Reader to Mayor Dawe: Because it’s 2016

March 23, 2016 · 0 Comments

The Mayor has stated his opposition to having the Regional Chair position elected starting in the next election cycle.
He says that he has only heard from three people on the matter and that no one is interested.
Let me be the fourth. Well, actually the thirteenth, if the eight people on Town Council count for anything.
He has offered several reasons in addition to the “nobody cares” argument.
He says that a complete governance review of the Region is needed, in part because of the Town’s under representation at Regional Council. The approach of not fixing anything, until everything can be fixed is an excuse as old as politics.
More specifically, the Town has 5 per cent of the seats on Regional council and 5.2 per cent of the Region’s population. Others municipalities in the Region may have more or fewer seats than their share of the population may deem appropriate, but not Aurora.
Frankly, I didn’t vote for him to argue someone else’s case.
The Mayor further argues he’s against the move to elect the Chair because it targets York Region specifically. Where exactly does he expect it to target? York Region is the third largest municipality in Ontario, the sixth largest in Canada. It has a population greater than five of the 10 provinces. The Region’s 2015 budget was $2.72 Billion.
In 2014, the then Chair, Bill Fisch, was paid $225,000, one of the highest paid political positions in the country.
It can reasonably be argued that the Chair of York Region is the most powerful unelected political position in Canada.
Well, here’s one argument for you to think over Mr. Mayor – it is 2016 not 1816.

Len Bulmer
Aurora