{"id":25751,"date":"2020-01-23T18:49:51","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T23:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25751"},"modified":"2020-01-23T18:49:59","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T23:49:59","slug":"regional-council-membership-should-be-reduced-in-bid-for-equity-says-mayor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/regional-council-membership-should-be-reduced-in-bid-for-equity-says-mayor\/","title":{"rendered":"Regional Council membership should be reduced in bid for equity, says Mayor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Significant changes to the structure of Regional Council\nshould be considered to allow communities like Aurora a greater say at the\ntable, according to Mayor Tom Mrakas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Mrakas, Aurora\u2019s sole voice at the Region, put\nforward a notice of motion on Thursday calling on the Regional Council as a\nwhole to task staff with reviewing their composition with an eye of reducing\ntheir numbers from the present 21 (11 Regional Councillors, nine mayors and one\nchair) to just 10 members \u2013 a seat for each of York Region\u2019s nine mayors plus\nthe Regional Chair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If such a reduction gains traction, Mayor Mrakas says the\nnew structure should give each of the mayors a weighted vote tied to the\npopulation of their respective communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previously, Aurora mayors \u2013 including Mayor Mrakas \u2013 have\nadvocated for an additional seat at the Regional table. Aurora is one of just\nthree York Region municipalities, along with King, Whitchurch-Stouffville and\nEast Gwillimbury, to have just one voice at the Regional level, while smaller\ncommunities like Georgina, have multiple representatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As previous bids for an additional Aurora seat have\nfizzled, Mayor Mrakas hopes this will be a better way to ensure equity at the\nRegion going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe believe we\u2019re being under-represented at the Region\nand there are others who believe they are under-represented,\u201d says Mayor\nMrakas. \u201cVaughan believes they are under-represented by population and the\nnumbers show that they are. Then, there are some that you look at and you say\nthey are over-represented; Georgina, for instance, has a smaller population\nthan us, but they have two members at the table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat happens through these discussions is as soon as\nAurora asks for a seat, Vaughan asks for a seat and then someone else in turn\nasks for a seat and you\u2019re looking at increasing the size of Regional Council\nand adding four to five politicians. That is not going to happen and that is\nwhy it never happens, because it is not just about adding one seat. If you\u2019re\nactually at having a true representation by population, to me the best way to\ngo about that \u2013 and the most cost-effective way is to reduce Regional Council\nto nine mayors, create a weighted voting system and that will all of a sudden\nput everyone at true representation by population.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It might be a tall order to get Regional politicians to\nseriously consider slashing their own ranks in half, but Mayor Mrakas is hoping\nthe facts, in a report by the end of the year if Regional Council approves his\nmotion in February, will ultimately win the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAurora is currently below Georgina in representation,\nbelow Newmarket in representation, equal to Stouffville, East Gwillimbury and\nKing, so if you were to go with a nine-mayor system with a weighted voting\nsystem, we would leapfrog Stouffville, King, Georgina, East Gwillimbury and we\nwould be just slightly behind Newmarket \u2013 which would have seven votes and we\nwould have five. It puts us in a better position to be represented properly as\nper our population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is [cost-effective] because as we grow, and we all know each of the municipalities are growing, if you need to make changes [according to population], you don\u2019t need to add another position; all you need to do is readjust the voting numbers.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He concedes it will be a \u201cdifficult process\u201d to get\nthrough, but says he honestly believes it is \u201cthe one system we can all look at\nand agree we are all being presented properly, fairly, and in the most\ncost-effective manner for the Region and for the residents of the Region.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am not saying that there\u2019s an issue with the status\nquo,\u201d he says. \u201cYork Region as a whole does a very good job where we all work\ntogether well, but when you\u2019re looking at that representation by population,\nthere are other solutions that you might be able to make some fixes that would\nwork for the meantime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is the best solution for long-term. That\u2019s why us\nas politicians we need to stop looking to the next election four years from\nnow, we need to start looking ten, twenty, thirty years from now and what can\nstand the test of time. I believe that making this change now at the Region,\nthey will have the best governance model for a very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Significant changes to the structure of Regional Council should be considered to allow communities like Aurora a greater say at the table, according to Mayor Tom Mrakas. Mayor Mrakas, Aurora\u2019s sole voice at the Region, put forward a notice of motion on Thursday calling on the Regional Council as a whole to task staff with […]<\/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-25751","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\/p3D2k4-6Hl","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 08:40:25","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\/25751","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=25751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}