"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Friday 4 March 2011

This One Is Entertaining

Anonymoose has left a new comment on my post "Pesky Old Petch House":

Oh get over it with the museum. We already have a museum. It's called Hillary House. How many do we really need? I've been there plenty of times. Sure some will nit pick and say that it is something different. I look at it and see a museum.

As for other displays of town history, The cultural centre will be rotating that stuff though on a regular basis as well. I remember when the church street school was the museum. It also had other tenants too and no one ever went there. Now we have a centre which does so much more. Will actually attract people to it so that when displays are there, they will be seen!

I like our new cultural centre and will fight tooth and nail to keep it.

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Anonymoose  valiantly declares  ,"I will fight tooth and nail to keep it"   while  lurking incognito  and tossing out an occasional sneering comment  like  above reference  to the Pesky Petch House post,the museum and reference to the town's historical collection as "that stuff"

My  last post was  about  user fees  for town facilities and policies as  opposed to actual practice. 

The Culture Centre is a public facility created with a recent but by -no- means - first investment  of $2,6 million dollars and $750K  in a grant from the Heritage Foundation . A budget of $340K plus maintenance expenses of $134K  is paid  with funds from the tax levy.

No user fee policy applies.The Management Board is arms length from the people  accountable for tax collection and  spending. 

A pre-jazz festival party was held there last July. Admission of $35 p.p.was collected. No user fees  charged.

Artists are invited to display their art and  paid to do so I believe No user fees are charged orn Art paid

The Town Hall has an Art  Gallery .  I'm fairly certain the town  does not pay artiststo exhibit. I believe a portion of art sales however are paid to the town. S.O.Y.R.A. holds a juried art show once a year.  A Juried  show  is a professional  standard.. Not every entry is accepted.

In the forty years of its existence, Aurora's Juried Art Show has grown in status. It never needed a sponsorship. It  was started by two young mothers who were neighbours, Cathan Schonicker of Sunray Place and Mabel Pearson of Jasper Drive. Ernie Batson ,arena manager/recreation director/ hockey scout,  provided space in the community auditorium and it simply grew in stature from there. 

A Writer's Club  meets regularly at the town hall.  I 'd be very surprised if they don't pay a user fee.

We have a Theatre in Aurora  that competes with the best in Ontario.Plays and musicals are expensive to produce. The town provides a building and takes care of the exterior. The group produces the magic.
In their entire history, they have never requested a sponsorship. Though local furniture stores often
contributed items for  sets that players didn't bring from their own homes. .

Thousands of hours of enjoyment for audience and players alike were produced  over the years  in what once was a little concrete factory building and is now a Bijou Theatre

New residents delight in the  town's library and the variety of   interests they discover in Aurora. They join and enrich  what was here .

The only lament I ever heard was lack of a  movie house. We not only have that now , we also have a film society to  bring movies to town  unlikely to be seen in the regular circuit.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let us be grateful for what we now have and stop harping on capital costs that are in the past.

We should be mindful of ongoing operating costs - Culture Centre - that are a ridiculous amount of money and for what?

So far as grants are concerned, someone has raised the concept of the Town having a policy that could be administered by staff. Once formulated, it should only be subject to review under extenuating circumstances.

Anonymous said...

Let us be grateful for what we now have and stop harping on capital costs that are in the past.

We should be mindful of ongoing operating costs - Culture Centre - that are a ridiculous amount of money and for what?

So far as grants are concerned, someone has raised the concept of the Town having a policy that could be administered by staff. Once formulated, it should only be subject to review under extenuating circumstances.