{"id":5195,"date":"2014-01-15T14:23:46","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T19:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=5195"},"modified":"2014-01-22T14:46:48","modified_gmt":"2014-01-22T19:46:48","slug":"joint-operations-centre-plan-splits-council-ahead-of-next-weeks-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/joint-operations-centre-plan-splits-council-ahead-of-next-weeks-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"Joint Operations Centre plan splits Council ahead of next week\u2019s vote"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Aurora\u2019s proposed new Joint Operations Centre will move forward for the next step in its approval next week. <\/p>\n

Councillors signed off on the building itself, as well as a tentative plan to pay for the new Industrial Parkway North facility, which will combine Aurora\u2019s Parks and Recreation Department with the Department of Public Works under one roof. <\/p>\n

The building will replace the current works yard on Scanlon Court which has been characterised as outmoded and run-down in serving today\u2019s population. The current price tag of $19 million, however, comes in significantly higher than the previously estimated $14.6M approved last year, and although Mayor and Councillors agree that a new facility is needed, the increasing costs and scale of the project split Council at a Special Committee meeting last week.<\/p>\n

According to Ilmar Simanovskis, Aurora\u2019s Director of Infrastructure, the increasing costs can be attributed to topographical challenges on the site, including soil stability, the general increase in construction costs, as well as a boost in contingency funds. <\/p>\n

A series of retaining walls and other mechanisms will be put in place to make the site workable, as well as considerations for the local environment given its proximity to the Aurora Community Arboretum, and the wellhead protection area. <\/p>\n

At the end of the day, staff argued Aurora was still getting a good deal compared to other options out there for industrial land, but some Councillors were not convinced of the numbers. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we first discussed this project we were going to take $7 million from [the sale of] Leslie Street [lands] and $3 million from Scanlon and now we\u2019re saying we can\u2019t realise that,\u201d said Councillor Gallo, noting his concern that a funding plan can\u2019t be finalized until final costs are known. \u201cI don\u2019t know if that is shocking to anyone else, but I am being told until the final cost is known, I assume once it was built, we will have a bill and that will determine what the final cost will be. I have issues with making a decision to spend $19 million without knowing where that money is coming from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Councillor Chris Ballard said although he supported the construction of a new facility from the start as the current building will not serve the needs of a growing community, he balked at the budget increase and \u201cextras\u201d such as a green roof and increased storage facilities, being considered to the bottom line. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re being presented with a fait accompli [and] I am not comfortable with where the building is today, let alone adding more things to it,\u201d he said, noting he was not in favour of plans to use future development charges to fund construction. \u201cUsing DCs might not impact current taxpayers but in my mind they are a form of tax. Raising it won\u2019t hurt current residents in town but it is not fair to new residents coming into Aurora. Is that fair? I am not too sure that it is. Even if they are not yet here in Aurora, I want to make sure that we\u2019re spending their money wisely.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuite often the hardest decision a politician has to make is to say no.\u201d<\/p>\n

For others, however, it was a \u201ctough\u201d decision but one that needed to be made. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe taxpayers ultimately elected us to make decisions,\u201d said Councillor John Abel. \u201c[Costs] are a little bit more than we had anticipated and it still comes in at a market value. It is central, it is practical and it is a large piece of land that will serve the purposes that we have deemed.\u201d
\nFor Councillor Michael Thompson, going forward with the new building is a necessity rather than a want and band-aid solutions on the current site were just not working.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to acknowledge we need a facility that meets our needs,\u201d said Councillor Thompson. \u201cThat has been a key consideration for this entire term. We\u2019re building more trails, there are more homes coming into 2C and yet we\u2019re not creating or building that infrastructure to take care of those and manage the operations of the Town.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can turn this down but that cannot deny the fact we need to do it and delaying it is only going to increase the costs. The building is not going to get any cheaper.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arguments were also made by Councillors in opposition to the plan that this was not a decision to be made in an election year, but this was a position Mayor Geoffrey Dawe rejected as it is a decision, he said, which has to be made now. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are here to make decisions and are here to move the Town forward,\u201d he said. \u201cNo one is happy with the price increase. Price increases happen and our staff needs to be far more intelligent in terms of managing these projects and some of that is underway in terms of correcting those.
\n\u201cSaying no is a tough decision. Saying yes, but not right now, is a cop out, quite frankly.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of this will be financed through a debt financing plan devised by Town Treasurer Dan Elliott. As The Auroran reported last week, the plan includes the application for a grant through Ontario\u2019s Green Municipal Fund, which is still pending, and the opening up of lines of credit which would eventually be paid through future development charges coming in from Aurora\u2019s 2C lands, as well as the sale of industrial lands owned by the Town along the Leslie Street corridor.<\/p>\n

Additional options were considered early in the project including borrowing internally from Aurora\u2019s $34m+ Hydro Reserve fund and the sale of the current Scanlon Court works yard. Although Mr. Elliott said the Hydro option was met with opposition, the sale of Scanlon remains on the table, but is pending the relocation of the land\u2019s purchaser.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora\u2019s proposed new Joint Operations Centre will move forward for the next step in its approval next week. <\/p>\n

Councillors signed off on the building itself, as well as a tentative plan to pay for the new Industrial Parkway North facility, which will…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5104,"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-5195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/2014-01-08-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1lN","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-28 05:41:34","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\/5195","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=5195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}