Sunday Morning

Crocus and tulips and other small green things are pushing their way out of the ground.

My great-grand-daughters, Cheyenne and Abby  are here with my grand-daughter Stephanie. They are encouraging  Mickey, the big black lab to sing.

He needs no encouragement. He  raises  his  head and his voice in song whenever there is song.

Commenters  have  engaged in the last few days with  ideas for public art.  Few of humorous vein. All of issues, which in time, we will wish not to remember.

Council will not meet. This week being March Break

The town hall will be quiet. Less quiet than at Christmas when it's closed completely.

Council  goes into  recess in June.

I can't help  connecting  town hall activity with council sessions.

It occurs to wonder ,with so many spells of inactivity, about the  need  for an $8 million renovation which will use up space designed for activities other than town business.

This  term we discovered how well the second floor reception area lends itself to ....receptions.

Folding doors all around the Council Chamber are intended to accommodate  audiences of hundreds for concerts.

We have only  had one Sunday afternoon jazz concert in a space designed  for dual purpose.

One wonders where all the culture vultures have been, in the twenty years since the town hall opened and was never fully utilised. 

Someone asked the other day if Ken Whitehurst was the first chairman of the Culture Centre Board and a number of other related questions.

He was not.

We did not  retain a consultant to obtain public input and develop a Master Plan for Culture in Aurora
.
We leap-frogged over that process.

The Church Street School renovation was  approved for the specific purpose of restoring the town's museum to its rightful place.

An Ad Hoc Committee for Arts and Culture was created.

Councillor Gaertner and Granger were council representatives. The former Mayor always had her favourites.

Council McRoberts asked  to be a member but his request  was spurned.

Ken Whitehurst, the Mayor's friend and campaign strategist  was a member.  He was also  on the Leisure Services Advisory Committee .
He and Councillor Mac Eachern re-wrote the Master Recreation Plan. prepared by a consultant at considerable town expense.

I believe C.Ballard was also a member of the ad hoc committee .At the time  his name meant nothing to me . He also became chairman of the Economic Development Committee, courtesy of  Mormac.

 K.Whitehurst as noted,  was  a member of the Arts and Culture committee. The  curator, hired by the Historical Society, at town expense, was  resource(staff) person for the committee.

Church Street School was intended  to  continue as the museum's home. Grant application had been made.. Everything was on course.

The curator resigned. Took a job elsewhere. Whitehurst was appointed to take her place. He was paid $60.00 an hour,while still a member of the committee.

A questions of conflict was raised...and dismissed by the Mayor.

The gang of six complied.   

A letter to the editor  from  Helen Roberts, President of the Historical Society vouched for Mr. Whitehurst being eminently qualified.. No credentials were cited.

Subsequently, we learned Mr. Whitehurst's  professional qualifications were in  journalism. The same is true of Mr. Ballard..

The  first chair person of the board was a former library board trustee  with an  established  reputation for commitment.

Mr. Les Oliver, a life-long  Historical Society member, accompanied the  chairperson to be introduced to Council as vice-chair of the new board.

The  Novita consultant's business plan  recommended to the town that seed money be provided initially  to the board, to be weaned at a rate of  $100,000  each year.

Nothing there to hint at what was to come. An agreement drafted with the board having legal counsel, paid for by the town and the town having no legal counsel. 

I think of  the chairman's response to my question; the board did not  lock the museum out of  Church Street School.  The Strategic Plan required it.

Who would have advised the board, the town's strategic plan did any such thing?

The plan pre-dated the decision to invest $2.3 million dollars in the building for the function of a museum.

So  now we have two possibilities for the decision to divert facilities and resources. 

In one of the hundreds of e-mails received by councillors, a member indicated the board had been  in  regular communication with the town's CAO.

We did not know that.

In another e-mail, we   learned the board's legal counsel, paid for by the town while we had none, is a former Councillor.

We did not know that. 

Plans  to  re-organise and change the  town hall  to accommodate  a burgeoning  administration were  under way.

Under the radar, Church Street School's  function was changed to accommodate uses heretofore accommodated in the town hall.

A figment of  my imagination, you say.  Well...NO

This  Council had  squirrelled away the  draft master recreation plan for a year, while former Councillor MacEachern and citizen friend and strategist  of the former  Mayor, Ken Whitehurst, re-wrote it  and produced it as "the town's own  Master Recreation Plan"  to be endorsed by the gang of six under the Mayor's direction.

Pshaw....you say.....not enough  collective smarts for  duplicity necessary to steal the museum  right out from under the community. 

Intelligence was not required, only cunning. And enough complicity to maintain secrecy until after the upcoming election.

The cabal  was  firmly ensconced and in control. 

Ancillary forces, insufficiently aware  but ever willing to be used were always at  hand.

I think another  piece of the puzzle just  clattered firmly into place.