{"id":24036,"date":"2019-06-20T18:33:22","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T22:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24036"},"modified":"2019-06-20T18:33:31","modified_gmt":"2019-06-20T22:33:31","slug":"shame-on-us-says-gaertner-following-stable-neighbourhoods-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/shame-on-us-says-gaertner-following-stable-neighbourhoods-fight\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cShame on us,\u201d says Gaertner following Stable Neighbourhoods fight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

When the word \u201cshame\u201d\nrings out in Council chambers, it is usually from residents who have felt their\nvoices were not heard by local lawmakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This word, however,\nwas voiced by one of their own last week near the end of a vote on protecting\nAurora\u2019s Stable Neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heated words were\nexchanged last week after Council voted down an amendment from Councillor Wendy\nGaertner that would have seen numbers used by a consultant to come up with a\nseries of zoning bylaw amendment recommendations retooled to exclude a pocket\nof 75 homes on Temperance Street from the equation — an inclusion some felt\nskewed the results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Council rejected the\namendment on a 4 – 3 vote, with Mayor Tom Mrakas, and Councillors Rachel\nGilliland, Harold Kim and Michael Thompson voting against it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\nhave been a lot of things I haven\u2019t understood about this process to make our\nzoning bylaws reflect our Official Plan,\u201d said Councillor Gaertner. \u201cIt seems\nso easy, it seems like it just should have happened so easily. The residents\nshould not have had to fight for this. The planning department should have\nbrought it forward when we looked at our comprehensive zoning bylaw. That\ndidn\u2019t happen. The residents took it on. Why did it take so long to get the\nreport to Council? Why do we have charts that say two different things and we\ndon\u2019t have any explanation for the consultant? Why does Council expect to make\na decision when they don\u2019t have the explanation of how the consultant came up\nto this conclusion? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCouncil needs complete and\ntransparent information. We didn\u2019t have that. We\u2019re now at the very end of this\nchain and this decision will affect thousands of residents, the quality of a\nlot of lives. It is going to change the face of our community and if I was the\nresidents, I would be saying, \u2018Go back to the drawing board, look at all the\nneighbourhoods separately. Do it right.\u2019 This is a change that is going to\nhappen forever to this Town. The residents are sitting here and we don\u2019t give\nthem one concession? I say shame on this Council and shame on the whole process\nthat has hit so many roadblocks in the way of these residents. We have a very\nsmall group here tonight and that is because most of the residents have given\nup. They\u2019re frustrated. I will remind you that many of us on Council during the\nelection said we would protect these residents. We have not provided them with\none protection that they asked for. Again, shame on us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Rachel Gilliland,\nhowever, was among the Council members who vocally disagreed with her\ncolleague\u2019s suggestion that Council hadn\u2019t responded to residents\u2019 concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo suggest that we haven\u2019t\nreally done anything, I disagree with,\u201d she said. \u201cMaybe in the previous terms\nwe haven\u2019t, as Council, done what we should. Yes, we did run on campaigns\nprotecting stable neighbourhoods. This issue has certainly been a hot, hot\ntopic and a very defining one for our neighbourhoods. We have heard a lot of\nstrong opinions from both sides for and against. Finding a balance between the\ntwo will never be a perfect science or a perfect math, but we must stand\ntogether and make a decision to do something before it is too late, as we\napproach yet another building season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHere we are today faced with\nthe same opportunity to make a positive change now. My fear is if we keep\ntrying to please everyone it will never happen and monster homes will still be\nbuilt overshadowing our small homes, blocking sun and losing the privacy we so\nmuch enjoy. We cannot deny that new homes have been torn down in the past 13\nyears… It is important that we include them in these changing neighbourhoods\nas they are now part of that neighbourhood. It is not fair to exclude them.\nWhat we\u2019re trying to focus on is mitigating these monster homes in scale and\nharmonizing a traditional balance while maintaining character.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Tom Mrakas also took\nexception to Councillor Gaertner\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know exactly what each and\nevery one of you said,\u201d said Mayor Mrakas, touching upon her reference to\ncampaign platforms. \u201cI know what I said, and I said it was a three prong approach\nwe need to take: we need to implement site plan applications for single\ndwelling homes, we need to make some changes to the zoning to meet the intent\nof the OP (Official Plan), which I think we are doing, and lastly, we need to\nimplement design guidelines and that is what we\u2019re doing. I think this will\nbetter protect our stable neighbourhoods and bring it in line with our OP.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Councillor John Gallo\nsupported Councillor Gaertner\u2019s initial motion, he ultimately said it was time\nto move forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWas it the best process we took? Probably not, but I\nguess we have learned from it,\u201d he said. \u201cAre we as close as we could have\ngotten? Probably. Would I have done some things differently? I think so. Can\nthis be tweaked? I also think it can. I agree with Councillor Thompson and\nothers that a more comprehensive look at them to see whether or not there are\nsome areas we can perhaps remove, but I am all in favour of moving forward,\nputting this behind us and getting it done.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the word \u201cshame\u201d
\nrings out in Council chambers, it is usually from residents who have felt their voices were not heard by local lawmakers. This word, however,
\nwas voiced by one of their own last week near the end of a vote on protecting Aurora\u2019s Stable Neighbourhoods.<\/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-24036","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\/p3D2k4-6fG","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 01:29:27","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\/24036","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=24036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}