{"id":24103,"date":"2019-06-28T11:26:07","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T15:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24103"},"modified":"2019-07-04T18:05:34","modified_gmt":"2019-07-04T22:05:34","slug":"the-show-must-go-on-canada-day-tradition-salvaged-at-eleventh-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/the-show-must-go-on-canada-day-tradition-salvaged-at-eleventh-hour\/","title":{"rendered":"The Show Must Go On: Canada Day tradition salvaged at eleventh hour"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

For decades, Town Park has been Aurora\u2019s destination to\nget a head-start on Canada Day celebrations with the annual Dance in the Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the yearly tradition was set to be consigned to the\nhistory books this year \u2013 until an eleventh-hour intervention by Council last\nTuesday night gave the Rotary Club a cash sponsorship to keep the party going\nthis Sunday evening, June 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Council agree to provide the Rotary Club with financial\nand in-kind support up to $5,000 at last week\u2019s General Committee meeting, a\ndecision which will be ratified this week, following a motion from Councillor\nSandra Humfryes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe challenge Rotary had is they are saving money for a\ncontribution gift for Library Square\u2026and they really need some financial\nsupport to keep this ongoing tradition moving forward,\u201d Councillor Humfryes\nexplained. \u201cThe Dance has been going on for probably over 50 years in Town Park\nand I would really love for us to continue the tradition. Staff have been\nmeeting with Rotary and have determined that they can, in fact, pull it\ntogether. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey know how to put it on, they are really excited\nabout putting it on, they have all their volunteers lined up and even have a\nband. They really can\u2019t wait to do it, but they need some financial support\nfrom our side, particularly this year because they would like to present\nsomething pretty exciting to the Town. This has taken a secondary seat in their\nstrategic budgeting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Humfryes\u2019 motion received enthusiastic support\nfrom her colleagues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are a lot of people in Aurora who get to go away\nfor weekends and long weekends and holidays, and there are a lot of people who\naren\u2019t able to go away,\u201d said Councillor Wendy Gaertner. \u201cThose people, I\nfound, [particularly] love this event. I thank you very much and I think there\nwill be a lot of people who are very appreciative because it is something they\nlook forward to because that\u2019s how they celebrate: they don\u2019t go away, they stay\nin Town and they want to stay in Town Park.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Added Councillor Rachel Gilliland: \u201cI am really big on\ntradition in this Town, and I think Aurora is really big on tradition in this\nTown. Residents will be really happy with this decision moving forward and I am\nglad the Town is going to be able to take this over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, this event sponsorship was framed as the stepping\nstone for the Town taking this event over from the Rotary Club down the line,\nsomething which drew questions from Councillor Michael Thompson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Thompson, a strong proponent of the Town\u2019s new\nsponsorship policy, which will see all community groups given equal footing in\ntheir asks for municipal dollars, however, questioned how this grant to Rotary\nwould fit into that frame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have talked about moving away from this type of\nsituation and developing a sponsorship policy to fund all these kinds of\nrequests, so why is [this money] coming out of the Council operating\ncontingency budget and not the sponsorship budget we identified in the 2019\nBudget as per our policy?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sponsorship policy, responded CAO Doug Nadorozny, is\nan opportunity for staff to deal with requests that involve specific\nsponsorship activities, such as advertising, which is set forth in sponsorship\nguidelines. Councillor Humfryes\u2019 motion, he added, is a more unusual situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis particular request is basically the funding of the\nentire project and would not fall within the guidelines of the sponsorship\nprogram,\u201d said Mr. Nadorozny. \u201cThis would be more than sponsorship. It would be\nfunding the entire effort. We would need some council authority in order to\nfund what is a new, unbudgeted event.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Tom Mrakas said he shared concerns about providing\nsponsorship outside the policy as the Town is trying to move away from that,\nbut agreed this is a very different situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInstead of taking a one-year hiatus on this event that\neveryone looks forward to and has been a staple for such a long period of time,\neventually we would either have to take this event over and have to run it in\npartnership with the Rotary Club or we would have to say we\u2019re giving up on\nthis event and it isn\u2019t happening ever again,\u201d said Mayor Mrakas. \u201cInstead of\ntaking that one year off\u2026 this is a way of continuing it and not having that\nmiss of the one year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would prefer to see it go through Sponsorship, but I\nthink this is different because we\u2019re going to end up taking this event over\nand working in partnership with the Rotary Club and the Optimists who come out\nand provide food services for this event. It would be a partnership, but it\nwould be more of a Town event.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dance in the Park will take place at Town Park this\nSunday, June 30, from 6 p.m. until midnight.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For decades, Town Park has been Aurora\u2019s destination to get a head-start on Canada Day celebrations with the annual Dance in the Park.<\/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-24103","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\/p3D2k4-6gL","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 08:51:37","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\/24103","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=24103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}