{"id":27128,"date":"2020-07-30T21:39:43","date_gmt":"2020-07-31T01:39:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=27128"},"modified":"2020-07-30T21:39:48","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T01:39:48","slug":"engage-aurora-invites-residents-to-weigh-in-through-new-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/engage-aurora-invites-residents-to-weigh-in-through-new-platform\/","title":{"rendered":"Engage Aurora invites residents to weigh in through new platform"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you have ever had a concern about something in Aurora, and have been looking for an avenue to weigh in while also protecting your privacy, the Town has launched a new platform to allow residents to speak out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engage Aurora, an online platform launched by the Town last month, has replaced Place Speak, the Town\u2019s previous channel for online engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was launched to address some of the \u201climitations\u201d previously identified and provide residents with a streamlined way to engage in the public process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere were definitely some limitations to PlaceSpeak in terms of usability, the friendliness of the platform and being able to encourage residents to engage on there,\u201d says Cindy Shaver of the Town of Aurora. \u201cThere was a lot of feedback from the public that it was not a user-friendly template to manoeuvre and intuitively know what to do on the platform.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the largest obstacles of the previous model was the user verification process. It is important to \u201cverify who your audience is\u201d and gauge who is actually participating in engagement opportunities, but Ms. Shaver says some people were \u201cturned off\u201d on the amount of information they had to provide to participate in the old platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow, we\u2019re not asking for specific addresses,\u201d she explains. \u201cThe new platform asks you for your first name, last name, email address and postal code and age demographic, and that allows us to better understand who we are speaking with\u2026without having to give specific addresses, and a huge advantage is you can actually have a screen name. You provide information to us in the back end so we can verify you are from Aurora, but residents don\u2019t need to feel concerned or that they [are] not able to voice their opinion as they want to for fear of backlash or that maybe someone can identify them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can use a screen name that allows them to keep their anonymity on our platform but allows us on the back end to be able to verify it is actually someone from Aurora when we look at the comments and the feedback provided.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engage Aurora runs on the Bang The Table platform and has allowed the Town to tailor the engagement tool for a more local feel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four municipally-driven initiatives are currently on Engage Aurora for the public to comment on, including the development of the Town\u2019s 2021 Budget and the creation of a Community Energy Action Plan (CEAP).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe idea is that this is going to grow,\u201d says Ms. Shaver, adding that municipal staff are currently being trained on the ins and outs of the platform in order to engage directly with residents and address their concerns. \u201cWhat we envision for this is we will be able to get more of those engagement opportunities online because experts in our organization are actually going to lead the consultations online and be able to participate in this online process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeyond that, we\u2019re also embarking on our Official Plan review, which is being led by our Planning Department. Right now, we\u2019re just asking for general comments, but this is about a three-year process for the Official Plan review and we will be going through different phases where we will be soliciting feedback from the community on certain topics. The idea is things are always changing and evolving, so we\u2019re looking for residents to register now so they can stay abreast of what is happening and this will be the go-to spot for engagement opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether you want to provide feedback on any of these initiatives, or a concern that is specific to your own particular neighbourhood, Ms. Shaver encourages residents to \u201ccome in, poke around and take a look\u201d on what Engage Aurora has to offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI definitely think residents need to give this a chance, sign up, and what\u2019s really cool is obviously you don\u2019t need to get involved in everything, not every consultation is going to be to each individual resident\u2019s interest, but what you can do is follow projects that are of interest,\u201d she says. \u201cThis is a great way to stay abreast of one thing that is of interest and follow a project from beginning to end and engage where able to. It is definitely Council\u2019s will to have our engagement opportunities expand. That is definitely the area we\u2019re looking at as an area we haven\u2019t really tapped with full capabilities. We know our residents are busy, we know that while we\u2019re providing lots of opportunities and we\u2019re expanding our in-person engagement\u2026we\u2019re still only hitting a small fraction of the population because people are busy. This platform allows people to engage with us when it is convenient for them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To become involved or find out more, visit engageaurora.ca.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

If you have ever had a concern about something in Aurora, and have been looking for an avenue to weigh in while also protecting your privacy, the Town has launched a new platform to allow residents to speak out. Engage Aurora, an online platform launched by the Town last month, has replaced Place Speak, the […]<\/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-27128","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\/p3D2k4-73y","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 09:06:56","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\/27128","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=27128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}