{"id":23631,"date":"2019-04-25T17:16:50","date_gmt":"2019-04-25T21:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23631"},"modified":"2019-05-02T12:15:46","modified_gmt":"2019-05-02T16:15:46","slug":"town-goes-it-alone-on-sport-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/town-goes-it-alone-on-sport-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Town goes it alone on Sport Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

Aurora is set to go it alone on a new\nsports plan with revised priorities and new recommendations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sport Aurora got the ball rolling on the\nmunicipality\u2019s Sport Plan, which was aimed at removing barriers to sport,\nensuring local sports resources meet the needs of a growing community and\nfostering a climate for sports tourism, but after considerable debate around\nthe table, Council is set to take things in-house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week, Council is expected to sign off\non a new permanent full-time staff position, a \u201cSport & Community\nDevelopment Coordinator\u201d to bring the project in for a landing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

$103,400 for the new position and the Plan\nitself have already been allocated as part of the Town\u2019s 2019 Operating Budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the report brought to last\nTuesday\u2019s General Committee meeting by Recreation Manager Lisa Warth, a review\nof the Sport Plan\u2019s current status has resulted in a \u201cre-prioritization\u201d of the\nrecommendations contained within it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSport Aurora has made good progress on\nthe Sport Plan, however, some of the recommendations are principle-based,\nphilosophical statements, and a measurement of success is difficult to\nascertain,\u201d said Ms. Warth. \u201cIn addition, some of the tactics currently\nidentified for implementation require considerable resources and may be a\nchallenge to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If approved this week, the revised plan\nwill give increased priority to the creation of a \u201csport policy\u201d that would\n\u201cdefine priorities and responsibilities for sport in Aurora among various\nstakeholders. Additional emphasis will be placed on volunteer recruitment and\ntraining for many organizations within Aurora, as well as training staff and\nvolunteers in \u201cworking with culturally diverse groups to understand their sport\nneeds and be able to respond to the changing demographics in Aurora.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conversely, the new blueprint will give\nlower priority to developing a sport tourism policy for the Town and assessing\nthe current provision of sports as it relates to older adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe capacity to host sport events is\nhighly dependent on appropriate facilities,\u201d said Ms. Warth on the lower\npriority for Sport Tourism. \u201cAs the Town is currently investigating future\nfacilities, it does not make sense to create a policy at this time.\nAdditionally, the Economic Development strategy will include sports tourism and\nthe results of that study need to be considered in an Aurora Sports Tourism\npolicy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs part of the sports policy, a decision\nneeds to be made about whether the needs of older adults is to be a focus on\nsports (physical activity and an opportunity for competition), or to focus on\nincreasing physical activity alone. Additionally, Activate Aurora has done\nsignificant work in the area of physical activity for older adults. Town Staff\nhave committed to sustaining the Older Adults Network created as part of\nActivate Aurora when the Activate Aurora project wraps up in June 2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time the recommendations reached\nthe Committee level last Tuesday, Council members focused on both of these\npriority changes as well as the cost of creating a new position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The starting salary for the Sport &\nCommunity Development Coordinator will be $69,000 plus benefits, which would\nclock in at around $83,000, said Robin McDougall, Director of Community\nServices for the Town. The entire amount allocated in the 2019 Operating Budget\nwill not be used at this time as the position will not be filled until later\nthis spring. Going forward, she added, staff would anticipate the full amount\nwill be used in future years, including $20,000 for the implementation costs of\nthe Sports Plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most vocal regarding the new\nhire was Councillor Harold Kim, who said he was \u201cnever a big proponent\u201d of an\ninternal hire for the role of Sports Coordinator, questioning how bringing the\nposition in-house would make achieving goals within the plan more realistic and\nachievable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. McDougall responded that bringing the\nposition in-house would level the playing field in that the person in the\nposition would have access to all the resources and information at Town Hall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis process of working towards a Sports\nPlan, gathering volunteers [for] the sports communities, reminds me of another\nproject [for] Cultural Partners [and we] hired an external consultant to\nspearhead that,\u201d Councillor Kim continued.\n\u201cMy understanding is that that is going well and it seems to mirror what we\u2019re\ntrying to do here in a certain respect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Ms. McDougall\nconceded there were \u201cparallels\u201d in the situation, she also noted \u201cthere are\nopportunities here where we see benefit in having in-house staff being readily\navailable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From other parts of\nthe table, Councillors raised issue with sports tourism being placed on a lower\nrung than it had previously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first to sound\nthe alarm was Councillor Michael Thompson who said he still saw tourism as one\nof the \u201ckey principles\u201d in the plan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCouncil has talked\nabout it from an economic development perspective,\u201d he said. \u201cYes, I understand\nthere is a bit of an overlap there with what is currently underway with the\nEconomic Development Board and the Economic Development Strategy, and tourism\nas well. I don\u2019t necessarily want to see sport tourism pushed too far to the\nside. I still think it is very much a prominent issue for this Council. We\ntalked about it at length with the Hallmark lands and whether it would be one\nand one or two baseball fields, we continue to talk about it with regards to\nmultipurpose fields and that vision. While I understand that not all of the\namenities or facilities are in place to really make a drive today, I still just\nwant to make sure it is somewhere near the forefront in terms of our priority\nsettings for sport tourism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Tom Mrakas had\na similar concern, saying \u201cwe don\u2019t want to lose that (sport tourism) and put\nthat aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith the new\nEconomic Development Corporation in place, that is one of the examples of where\nMs. McDougall mentioned that hiring an in-house staff member for the position\n<\/p>\n\n\n

[would allow them to]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

have access more closely with the corporation and look at\nfurthering that sport tourism aspect, the total tourism picture for the Town,\u201d\nhe said. \u201cI think that is a great way for us to move forward on that piece.\u201d\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Wendy\nGaertner\u2019s concerns lay in a lower prioritization for the sports needs of older\nadults. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a significant\namount of work that is already being done and being looked after through the\nefforts and work of Activate Aurora that initiated the program along with our\nstaff,\u201d said Ms. McDougall. \u201cOur staff are planning to continue on with that\nwork with the Older Adult Network and it is literally a network of resources, a\nlocal volunteer group of individuals who have expertise in the area, whether it\nis through health, whether it is through medical, or whether it is through just\ngeneral interest in seeing healthy, active adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are a lot of\nresources on that committee that see initiatives that we can run forward with.\nIt doesn\u2019t necessarily have to be defined by sports, but it can be defined by\nphysical activity and so from a priority perspective, we feel that some of that\nis already being achieved.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Responded Councillor Gaertner, \u201cI would rather\nlook at keeping seniors active and healthy as opposed to promoting competitive\nsports. I think that the Seniors\u2019 Centre does some of that work right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora is set to go it alone on a new sports plan with revised priorities and new recommendations.<\/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-23631","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\/p3D2k4-699","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 10:57:31","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\/23631","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=23631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}