Council Watch #9 – by Richard Johnson
It has been a while since I last posted a formal Council Watch comment, but that is not been as a result of lack of material!
Did anyone catch this week’s Council meeting on Rogers TV?
I’m aware that no one appeared to be sitting in the audience at the Town Chambers but I do have to wonder how many people know what is really going on at 1 Municipal Way these days! I would not blame anyone for claiming to have better things to do with their time, but sometimes I can’t help but tune in to see the latest developments at Council. For those people who may want to watch council in action, you may want to note the procedure provided below.
This week’s meeting was as good as any to give one an idea of what has been going on for some time now, at Council.
- Select: www.rogerstv.com
- Choose your region – Aurora – from the pull down menu, then choose your language (You probably only have to do this on your first visit)
- Click on Video on Demand link located near the top right corner of the home page.
- Select City Council from the Shows/Events option.
- Select City Council – Aurora from the Sections option.
- Select All from the Category option.
You should see all of the council meetings there and you can choose by date for the one you wish to view.
I can’t possibly cover all of the shenanigans I witnessed, but I can assure that all is not what it appears to be at the Town Hall when one puts what is being said into some necessary perspective. It really is something to behold.
Here are some highlights as far as I am concerned.
The town is still debating the costs surrounding the diesel generator it plans to install at the Town Hall. This issue strikes me as more than a bit ironic given the town’s clear and apparent lack of understanding with regards to the power supply issues and corresponding environmental impacts that the region has been facing for years, but at least one thing became very clear last night. Despite asking developers to “consider” (Council’s words not mine) incorporating more green initiatives into their developments while passing the cost on to consumers, the town itself does not appear to be prepared to incur any extra costs associated with buying a more environmentally friendly alternative to the proposed diesel generator or to even to install solar power generation on the new recreation center (not to mention any number of other similar eco-opportunities). Council also seemed to not grasp the difference between supplying back-up power to a telecom local area network (LAN) versus providing back-up power to the whole building. Council could not grasp why a substantial change in the stated specifications contained in the request for proposal resulted in an increased cost estimate. I kid you not. Staff tried in vain to explain the basics, but to no avail, so you guessed it, another staff report is on the way.
Given Council’s track record on power supply issues it is doubtful that they have explored the Ontario Power Authority’s Feed in Tariff (FIT) program or the fact that a properly designed and more environmentally friendly bio-diesel generator could in fact allow the town to recoup most, if not all, of the associated cost for the back-up source of power. To go a step further, a gas powered generator, a gas fired combined heat and power plant, or a district energy plant could be even cleaner still, but clearly local generation is not something the council is prepared to even discuss given our experience with power supply issues over the past few years, even if local generation does make technical, economic as well as environmental sense on any number of levels.
The simple truth is that Council wants to ensure that the lights stay on at the Town Hall with diesel power no less, even if the power may go out for the rest of us. Working towards finding viable long term and comprehensive power solutions clearly is not seen as being Council’s responsibility or priority for that matter. The most difficult thing for me to accept is that the facts surrounding the viable alternatives and the resulting impacts of various power supply solutions never do seem to matter. If you ask me, the Mayor and Councillor MacEachern get what they want on the big picture issues and who cares about what the impact is on others, including other municipalities, as a direct result of their actions and inactions?
This week the Mayor even stated her intention to do what I (and others) suggested should have been done over five years ago with regards to revisiting our planning codes and objectives in order to address corresponding environmental impacts more proactively, but then again it is an election year so why not claim to be on the cutting edge ? One can always bait and switch after the fact, regardless of what the speech writers may say so effectively during any given election.
The Mayor can’t even apparently understand the development approval process as was demonstrated by her handling of the condo development proposed for Yonge and Wellington. Remember the site that the Mayor demanded should get cleaned up ASAP and the same development that she repeatedly claims has not been delayed by council for years? In a rambling statement the Mayor said that the delays caused in 2008 were not under her term in office (go figure), but in that case she must have misspoken by accident. The Mayor and council could not for the life of them figure out the approval process and they asked for yet another staff report that could delay the development approval for a further three or four months. At this rate there is a good chance that there will be no shovels in the ground for at least another twelve months in the best case scenario. It was stated that Council does not want to make any decision until the Yonge Street improvement plan (aka the Ken Whitehurst & Co Report) is presented in September after taking over a year to prepare, so I guess we’ll all just have to wait until the election to see what the grand plans are, not to mention who gets elected as Mayor on October 25th, 2010. The grand redevelopment plan pending will no doubt be incorporated with great fanfare into the Mayor’s re-election campaign given that Ken Whitehurst will very likely once again play a significant role in crafting Phyllis’s every utterance, along with the Mayor’s newly hired speech writer. You can see where this is all going.
The other inescapable highlight of this week’s meeting was the electioneering that is clearly well under way. Don’t get me wrong, I think that I still detected the bitter undertone and some less than subtle grumbling, but thanks to a great set up by Councillor Wilson the Mayor could boast what a GREAT job staff and council have done in reducing the back-log of issues. A job well done, way to go everyone and thanks especially who paid with their jobs! Amazingly the Mayor also even lost a couple of recorded votes which seems to buck the trend and may even suggest that either “the block” is not what it once was, or someone may have wanted to make the point that at least at times the block is controlled by others. Of course some would insist that there is no block or that all of this is completely normal and to be expected from a well oiled and professional team.
Oh the web we weave in Aurora!
I suggest that you should take the time necessary to watch the Rogers video of the meeting and decide for yourself if this is good government and smart growth development in action.
RJ
