{"id":38327,"date":"2026-06-11T16:07:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T20:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=38327"},"modified":"2026-06-11T16:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T20:09:09","slug":"elected-officials-should-reimburse-town-for-conference-expenses-if-they-decide-not-to-seek-re-election-resident-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/elected-officials-should-reimburse-town-for-conference-expenses-if-they-decide-not-to-seek-re-election-resident-suggests\/","title":{"rendered":"Elected officials should reimburse Town for conference expenses if they decide not to seek re-election: resident suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As Council prepares to approve a new reporting mechanism to share amongst themselves \u2013 and the wider community \u2013 what they learned attending conferences and other events on the taxpayer\u2019s dime, a further layer of accountability should be added, suggested a resident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a Council member attends a conference or similar event at the public\u2019s expense in the last six months of a Council term and then decides not to seek re-election, they should have to reimburse the Town, stated resident John Hartman at last week\u2019s General Committee meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hartman made his suggestion in response to a report in front of Committee outlining the new reporting framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reporting framework has been in the works since the end of April and will require members of Council attending such events to report back not only on the costs incurred, but \u201ckey learnings and takeaways, any relevant best practices or ideas that could be considered for implementation in the Town of Aurora,\u201d and these reports will be made public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAurora has seven Council members, of whom four attended conferences, representing a 57 per cent participation rate,\u201d said the staff report. \u201cAurora\u2019s total spend on Council conferences was $10,164, which is below the peer-municipality average total expenditure of $15,035. When costs are examined on a per-attendee basis, Aurora\u2019s average spend per attending Council member was $2,541, compared to a peer average of $3,132. This indicates that Aurora\u2019s per-participant conference costs are meaningfully lower than the average of comparable municipalities. When assessed across all members of Council, including those who did not attend conferences, Aurora\u2019s average spend per Council member was $1,452, compared to the peer-municipality average of $1,678.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delegating to last week\u2019s meeting, Hartman said the numbers \u201cmight look good on the surface\u201d but needs some additional context on location, accommodation, and more \u2013 and more information beyond what is proposed should be considered as part of the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe draft external report template is extremely well done. I might suggest it also include a question asking how many other Council members attended the same conference or event,\u201d said Hartman. \u201cThis way, when summaries and reports are made public, people know exactly how many other Council members attended that same event. It might be a promising start for the idea of transparency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBased on me speaking to over a dozen community members, including several Council and staff, it\u2019s to be noted that no Council member should attend such an event or conference at the Town of Aurora\u2019s expense, should that person declare they are not running for Council in the next election. That window of non-attendance should be no more than six months. I accept that a person has until the end of August of an election year to declare their intentions, but should an event, conference, or seminar occur within that period that they attend, then they declare they are not running, the Town of Aurora should seek ways to have the funds fully reimbursed. It is somewhat shameful that someone would leverage Town funds for their own gain without any benefit to the Town nor its taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hartman\u2019s suggestions were considered by Council, with Ward 3 Councillor Wendy Gaertner suggesting she could bring forward a motion that no Council member may attend conferences in the last six months of the term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Councillors will soon need to report on learnings from conferences<\/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_feature_clip_id":0,"_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-38327","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\/p3D2k4-9Yb","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 04:30:13","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\/38327","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=38327"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38329,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38327\/revisions\/38329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}