{"id":39138,"date":"2026-10-19T18:09:29","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T22:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=39138"},"modified":"2026-10-19T18:09:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T22:09:31","slug":"aurora-votes-2026-meet-your-council-candidates-george-tremtsidis-ward-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-votes-2026-meet-your-council-candidates-george-tremtsidis-ward-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora Votes 2026: Meet Your Council Candidates \u2013 George Tremtsidis, Ward 5"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

George Tremtsidis lives near Ada Johnson Park, an expansive greenspace in Aurora\u2019s Ward 5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a community park, it\u2019s supposed to be a destination, but it has untapped potential for the community\u2019s northeast neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s something Tremtsidis is hoping to change as he vies to be Aurora\u2019s next Ward 5 Councillor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI live in the Ward, I understand the Ward, I\u2019m a political junkie, and I decided to run as opposed to sitting on the sidelines,\u201d says Tremtsidis, who said he had considered whether or not to throw his hat in the ring for six months before registration opened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helping bolster his decision to join the Ward 5 campaign was a drive to bring \u201caccountability\u201d to Council table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m in the logistics business, I\u2019ve negotiated hundreds of millions of dollars [in] contracts and I hold myself and the people who work with me accountable. I expect the Mayor to hold our Operations, our Management people accountable,\u201d he says, citing Aurora Town Square of one example where he says he sees a lack of financial accountability. \u201cI understand finance very well. Understanding and crunching numbers, negotiations, I\u2019ve trained in negotiations for over 30 years and I\u2019m for people first. I can listen as well and talk. That\u2019s why God gave us two ears and one mouth \u2013 you should listen twice as much as you talk. I don\u2019t only listen, I hear what a person is trying to tell or ask me. We can agree to disagree, but we have to agree to talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think a lot of people here on Council don\u2019t do that very well. If we\u2019re making a decision such as [Aurora Town Square], I think it should have gone out as a referendum during our elections.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a Ward 5-specific front, Tremtsidis says he wants to advocate for improved snow plow service \u201cso my grass doesn\u2019t get torn up every year,\u201d as just one example. He would also like to see increased community engagement in the Ward, perhaps starting with regular community events at Ada Johnson Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a sense of community here,\u201d he says, noting that centring so many community events on one location, such as Aurora Town Square and Aurora Town Park, doesn\u2019t work for many residents who live elsewhere. \u201cWhat\u2019s so hard about having something in three or four different parks and rotating it? It\u2019s bringing people into my community, in my ward, and having a better understanding of what\u2019s happening with their time and with their taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Property taxes, he argues, should be lowered and services funded from these taxes streamlined for maximum efficiency, including Bylaw Operations, finding more cost-effective ways of maintaining outdoor skating rinks in local parks, including a return to the tried-and-true methods of flooding the ice pad areas, and enforcing vacant homes tax to bring more money into municipal coffers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have so many vacant houses here, but we don\u2019t enforce the vacant tax laws,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have millions of dollars of back debt from property taxes that are vacant and nobody does anything about it. I think Aurora is a great town to live in, I think the majority of the people I\u2019ve met, if not all of them, have been great people\u2026 but it\u2019s getting expensive to live here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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

George Tremtsidis lives near Ada Johnson Park, an expansive greenspace in Aurora\u2019s Ward 5. As a community park, it\u2019s supposed to be a destination, but it has untapped potential for the community\u2019s northeast neighbourhoods. That\u2019s something Tremtsidis is hoping to change as he vies to be Aurora\u2019s next Ward 5 Councillor. \u201cI live in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":39139,"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-39138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-abg","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-26 23:04:31","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/2026-10-22-03.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39138","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=39138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39140,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39138\/revisions\/39140"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}