse would like to bring forward is a facilities management program that would see more free time access at municipal facilities such as pools and ice rinks. One hour here and there is insufficient, he says, and the Town needs to look at \u201cwhy\u201d people are using facilities as they are.
\n\u201cIf we want to increase that community of sports within the Region we have to understand what people are participating in,\u201d he says. \u201cIf we can understand that, then we can support them. The same is true of other facility-based sports like hockey, basketball, etc. I believe what we need to understand is who is going to be using them. From everything I\u2019ve read, we do want to understand what people are going to use, looking at age brackets and so forth, but we seem to be stuck in an evaluation.\u201d
\nThere is not a huge cost in adding 30 minutes of lifeguard duty here and there, he says, and it would be an investment that would pay dividends.
\n\u201cWhen I talk to other individuals, they leave and go to other towns because they will have greater hours. Why do we allow that? We have great facilities here, but we\u2019re forcing our residents to go elsewhere. That is because we don\u2019t understand. We don\u2019t need to make huge investments in research and so forth, it is simply an understanding of what is being done, why people want to use the facilities and answer those questions.\u201d
\nHe does, of course, see Aurora residents leave town for a number of other reasons, whether it is up to Newmarket to take in its bustling Main Street, or down into Toronto on their morning commute. Both issues are a concern for Mr. Lajeunesse, and a key component to turning the tide will be creating a climate enticing for people to open up small businesses here at home.
\n\u201cIf we can get one in 10 families to have one individual work from home, that has a tremendous impact on the amount of traffic you see at peak hours, for instance,\u201d he said. \u201cAll we need for that is to ensure companies like Bell and Rogers support us in terms of the connectivity they require. It is the mentality of thinking a few years down the road. We have done great. The Town is beautiful, it\u2019s safe, it\u2019s a nice place to buy a home, but I am just worried about the longer-term vision in that I want to stay here Friday nights, I want to shop at the Market and I want to participate in my sports programs.
\n\u201cMy main business is based out of Waterloo. One day a week I go to that office and the other four I spend in my home office. The concept of allowing people to work from home just makes sense. That doesn\u2019t mean to turn a home into a storefront. Absolutely not, but an individual being able to spend maybe two or three days at home from time to time really helps the greater community. It helps us because it allows for more parking spots for the GO Train, less congestion on the onramps onto the highway, and allows for our small businesses to benefit.
\n\u201cIf you improve traffic, you improve health and wellness. If you improve health and wellness, you improve businesses. If you improve businesses, you improve the tax base. If you improve the tax base, we have more services. If you improve services, they are better maintained.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As he worked towards his first Ironman triathlon this month, Daniel Lajeunesse set a challenge for himself: using only municipal facilities to train.
\nIt was an \u201ceye-opening experience,\u201d he says, in that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21653,"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-21651","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\/2018-09-20-08.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5Dd","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 20:58:32","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\/21651","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=21651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}