{"id":4886,"date":"2013-12-11T13:52:58","date_gmt":"2013-12-11T18:52:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=4886"},"modified":"2013-12-18T11:07:52","modified_gmt":"2013-12-18T16:07:52","slug":"an-extra-seat-for-vaughan-would-dilute-auroras-voice-at-region-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/an-extra-seat-for-vaughan-would-dilute-auroras-voice-at-region-council\/","title":{"rendered":"An extra seat for Vaughan would dilute Aurora\u2019s voice at Region: Council"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

If Aurora can\u2019t have a second seat on Regional Council, than the City of Vaughan shouldn\u2019t get an extra voice at the table either, according to Council. <\/p>\n

Councillors are set to approve a motion this week voting down a bid by Vaughan to have an additional seat at Regional Council, after multiple bids to add a Regional Councillor for the Town of Aurora were voted down by larger York Region municipalities. <\/p>\n

That is the recommendation coming to Council following last Tuesday\u2019s General Committee meeting. Going into last week\u2019s session, the recommendation to Council was to provide direction on Vaughan\u2019s bid. In order for their bid to be successful, it needs to get a \u201ctriple majority\u201d in approval at the Regional table, the approval of a majority of York Region\u2019s nine municipal councils, and a majority of eligible voters. Aurora Council decided to move an option refusing the change. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it is to our advantage, seeing as how the Region has not cooperated with our requests as a whole,\u201d said Councillor John Abel. \u201cI think it is important that this Council makes it clear we have a problem with their reasoning [as] we don\u2019t have the population [to warrant a second seat] but we do play a significant role in the Region. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf they aren\u2019t willing as a whole to listen, I am not willing to entertain them as a whole with their recommendation of adding one to Vaughan simply because of population. [My decision] isn\u2019t based on a practical way of doing it. Mine is purely political. They refused, so I am refusing. That is my option.\u201d<\/p>\n

Councillor Paul Pirri said his support of blocking Vaughan\u2019s bid was less to do with how Regional Council decided the fate of Aurora\u2019s bid, but in diluting Aurora\u2019s voice at the Regional table. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a growing divide between the Northern Six and the Southern Three,\u201d said Councillor Pirri on the nine municipalities. \u201cThe Southern Three keeps getting bigger and bigger, and my concern in allowing them to get bigger and bigger is Aurora has less and less of a voice proportionately at Regional Council. If we want the best deal for Aurora, it is to limit the size of the larger municipalities and stop them from getting bigger and bigger. Our voice will get squeezed out at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doubting the option to block Vaughan\u2019s bid was Councillor Chris Ballard. He said it was problematic voting \u2018no\u2019 just because Aurora\u2019s bid was scuttled. It won\u2019t make Councillors \u201cbigger people\u201d, he argued.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are all members of York Region and at the end of the day we have concerns about the power of the Southern Three versus the power of the Northern Six. But I think if we vote for Option Two, that reinforces the stereotype of it is us versus them. Perhaps it is unfortunate, but what we really need to be talking about are some of the issues Councillor Pirri raised about representation, not only based on population, but based on need. Saying no just reinforces there is a power struggle between North and South\u2026and I don\u2019t think it does [either side] any good.\u201d <\/p>\n

In response, however, Councillor Abel said he was not trying to create \u201cdivision\u201d or \u201cpolarity\u201d in the Region, rather than having Aurora\u2019s voices heard. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is our moment to make ourselves heard,\u201d he concluded. \u201cI see no [other reason presented for Vaughan\u2019s extra seat] than population. I don\u2019t know why it is so important that they have that extra seat. Georgina is getting an extra seat based on their population and they are not even half of us. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are certain circumstances why you would have that extra seat and not based solely on population. Having said that, I am all for what Aurora plays in the Region and how important it is to have a strong, unified voice at the provincial and other levels. I don\u2019t wish to say that it is a get even. In my mind, it is not. It is an opportunity to voice our concerns on what is going on at the Region and this is one way we get to voice it.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If Aurora can\u2019t have a second seat on Regional Council, than the City of Vaughan shouldn\u2019t get an extra voice at the table either, according to Council. <\/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":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1gO","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-14 13:35:59","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\/4886","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=4886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}