Aurora Mayor Tom Mrakas called for York regional council to be slashed from 22 members to just nine, with only each municipality’s mayor having a seat at the table.
Mrakas said the province should conduct a governance review of regional council to help create a “streamlined decision-making body” during a speech at the Aurora Chamber of Commerce’s annual mayor’s luncheon Feb. 19.
“Mayors like me already represent their entire municipalities and have broad mandates to make decisions for all voters,” he said. “Streamlining governance at the regional level would eliminate unnecessary delays, improve service delivery, and potentially save taxpayer money.”
Currently, the council has 22 members, with larger municipalities like Vaughan and Markham having five representatives each, while relatively smaller ones like Aurora and East Gwillimbury have one representative.
Mrakas said the move could help find efficiencies with government spending, pointing to recent snow plowing efforts as an example. Mrakas said some roads were plowed by the region, while their sidewalks were plowed by the town. Mrakas also said he was in favour of a York regional fire service.
“A regional governance review could help identify and eliminate even more of these redundancies,” he added.
Tariffs
During wide-ranging remarks that recapped the past year and the one to come, Mrakas said impending U.S. tariffs represented a “looming economic crisis.”
“If the U.S. does go through with blanket tariffs, government support in Canada needs to be swift, strategic, and substantial – not just to protect jobs, but to stabilize industries and safeguard our local economy from major disruption,” he said.
Mrakas pointed to measures the town has taken, including endorsing a bylaw amendment to prioritize Canadian procurement, adding that he plans to convene a mayor’s tariff task force in the coming weeks.
Town Square
The mayor also touted new town recreation spaces, including the opening of John Abel Park, a new accessible playground in Town Park and the opening of Town Square, which Mrakas described as a “20-year project, finally, come to fruition.”
“I’m proud that despite the really significant labour shortages we saw during the pandemic, and a huge rise in construction costs, we kept the price of Town Square very close to our original budget – something many governments are struggling to do with major projects. A $51.9-million dollar project was delivered at $59.7 million,” said Mrakas.
He thanked Aurora’s business community for backing the project with $5 million in fundraising, meaning the town had to cover an extra "$2.7 million." Mrakas added that the building is now valued at $76.7 million.
Building downtown and housing
Mrakas said Town Square is a big piece of the town’s continued efforts toward downtown revitalization, adding the town has plans for mixed-use housing developments in its downtown, pointing to plans for a community permit planning system.
“A diverse housing stock isn’t a nice (thing) to have, it is a necessity if we are to sustain our thriving community,” he said. “We need to continue to work to increase the availability of a variety of housing options. And with our limited greenfield space, we simply can’t rely solely on detached single-family homes.”
On affordable housing, Mrakas said governments would need to subsidize the building of affordable units, adding governments at all levels should look at re-purposing government buildings for housing.
“We can’t expect a for-profit private industry to solve the housing crisis,” he said. “It’s up to us, as a community, to explore real solutions for supportive and affordable housing.”
Mrakas was also critical of proposals to cut development cost charges, saying it was a “mistaken belief that it will lower housing costs.”
"The simple truth is that we can’t build the infrastructure that supports new housing without stable, predictable funding,” he said.