{"id":23727,"date":"2019-05-09T16:48:40","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T20:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23727"},"modified":"2019-05-09T16:48:48","modified_gmt":"2019-05-09T20:48:48","slug":"sports-plan-to-be-implemented-by-new-staff-person-at-town-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/sports-plan-to-be-implemented-by-new-staff-person-at-town-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"Sports plan to be implemented by new staff person at Town Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

Council\u2019s\nefforts to bring the implementation of Aurora\u2019s Sports Plan in-house were\napproved by local lawmakers last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a vote of 6 \u2013 0\n(with Councillor Michael Thompson absent from the meeting) Council signed off\non a new 24-month contract position to implement the Town\u2019s Sport Plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This 24-month\ncontract position, however, fell short of what municipal staff were looking\nfor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Going into last\nweek\u2019s Council meeting, elected officials were poised to ratify a decision made\nat the Committee level calling for the hiring of a new permanent position to\nbring the Sport Plan to fruition. They changed their mind, however, bowing to\ncalls from Councillor Harold Kim to convert this proposed full-time position to\na contract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initially proposing an\n18-month contract position, Councillor Kim said his initial preference was to\nbring on an external consultant to do the work because of their industry\nexpertise. But he said he sensed his Council colleagues, and indeed staff, were\nlooking at the possibility of an internal hire for the role and a contract\nposition was the compromise he offered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis gives us the\nopportunity to see if it works out with this individual because not every hire\nis the best hire,\u201d he said. \u201cSome of us have been in a situation where we have\nhired staff and people on our team and thought, you know what? Maybe we could\nhave done something different or hired someone else. This gives the flexibility\nthat after the Sport Plan is constructed, maybe we go in a different\ndirection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the outset, staff\noffered some concerns that an 18-month contract was not enough time to fully\nevaluate the performance of the individual hired ahead of the 2021 Budget\nCycle. Councillor Kim\u2019s motion, as a result, was amended to 24-months to allow\nsome additional time to examine the impacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking the position\nfrom a full-time hire to a full-time contract position received support from\nmany Council members, including Councillor Wendy Gaertner who said it is\n\u201ccommon practice\u201d to do a temporary hire and let the individual prove\nthemselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGetting stuck with\nsomeone who is permanent\u2026puts us in a hard position,\u201d she agreed. \u201cI think,\nunfortunately, the way the job market is now\u2026I think it is very hard for people\nto get jobs and having a 24-month contract\u2026with the Town of Aurora with the\nhope of becoming permanent, I think is actually a good idea.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor John Gallo\nagreed, noting he would have been fine with the original amendment for an\n18-month contract. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Sport Plan\nactually has a five-year window from 2015 to the end of 2020 and the plan is\nbasically spelling out it should be implemented within those five years,\u201d he\nsaid. \u201cEighteen months, by the time you select someone, is more or less the end\nof 2020. Even if during the Budget process, there\u2019s enough money there to have\nthat position up until the end of 2020. So, the discussion would be at Budget,\nin my view, after the end of December 2020. Do we hire that person again\nstarting in January 2021?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Offering a different\nperspective was Councillor Sandra Humfryes who spoke in favour of a permanent\nhire. Advertising for a full-time position, she argued, might yield better\ncandidates than a job posting for a contract position, regardless of how many\nmonths the contract is for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re taking a big\nchance here, changes in direction, and I want to make sure we have someone who\nfeels they can have a big career here and not just coming in for 18 or 24\nmonths,\u201d she said, referring to Council\u2019s shift on bringing the Sport Plan\nin-house from Sport Aurora, which has laid much of the plan\u2019s groundwork. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would normally\nagree [with Councillor Kim\u2019s rationale], but I believe you are looking for an\nexperienced individual, someone who understands sport and all types of\ndifferent programming and actual different types of sports. Also, this isn\u2019t\ngoing anywhere. This is a long-term plan that is going to continue to grow and\nevolve. It is not going to disappear. We\u2019re making a big change here. We\u2019re\nreplacing an organization that used to deliver this and we\u2019re now taking it on\nin-house. I want someone who is out there, perhaps in a current job in a\ndifferent town, who thinks, \u2018this is a great opportunity for me.\u2019 It is going\nto be hard for someone like that to leave a permanent position to take a chance\non a [the contract position] here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Rachel\nGilliland noted that her only concern with a permanent position was there were\na lot of \u201cunknowns\u201d on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMaybe there is room\nto define what the role would look like,\u201d she said. \u201cMaybe 36 months would be\nsomething more appropriate to give [staff] a little bit more evaluation. I\nwould feel comfortable with a 24 or 36 month contract position just because we\nare entering the unknown. I personally feel just being in the workforce,\nconsultants and contract work is not unusual and I think it does foster some\nindividual who would vie to do this job, probably better, above and beyond,\nbring new and different ideas, and it gives us an opportunity to refine that\nposition if we so find and need to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Mayor Tom\nMrakas said he wanted to see this position be a permanent one, he saw the value\nin bringing in some flexibility by voting in favour of the amendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen we first\nventured down the Sport Plan and we hired Sport Aurora as a vendor to implement\nthat Sport Plan, the specifics around that was that we would re-evaluate them\nafter a couple of years and that\u2019s what we did,\u201d said the Mayor. \u201cI think we\nshould allow us the same flexibility with this as well, to be able to\nre-evaluate after a couple of years. I do want to make sure that our staff have\nthe proper amount of time to give us a proper evaluation, so that is why I\nthink I am okay with the 24 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t mind seeing the contract position\n<\/p>\n\n\n

[because]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

we can re-evaluate and make adjustments. We\u2019re going to [keep looking\nat how we can promote sport tourism] within our community, so I see this as a\nlong-term position, but I would just like to make sure we have had an\nopportunity to re-evaluate it.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Council\u2019s efforts to bring the implementation of Aurora\u2019s Sports Plan in-house were approved by local lawmakers last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23727","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\/p3D2k4-6aH","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-14 14:14:58","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\/23727","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=23727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}