Aurora Welcomes New CAO in January

Aurora will welcome a new CAO in January. Neil Garbe is currently at the Region, so he should be fully aware of the situation here in Aurora.

His first job should be to start rebuilding trust in the ranks of the Town staff. In the current economic climate, hardly a day passes without the newspapers commenting about the importance of motivated staff to achieve the best results. Countless research studies have shown that unless staff is positive about their jobs they do not perform effectively.

Why is that important? Until that is achieved, the residents will never receive their full value of their tax dollars. In other words, our taxes are higher because the town does not operate as efficiently as possible.

One example is the amount of time and money that gets spent by Council's inability to make a decision about issues and continually revisit them. The waste in staff hours and impact on moral must be staggering.

The current Council needs to ensure that our scarce dollars derive the most benefit and the first steps is to rebuild relationships with staff.

We will all be watching with great interest to see how he manages the situation he has inherited.

Let's wish him best wishes and good luck

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How should the Region use returned tax funds?

For years the Region of York has been forced to send our tax dollars to Toronto to fund their social programs -- often providing residents of Toronto with services that York Region was unable to provide for our own residents. It has been a thorn in our side for many years. This pooling is being phased out. Each year it is reduced until we don't send any dollars south by the year 2013.

In 2004 we paid $79 million dollars. In 2009 we will be sending $13.2 million less than in 2008, allowing those dollars to be used for service here in York Region.

The question to be answered is what will these funds be used for?

• Reduced tax burden to residents
• Enriched social programs
• More recreation facilities
• More arts programming
• More support to seniors
• More health facilities/programs
• Reduce infrastructure debt
• Build/upgrade infrastructure

Let us know what do you think they should be used for? Make some suggestions and we will post a poll to get community input.

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