{"id":9830,"date":"2015-02-18T18:48:26","date_gmt":"2015-02-18T23:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=9830"},"modified":"2015-02-25T16:32:35","modified_gmt":"2015-02-25T21:32:35","slug":"promenade-plans-delayed-as-aurora-finalizes-capital-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/promenade-plans-delayed-as-aurora-finalizes-capital-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Promenade plans delayed as Aurora finalizes capital budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Plans for a revamped Aurora Promenade have been delayed after a heated debate at Council last week.<\/p>\n

Streetscape designs for the Promenade, which includes stretches of Yonge Street and Wellington Street in Aurora\u2019s Downtown Core was the last item for Council to consider after finishing debates on the 2015 Capital Budget. While debates over the Operating Budget, the portion on the budget that has a direct impact on residential tax bills, is due to kick off next Monday, there was no shortage of debate on this item last Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The streetscape design includes provisions like street furniture such as benches and planters, to make the area in question more pedestrian friendly and, in turn, give a boost to area businesses, but the primary bone of contention last week was the replacement of current pavement with patterned pavement to the tune of over $2 million.<\/p>\n

Although Council was only considering the design phase of the project at approximately $200,000, the hefty price tag which could be coming down the pipe, pending further discussions, was too much for some to swallow.<\/p>\n

Councillor Michael Thompson, for instance, said he was expecting more information to come before Council by the time this year\u2019s budget deliberations rolled around that would be speaking to the financial implementations of the plan, but that was not what was there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had serious concerns about the cost of sidewalks at $2 million and I wasn\u2019t in favour of moving forward with it, and I still haven\u2019t seen the report,\u201d he said. \u201cWithout having that, I am not willing to move forward on this capital project conditionally, or as is. The report spoke nothing to the benefits of doing this. At the same time, we are talking about the Community Improvement Plan and the investment of business owners in re-facing and revitalizing the downtown core and how that kind of project provides a return on investment. I think that $2 million could be better spent on other ways to revitalize the downtown than rebuilding sidewalks which, at the time of the report, really all was about a design and a look.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was a view shared by Councillor Wendy Gaertner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not interested in approving anything, conditionally or otherwise, until Council gets a more comprehensive report on this,\u201d she said.
\nAdded Councillor Jeff Thom: \u201c$2 million for sidewalks is an outrageous amount of money. I haven\u2019t seen a report on this, so I have a hard time providing my consent on conditional approval or any approval for something that may or may not cost $200,000, or $2 million, or twenty bucks.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Councillor John Abel, a more \u201cwholesome\u201d discussion of what should be done in the area, particularly at Yonge and Wellington, should figure into the debate before proceeding further. Although he too said he was not in favour of the $2 million proposed for new sidewalks, noting he was not convinced that alone would bring residents \u201cflooding\u201d into the area, information was lacking.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should be very certain and confident in ourselves that something will be realised from it,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t believe patio concrete is going to revitalize that corner. It is going to take businesses, restaurants, atmosphere, gatherings and that is where we should be looking, in my mind, and then we can finish off the streetscape.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some, on the other hand, said they were in favour of going forward with the design at this point, comfortable there would be room for debate on the high ticket items once the design is complete and up for Council consideration. <\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, the streetscape is very important,\u201d said Councillor Sandra Humfryes. \u201cIt goes right down to the revitalization of our downtown core. I know there were some concerns with some of the areas of priority of what we wanted done\u2026[but] I don\u2019t want this to stop. I don\u2019t want to defer it. We need to move forward. We talked about it a lot last year, so I am looking forward to that report.\u201d<\/p>\n

A similar view was offered by Councillor Paul Pirri, who said he did not understand Councillor Thompson\u2019s objections, stating a number of items have been approved conditionally pending further information. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re doing the exact same thing \u2013 conditionally putting it on the table, earmarking it as something that could potentially go forward,\u201d he said. \u201cIf the report comes through and we don\u2019t like it then, we can turn it down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Exchanges between Councillors Pirri and Thompson got more heated as the debate continued with Councillor Pirri saying he believed \u201cpeople are afraid of conditionally approving something\u201d and Councillor Thompson countering with a point of order objecting to the characterization of being \u201cafraid of action.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know why we are getting so heated here,\u201d intervened Mayor Geoff Dawe. \u201cWe\u2019re looking at a conditional approval on a project that is $200,000. We\u2019re not looking at anything else.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not really discussing $2 million for sidewalks. We\u2019re discussing\u2026a conditional approval pending further information from staff. We\u2019re not talking about spending money with respect to the motion that is on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plans for a revamped Aurora Promenade have been delayed after a heated debate at Council last week.<\/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":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2yy","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-02 07:37:13","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\/9830","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=9830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}