{"id":26382,"date":"2020-04-16T15:19:59","date_gmt":"2020-04-16T19:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26382"},"modified":"2020-04-16T15:20:07","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T19:20:07","slug":"rent-is-top-concern-for-business-continuity-task-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/rent-is-top-concern-for-business-continuity-task-force\/","title":{"rendered":"Rent is top concern for Business Continuity Task Force"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Local small businesses are facing many challenges amid\nthe COVID-19 pandemic, not the least of which is finding the means to pay their\nrent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was one of the primary concerns of the local\nbusiness community when they convened virtually on Friday morning for the\nsecond meeting of the Aurora Business Continuity Task Force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A joint initiative of the Town of Aurora and the Aurora\nChamber of Commerce, the purpose of the Task Force is to \u201chelp find creative\nways to assist Aurora\u2019s small businesses\u201d and now the first order of business\nis to help property owners and businesses communicate on a path forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we are constantly hearing is the same thing we have\nbeen advocating to the Province and the Feds for is rent, rent, rent. We\u2019re\nhearing from tenants and we\u2019re also hearing from landlords as well,\u201d said Mayor\nTom Mrakas immediately following Friday\u2019s session. \u201cWe understand that while\nthe businesses and the tenants are struggling through this unprecedented time\nthat some of the landlords are in the same struggle, the same situation, so\nwe\u2019re hearing it from both ends, but what we\u2019re also hearing is some are not\nresponding. Some landlords are not responding to tenants\u2019 calls, emails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPart of our discussion was if we can get a list of all\nthose we\u2019re hearing from who are not responding, I will be personally calling\neach one of those landlords because, as I have said a couple of times now, this\nis unacceptable. Everyone\u2019s situation is different and it is a case by case\nthing that we should be looking at but, at the same time, in the times we\u2019re in\nright now, there is no excuse not to pick up the phone or respond by email and\nexplain clearly what can be and what can\u2019t be done \u2013 and if there are things\nthe landlord and tenant can do together to try and help each other during this\ntime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am going to make it a priority of mine that any\nlandlord that I hear of that is not responding to a tenant, I will be making\nthat call to them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond a phone call, however, municipalities have limited\nmeans of doing much else to bring landlords to the table, according to\nOntario\u2019s Municipal Act. What they can do, however, is a measure the Town put\nin place in March: providing a property tax break to commercial business owners\n\u2013 but only if they can prove that the break they are receiving is benefiting\ntheir tenants as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you want a deferral, you have to have a signed\nagreement that you\u2019re going to be passing it along to your tenants, otherwise\nyou\u2019re not going to get a deferral from the Town,\u201d says Mayor Mrakas. \u201cWhat are\nwe legally allowed to do? What do we have the authority to do? What are all the\ntools available to us, our solicitor, our CAO, our ELT team? Everyone is\nworking on those things to be able to see what we absolutely can do and I can\ntell you that whatever is available to us, we will implement to ensure that\nthere is a working relationship between the landlords and the tenants at this\npoint. Beyond that, you need the Province and the Federal government come in\nand put in actual measures that can be implemented. Most of the things we can\ndo is the advocacy part.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the moment, no one knows just how long this pandemic \u2013\nand Emergency Orders put in place \u2013 will last, but the Aurora Business\nContinuity Task Force is looking ahead to the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have talked about the here and now, but we have also talked about moving forward because we have to be proactive in our approach and look at once we get out of this, what is going to happen? How do we get our businesses back up and running?\u201d said the Mayor. \u201cThe same as the Premier talks about, the economic recovery, how do we implement things that will help our businesses start to flourish again? We\u2019re going to start taking an approach to looking at beyond the current state and moving forward six months and a year from now and what we can do to put those things in place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Local small businesses are facing many challenges amid the COVID-19 pandemic, not the least of which is finding the means to pay their rent. This was one of the primary concerns of the local business community when they convened virtually on Friday morning for the second meeting of the Aurora Business Continuity Task Force. A […]<\/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-26382","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\/p3D2k4-6Rw","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-13 11:53:37","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\/26382","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=26382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}