Transparency, communication top issues at Aurora all-candidates meeting

Closed door discussions debated by Dawe, Gallo

Yorkregion.com
Oct. 6, 2014
By Laura Finney

Transparency was a major issue residents asked Aurora’s mayoral hopefuls about during the all-candidates meeting in Sunday afternoon.

Early in a Q&A segment, Geoff Dawe and John Gallo were asked what transparency means to them.

“In many respects, transparency is in the eye of the beholder. As we found over the four years of council, everybody seems to have a different concept of it,” Mayor Dawe said.

Transparency is being open with decisions and reasoning when possible, but there are certain issues that are not made public based on advice from legal staff, Dawe said.

“We work specifically with our solicitor to see what can be disclosed and what can we not disclose,” he said. “We need to disclose everything that is possible.”

Gallo said transparency is bringing as much information as possible to the council table and the public agenda.

“Every large decision at the council table should be public,” he said and added that Mavrinac park is one example where council did a poor job relaying important information to residents.

Discussions were made behind closed doors and council needed to communicate with the residents to let them know things were changing, Gallo said. Council didn’t do that, so he reached out to the community to enable citizens to be part of the discussions, he added.

“I was happy (residents) ended up coming and expressing their opinion,” he said. “It’s that kind of thing I want to continue doing.”

While Dawe said transparency is essential, he said it has to be done in conjunction with the legal department and with everyone on council.

The town is now in a legal battle over the park and “that may have been avoided if we had managed to actually work together”, Dawe said, adding sometimes, council has to step back from rushing to let people know and think about the long term effects of its decision, he said.

But Gallo did not agree.

“It’s funny. We differ in terms of definition of transparency,” Gallo said. “Because if I didn’t do what I did, which was put forward to the public what was a public document, I don’t believe we would have been where we were.”

While he said he cannot speak to some of the conversations that happened behind closed doors, at some point, the public will know.

“You can probably read between the lines as best you can,” Gallo said. “My conscious is clear.”

He said he went to the community and talked to residents who came to the table and council supported them.

His comments were met with applause from a large crowd that filled council chambers for the meeting.

Another issue tackled during the meeting was communication after one resident asked how the candidates would change how the town communicates with residents.

Gallo said communication is part of his platform and the fact someone asked the questions implies the town is probably not doing a good job. Residents have told him they receive emails once a week from retailers with links and information and ask him why the town does not do that.

“There’s no reason why the Town of Aurora couldn’t do that with every single resident,” he said “It’s not rocket science.”

Dawe listed a number of things the town has been doing, including streaming meetings.

He said the town will continue to look at different ways to communicate with people, including media, social media and email.

Questions about the future of Aurora, including traffic and development were also raised.

One resident asked why all the land in Aurora has been sold to developers, ignoring Auoroa’s agricultural history.

“I would like to know, who is going to feed us?” she asked.

Gallo admitted the issue goes beyond the borders of Aurora, but he said there are small things the municipality can do like explore the possibility of more community gardens.

The all-candidates meeting was hosted by the Aurora Public Library. It featured introductory speeches by mayoral, councillor and school trustee candidates, as well as a Q&A session with the two mayoral candidates.

For more information about the upcoming election and registered candidates, visit our election section yorkregion.com/yorkregion-news/municipal-election