Citizen Engagement

The 2020 Town of Aurora Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Mediocrity

Aurora’s Mayor Marakas sends out his annual cookie-cutter Happy New Year message overflowing with self congratulations and back patting that we have come to expect from him. It is no surprise that Mrakas cherry picks the positives while completely failing to address the equal amount of turds. No town, its politicians nor its bureaucrats can […]

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Aurora’s Silent Majority

This February 21st piece in the Auroran raises valid questions on the effectiveness of the Town of Aurora’s public engagement capabilities. A range of opinions are captured with Clr. Gallo believes the town has failed miserably and the process is flawed. Clr Gilliland states that insufficient information has been communicated even though multiple events have […]

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the laws of repulsion

So busy self congratulating themselves on a meaningless ranking in Maclean’s Magazine the Town of Aurora has apparently had no time to respond to citizen inquiries as evidenced by this recent facebook post: When you can’t be bothered to put promotional magnets in citizens hands for them to disseminate you’ve failed as a town. When […]

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how not to get noticed

Check out this “Community consultation notice” about a public open house that is occurring in less than 50 hours: And how did I learn about this? A town councillor posted it to social media. Surprised I went to verify the notice on any of the Town of Aurora’s mediocre media offerings and guess what. It’s […]

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no response is a response

Voter engagement in Aurora has fallen and council and staff have the nerve to put on perplexed faces, shrug their collective shoulders and ask why. They need to look no further than themselves. Staff more so than councilors. During an election cycle, candidates are very conscious of responding to citizen requests. After the election that […]

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The monarch of all they survey

Back in July I posted about the Town of Aurora’s questionable choice to use stock imagery to engage our youth population. More recently the town decided to roll out a survey (yawn) targeted at skateborders. Because that’s what skateborders love to do, fill out surveys. So on the town’s facebook we see a notice with […]

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Don’t speak. I know what you’re thinking. I don’t need your reasons. Don’t tell me ’cause it hurts.

Both King Township and Nemarket announced this past week that they were launching digital engagement portals using service provider Bang The Table. Bang The Table has 8 offices with solutions deployed to 365 clients worldwide. Listed among other Canadian municipalities with populations between 20 and 100,000 is Innisfil.  Newmarket tendered for a 1 year pilot.  King signed a […]

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holding the roll

We are now at the halfway point of 2016 and the Live Stream Video Archive on the town’s website has not been updated once this year. Videos of GC and Public Planning meetings are being recorded by town staff and are sporadically uploaded to the town’s YouTube channel but there is no set schedule for […]

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We asked 100 people

So disengaged from its residents the Town of Aurora’s Communications department has decided the way they’re going to get to know us better is by engaging us with the one thing that has proven not to work up to this point; another survey. Here’s a snapshot of the recent announcement on the town’s website: Remember […]

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