{"id":888,"date":"2013-03-19T15:50:04","date_gmt":"2013-03-19T19:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=888"},"modified":"2013-03-26T13:56:58","modified_gmt":"2013-03-26T17:56:58","slug":"politics-as-usual-march-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/politics-as-usual-march-break\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICS AS USUAL: March Break"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas<\/p>\n

This week as I was running back and forth between three committee meetings, a thought occurred to me.
\nIt\u2019s been quite a while since I\u2019ve seen a Council agenda. Why haven\u2019t we had a Council meeting? I checked the Town\u2019s website and noticed that Council has been on \u201cMarch Break\u201d for two weeks. March Break? Now that\u2019s odd. The only folks that I am aware of who get a March Break are teachers.
\nI don\u2019t think anyone is suggesting that councillors are akin to teachers \u2013 goodness me, can you imagine the curriculum if designed by some of the councillors? I foresee such useful courses as \u2013 \u201cHow to tweet while attending a meeting in 5 easy steps\u201d, or \u201cHow to not make a difficult decision my referring an item back to staff for another report\u201d.
\n In any event, I thought that a March Break for Council seemed pretty darn out of the ordinary to use a polite term, so I decided to investigate. I was sure in the knowledge that Aurora was unique in giving this break. Full disclosure here \u2013 I recall that when I was a Councillor I did inquire of staff at the time why we got the time off and was told, it was \u201ctradition\u201d.
\nThough I thought the answer was ridiculous (tradition? Tradition of what? A free holiday?) given that I truly welcomed the break, I made no more of it. So perhaps a wee bit hypocritical on my part to raise it as an issue now when I benefited from it then. But I will raise it anyway.
\nI thought that the \u201ctradition\u201d of the break was limited to Aurora \u2013 a uniquely Auroran kind of thing. I was wrong. I checked the calendars of the local municipalities in the Region and it seems they all have a \u201cMarch Break\u201d. It\u2019s even printed in their calendars as \u201cMarch Break\u201d. Again, I think that\u2019s odd.
\nIt\u2019s not even timed properly to be a kind of \u201cides of March\u201d avoidance exercise. Given the shenanigans in most municipalities, it may be prudent indeed to beware the ides of March. But that isn\u2019t the case. The break is clearly geared to mesh with the school holidays.
\nOkay. So the schedule allows Councillors \u2013 and in Aurora\u2019s case part-time Councillors that often have full time day jobs \u2013 the opportunity to be off at the same time as their children. Fair enough. But I don\u2019t know about you, but even in my office, a university, we\u2019d have to book that time as vacation in order to go on March Break. At the university, we too have a winter break called reading week. Staff and professors do not get that time off though. It isn\u2019t our break.
\nSo, is the Council on vacation? The staff certainly wasn\u2019t. The Town hall has been open all week \u2013 I know because I was there dealing with staff on committee work. It does not shut down like it does over the Christmas holidays. That\u2019s because March Break is not a holiday.
\nSo just Council meetings shut down. Again \u2013 why?
\nLest I come across as just cranky \u2013 and truth be told maybe I am being a wee bit cranky about this \u2013 my point is that Council has a lot of tough decisions to make and a lot of work to do in the time remaining in their term and I am very concerned that they don\u2019t have enough time to do what they need to do.
\nThe time remaining is less than you think as it will soon be gobbled up by the silly season that is campaigning.
\nYes folks, we are only 18 months away from the next election. So, to my mind, we have about 7 months or so left for this council to get some hard decisions out of the way before we have the endless months of posturing and preening at the council table by the candidates. Let me rephrase that \u2013 before we have the endless months of even more extreme posturing at the Council table than that which we\u2019ve already witnessed. I\u2019m sure we can all agree that we\u2019ve had antics all along.
\nSo, a two week break from Council \u2013 decision making on our behalf – is a long time. Issues fester, agenda items stall, reports can\u2019t get written. Heaven knows that they do need a break from it all \u2013 don\u2019t get me wrong \u2013 but they don\u2019t all need it at the same time. A March holiday merely six weeks or so since they came back from the Christmas holiday (Council did not meet, if you recall, until the third week of January) is not an efficient use of Council\u2019s time.
\nIt doesn\u2019t allow for much time to get a whole heck of a lot of work done or decisions made, in my humble opinion. And that\u2019s all I\u2019ll say about that.
\nUntil next week, stay informed, stay involved because this is, after all, Our Town.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas This week as I was running back and forth between three committee meetings, a thought occurred to me. It\u2019s been quite a while since I\u2019ve seen a Council agenda. Why haven\u2019t we had a Council meeting? I checked the Town\u2019s website and noticed that Council has been on \u201cMarch Break\u201d for two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"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-888","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-ek","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 17:03:17","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\/888","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=888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}