{"id":23841,"date":"2019-05-23T15:57:31","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T19:57:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23841"},"modified":"2019-05-30T17:12:19","modified_gmt":"2019-05-30T21:12:19","slug":"time-for-aurora-to-adopt-ward-system-says-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/time-for-aurora-to-adopt-ward-system-says-council\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for Aurora to adopt ward system, says Council"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

Aurora is set to begin the process of looking at a ward\nsystem of government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, Council voted to begin the process of hiring a\nconsultant to carry out a study on how Aurora might adopt a ward system of\ngovernment whereby each Council member would be elected to represent the\ninterests of a specific neighbourhood. Aurora currently employs an \u201cat large\u201d\nsystem of government where each Council member serves the Town as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Council\u2019s decision to hire a consultant to begin a public\nconsultation process came in the face of recommendations from staff and the\nTown\u2019s Governance Ad Hoc Committee suggesting the process be put on the\nbackburner pending the Province of Ontario\u2019s review of Regional Governance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The motion to forge ahead came on the heels of a similar\ndecision made at the previous week\u2019s General Committee meeting and was made by\nCouncillor Michael Thompson, who suggested an amendment to take things one step\nfurther.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCouncil needs to send a clear and concise message that\nwe\u2019re more than just interested in exploring the possibility of changing our\nelectoral system; that the general view is that we believe it is time to switch\nfrom a Town-wide perspective to a ward vote,\u201d said Councillor Thompson. \u201cWhile\nthis doesn\u2019t bind us because it is just in principle, it shows to the\nGovernance Committee and the Consultant that it is the serious intention of\nthis Council to switch our system of government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Thompson conceded there has been significant\ndiscussion in the community \u2013 and the Council table \u2013 whether a ward system, if\nadopted, would be a full ward system, or a hybrid of wards and Aurora\u2019s current\nmodel, or indeed to maintain the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it is important for those who are vehemently\nopposed to the ward system\u2026to speak now and show their thoughts or preferences\ntowards the system; otherwise, we should continue forward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First to speak in favour of Councillor Thompson\u2019s\namendment was Councillor Harold Kim. While he acknowledged the work of the\nGovernance committee, he said that over the last four-and-a-half years he has\nseen public sentiments change towards a ward system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the question on whether to adopt a ward system was\nput to local voters in the 2014 Municipal Election, with nearly 55 per cent of\nvoters sending a message in favour of the status quo, Councillor Kim said\nthere\u2019s change in the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have experienced people, Councillors, say one thing in\nprevious years and say something else in subsequent years and I think we need\nto hold ourselves accountable on where we\u2019re at and where we\u2019re positioned,\u201d\nsaid Councillor Kim. \u201cThis is a way of solidifying that we are committed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving forward was also \u201cthe right thing to do\u201d from the\nperspective of Councillor Sandra Humfryes, who said this will begin the process\nof gathering more information and public input.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWatching how things have worked over the last nine\nyears, I believe that if we\u2019re directly accountable to an area, there\u2019s a\nstrong accountability there, whereas now we\u2019re at large, which is flexible for\nthe resident absolutely; they can pick the Councillor or many Councillors to\nwork on their behalf. I find it not as effective as it can be because our Town\nhas grown a bit larger and having that dedicated resource to that area and\nunderstanding the intimate concerns of that particular area\u2026 it allows a lot of\nbenefit to the resident. I am very excited about this and hope we can move\nforward and see where this leads us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less convinced, however, was Councillor Wendy Gaertner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Councillor Gaertner said it was fine to begin the\nprocess of exploring a ward system, she said emphasising in the motion that it\nis Council\u2019s wish to make a ward system a reality could jeopardize the\nconsultation process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think if we say, even in principle, that Council wants\nthe ward system, it is biasing the public outreach and I think that, as\nCouncil, we\u2019re here to represent what the public wants, and the public could\nvery well want a ward system, but I don\u2019t think if we\u2019re going to all this\ntrouble for the review that we, as Council, should be telling the public up\nfront what we want. We can tell them it is one of the main things we want to\nexplore, but I feel this is the wrong way to go about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Tom Mrakas said that while he understood the\nCouncillor\u2019s concern that it would \u201cadd a level of bias,\u201d he saw it similar to\nthe process Council recently undertook hiring an independent consultant to\noffer recommendations protecting the Town\u2019s stable neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was concern about that too, but we gave clear\ndirection to that issue and said we wanted the consultant to come in and give\nus changes and not say \u2018keep it the same,\u2019\u201d said Mayor Mrakas. \u201cWhat we\u2019re\ndoing here is presenting that clear direction of Council to say we want to move\nin this direction and we want the consultant to put forward options that would\npresent this direction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Thompson also agreed that \u201cbiasing public\nengagement\u201d was a valid concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He underscored the ward question on the 2014 ballot that\ncame down on the \u201cno side\u201d and said by going this route he wanted to see \u201cthe\nconversation move a little bit less from \u2018should we\u2019 or \u2018shouldn\u2019t we\u2019 to, \u2018if\nwe move to wards, what should the boundaries look like? [and] have input from\nthe residents on how to shape those boundaries. That is a significant process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe question on the ballot is the best way to do that\ndecision-making process. We have those results, but I still think and I firmly\nbelieve this Council has made the decision that even though we know it was a\nclose vote and it was a little bit more on the no side, we still believe this\nis the best way forward for Aurora, especially for a Town of our size. Let\u2019s\nengage the public but more so on how do we make this transition and what do\nthese wards look like?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor John Gallo was not present at last week\u2019s\nCouncil meeting.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora is set to begin the process of looking at a ward system of government.<\/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_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-23841","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\/p3D2k4-6cx","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-25 07:08:44","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\/23841","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=23841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}