The River Of No Return

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Perspective is the reality in politics. But the re...":

8:41 AM
Thank you for the refresher course. We need to receive it periodically so as not to forget just how long that list of sins became over a few short years.
One lawsuit has been completed although not to my satisfaction as the defendants were still out a great deal of money. Two more on the way.
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I understand, although I can no no longer be certain , there is a date for the Spring session of  Court
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.Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Should a Town Tax Itself":

I have always been curious about what that guy at the Town whose business card says " Retention of Businesses " does with his time. Would it be possible to assign him to one of those 20 work stations and just have him fill out applications all day ? That way, Aurora would be in line for any grant or price reduction without this second guessing and asinine assigning of blame.
Just a suggestion. 
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The  function is "business retetion and expansion"

I don't believe  it.

Ten spaces not twenty will be created with the million dollar addition to the town hall  on the ground floor. 
Intentions are to add the same  amount of space on the second and third floor. 

At a time when the town's  outbuilding is coming to an end, I am not in favour of the project.

We don't have space for parking.$200,000  is in the budget to take away landscaping and created  a handful of parking spaces at the rear of the buildiug.
 
I believe we can find  space elsewhere for staff. .The two meeting rooms and the vast lobby space at the library could be reviewed. 
There isn't  enough parking space there for the people who use the meeting rooms. The coffee shop  doesn't pay any rent. Nobody wants to rent it.

We're looking at building an addition to the Family Leisure Centre.
The people who use the library space could easily go up there. There's acres of empty parking space available.  

At a time when we should be cutting back on staff, we   find reasons to add people, Last year, we changed two contract positions to full-time. It was in this year's budget to do  the same thing again. I have to find out  if Counil went along with that. . 

The Economic Development  Advisory Committee recommended staff should work to attract a post-secondary  education
institution to Aurora. A senior planner was transferred from the planning department to the CAO's department to become Manager of Special Projects. He had been the go-to-expert on Oak Ridges Moraine matters.Don't know who that is now.

Don't agree with that  re-org  but we're told Council has no authority in the matter.

We have authority on some  matters.  Most important being the budget. We don't  exercise much. . Choosing instead to defer to staff.

I think we're being gouged by the Region for the price of water. They've increased the price by ten per cent again and intend to keep doing that for the next five years. They said that five years ago.. Now it's another five

I think they're collecting from  us to pay for new installations, not just here but in Toronto and Peel. And in the north end of the Region for  urban development from East Gwillimbury north.

Water doesn't increase in price. It's in the ground for Goodness Sake. It's ours to take.

I heard last week, the Region is carrying  five billion dollars of debt.

At the time of the last election ,I heard it was $2 billion.

They spent a couple of million on that " accoustic" fencing on Bathurst Street.  And there's still a lot of people who didn't get it and don't understand why.  

I don't think anybody is in charge of anything. When you hear figures like $340 million to cancel  construction of badly needed gas-fired  hydro generation plants. here's not much point in looking in the direction of Queen's Park. 

It's discouraging.  I always felt at the level of a small own, that was one place you could expect to have control. 

When I told the  Director of Environment and Infrastructure and the Treasurer,  I think we're being gouged on  water bills. And it's a taz levy like all the rest  and should be added to the budget increase, not kept separate,.to preserve the illusion the tax increase is down around 3% and not up around 15%  

Councillor Gaertner, or one of the others, inevitably follows up with commendations to stafff  for the wonderful job they're doing. 

It must be a great comfort to staff  to know they enjoy the complete confidence of Councillor Gaertner and others. 

They don't have to worry about the people  who pay the bills
 when the people they elected to protect them from gargantuan bills are perfectly content to funds spent  by the millions and  watch seventeen per cent rise in tax levies every year.  

At this rate, this Council must be responsible for  45% increase since they were elected. I've asked for the figure. It has not been forthcoming.  I  think  if we keep it up, by the next .election, we will have increased taxes during our watch by around 80% or more.

And  spending by considerably more than that.          .