{"id":8582,"date":"2014-10-22T15:29:48","date_gmt":"2014-10-22T19:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=8582"},"modified":"2014-11-05T11:34:38","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T16:34:38","slug":"mayoral-candidates-sling-more-than-mud-at-final-debate-in-battle-over-golf-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/mayoral-candidates-sling-more-than-mud-at-final-debate-in-battle-over-golf-tournament\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayoral candidates sling more than mud at final debate in battle over golf tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

What was expected to be a debate simply about the future of sports and recreation in Aurora turned out to a full blown battle between Aurora\u2019s two mayoral candidates as the Mayor\u2019s Charity Golf Tournament hit the fan. <\/p>\n

The tussle broke out at last Wednesday\u2019s All-Candidates\u2019 meeting, hosted by Sport Aurora at the Royal Canadian Legion. Sport Aurora\u2019s debate was the third in a series of three All-Candidates\u2019 meetings intended to allow voters to get up close and personal with the two mayoral candidates and 28 individuals vying for eight seats around the Council table with a focus on what each of them would do to further sports and recreation in town. <\/p>\n

Things took a turn, however, when one resident, who asked several questions from the floor, turned his attention to the annual Mayor\u2019s Charity Golf Tournament, which was held last month at Silver Lakes Golf Club. The man said in a perusal of incumbent Geoff Dawe\u2019s website that he couldn\u2019t find where the funds raised in the tourney were going, and questioned the \u201caccountability\u201d of the event.<\/p>\n

While Mr. Dawe countered that there was a full listing of all recipients online, he balked at the suggestion that the tournament was anything less than transparent. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe people who get it are absolutely identified and to suggest otherwise, that I am not being transparent is, for me, to be kind, incorrect,\u201d said Mr. Dawe. \u201cThe developers are indeed sponsors. Someone asked what we\u2019re getting the sponsors to do, and we get developers to do things like support the golf tournament, which generates cash, which goes back to needy groups in Town. If people don\u2019t want to do that, I am fine with that. We will just abandon the needy groups. If we think that is the way to go, then let\u2019s just jump back four years to where it was. It is absolutely transparent, it is absolutely open, and to suggest otherwise is just wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taking his turn to respond, John Gallo said support from developers was not necessarily the most \u201cinteresting\u201d thing about the golf tournament. Waving a typewritten piece of paper, which he claimed was an email sent to him \u201canonymously\u201d, he questioned Mr. Dawe on who actually organized the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will tell you who organized it: the staff at the Town of Aurora organized this \u2013 and who pays for the staff at the Town of Aurora? Guess what.\u201d
\n\u201cThat\u2019s bullshit,\u201d replied Mr. Dawe. \u201cI am not going to sit here and let someone lie.\u201d<\/p>\n

After admonishing Mr. Dawe for being \u201cunprofessional\u201d, Mr. Gallo went on to claim staff members were \u201cforced\u201d to take vacation days to organize the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no issue with what the Mayor was doing, raising money for great purposes. My issue is how he went about doing it. It is not a Town of Aurora-sponsored event. He should have got authority from the Town of Aurora before using Town resources to organize his event. Other people will have to ask him whether or not staff participated in organizing that event and I wonder why. Did they take a vacation day? Probably. Were they forced to? I don\u2019t know. I have a letter here, anonymous, mailed to me from someone explaining exactly what happened with the Mayor\u2019s Golf Tournament and I may very well take out the names and put it on a blog on my website if you want to see exactly what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

(At press time, Mr. Gallo had not produced any form of the email in question \u2013 redacted or otherwise \u2013 to his blog. When The Auroran asked whether or not he had any intentions on doing so, he said he was still \u201cconsidering\u201d it.)<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Mr. Dawe continued to call B.S. in not so many words on Mr. Gallo\u2019s claims, as did organizers who put together this year\u2019s tourney.
\n\u201cNo, I didn\u2019t force anybody to work on the Mayor\u2019s Charity Golf Tournament,\u201d Mr. Dawe continued. \u201cPeople volunteered. Yes, we did have staff members work on it. They took a vacation day for that day. If we had a meeting, it happens at lunchtime. The committee is co-chaired by Tim Jones, who does not work for the Town, by Steve Hinder who does not work for the Town, Melanie Bell who does not work for the Town, the majority of people do not work for the Town.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Bell also took the opportunity to go up to the microphone to counter Mr. Gallo\u2019s claims. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have been on the Mayor\u2019s Golf Tournament for the past three years and I can hold my hand up and say it is community members that are a part of the Committee,\u201d she said. \u201cWe work very hard so we can give back to the community and all of those organizations benefit from having this tournament. So, what if builders take part? There are sponsors that are part of the tournament, so all of those funds that are raised go towards helping local community organizations in the Town of Aurora. It just made me so angry and cross because the transparency is there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Days after the event, Mr. Dawe said while he and Ms. Bell were so \u201cagitated\u201d by the claims that emotion came into the conversation, he was unrepentant about his word choice, adding that three staff members ultimately decided to take vacation days to participate in the tournament. <\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes you don\u2019t think so well when you are that emotional about the thing,\u201d he said. I have only had one negative comment [about the word]. All the others said, \u2018It is about time you showed some passion, dude,\u2019 because I tend to be a far more reserved person than not. [Those claims were] politics at its lowest form.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What was expected to be a debate simply about the future of sports and recreation in Aurora turned out to a full blown battle between Aurora\u2019s two mayoral candidates as the Mayor\u2019s Charity Golf Tournament hit the fan. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8557,"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":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8582","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\/10\/2014-10-23-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2eq","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 07:32:57","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\/8582","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=8582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}