Aurora council betting on lucky number 7 after cutting 2 seats
Third time's the charm as council votes to drop two councillors in 2018 after voting the idea down in 2013, 2015

YorkRegion.com
Oct. 30, 2017
Teresa Latchford

Aurora residents will only have six councillor positions to fill come the 2018 election.

Councillor Sandra Humfryes called for support from her fellow councillors to reduce the number of council seats from the current nine, one mayor and eight councillors to one mayor and six councillors come the new term.

Looking at information coming from the town’s governance review committee, Humfreys felt this was an opportune time to revisit  the idea, being armed with the evidence.

“(Seven) is an adequate number to have a focused group of people who can make powerful decisions going forward in the integrated issues of the community,” she said earlier this week at a council meeting. “This is step one and step two would be a ward system.”

In the 2014 municipal election, Aurora had two referendum questions on the voting ballots regarding support for a decrease in council members and the transition to a ward system.  Only one third of Aurora’s eligible voters cast a ballot but of those that did two thirds supported dropping two councillor spots.

This isn’t the first time the idea has been before council as it was voted down in 2013 and 2015, according to councillor Paul Pirri, who proposed it earlier in the term but was defeated in a 7 to 2 vote.

“I don’t know why people have changed their minds so for my sake I would like to know,” Pirri added.

Councillor Michael Thompson was glad to reply stating that his change of heart came from gaining more information and speaking with other municipalities.

“It is important to have some evidence-based statistics,” Thompson said. “I was one of the people who voted no before but I have had more opportunity to gather information and it changed my mind.”

Out of the 444 Ontario municipalities, 75 per cent have less than nine members of council. Pickering, Clarington, Waterloo, Ajax, Burlington and Vaughan, with populations ranging from 90,000 to 183,000, make it work with seven seats, he added.

“There is an effective decision-making study out of Harvard that found for every person over seven, you reduce effective decision making by 10 per cent,” he said.

However, not all councillors were convinced the community would be better served with fewer councillors sitting at the table.

“Aurora has had eight councillors for a long time,” councillor Jeff Thom said. “More representation, more voices and more views at the table is better in my opinion.”

He also pointed out that the population continues to grow and the provincial and federal governments have increased their seats over the last few years.

Thom is also hesitant to make such an important decision before the final report from the governance review committee is presented.

Councillor Wendy Gaertner echoed Thom’s statements and feels more public consultation needs to be conducted on the subject.

“While our council has pretty good attendance, what happens if someone is away and you only have six making decisions,” she asked. “I’m in favour of six full-time councillors but not part-time.”

Council voted to drop two councillor seats.