Ward 5 Councillor Alan Shefman

Welcome to the City of Vaughan
Official Website.

QUICKMENU

Use the drop down arrow below to navigate through our site

Advanced Search

Home > Council > Councillor Shefman

Ward 5 Councillor Alan Shefman

It has been an honour representing the residents of Ward 5 – Thornhill since 2004. The opportunity to be the voice for what has become the City’s most populous Ward has been challenging and demanding but always satisfying as Vaughan continues to evolve into a dynamic urban community. Most gratifying is the continuing level of support that I have received through four municipal elections.

A First Achievement – Still Going Strong

Since becoming a Vaughan City Councillor, I have worked on your behalf to do everything possible to improve the quality of life in our great city. Indeed, within weeks of being elected in 2004, even though I was still learning on the job, I brought a motion to the Budget Committee which had the effect of dramatically changing the waste management system in the City through the Greening Vaughan initiative. Today, Vaughan’s recycling program is one of the most effective in the province of Ontario.

Principles and Ethics

There is nothing of greater importance to me as your representative than to base my actions on strongly held ethical principles. For me, these principles include acting respectfully in my interactions, communicating with people openly, directly and honestly, respecting the democratic institutions of municipal government and always doing my best to achieve the greatest value for our City in all my decisions.

Common Sense and Practical Solutions
As your City Councillor will always try to respond quickly to find common sense, practical solutions to the issues that residents bring to my office. It is my experience that every time that I hear from a resident about a concern, I gain more of an understanding of the important issues in our community. While not every problem has a ready solution or one that is satisfying, my executive assistant, Debi Traub and I work together to try to be responsive and honest about what we can do to help. Generally, I have found that the great staff of the City work very hard on your behalf to solve problems and deal with issues as they arise.

Initiatives
While I have a very wide range of interests in how our city is run, there are a number of areas where I have taken a leading role. One of them is on environmental matters. Without a doubt, we need to take immediate action at the municipal level to address the broad range of environmental issues that are before us today. I firmly believe that there are many areas, from dealing with the litter on our streets to global warming, where a city government can have a major impact on sustainability. Our new City Hall, built to a LEED Gold standard, one of the highest levels of environmental sustainability, is an extraordinary example of what can be done in this area. I would invite you to come over to City Hall to take a look at this terrific, iconic building.

In the past term I brought two important initiatives to Council for consideration by community based task forces. The first was the Task Force on Festivals and Community Events. This Task Force was established to provide a coordinated approach by the City to look into ways our variety of festivals and celebrations run by community groups could be assisted through working together and how the City itself could provide much needed support. A number of the recommendations emanating from this group have been implemented after review by staff and approval by Council

The second initiative was the Task Force on Residential Condominiums. This group was established after I discovered during the 2010 election that there was a wide variety of outstanding issues that residents living in these types of homes had relating to the City. One focus of this group was to prepare recommendations for the provincial review of the Residential Condominium Act that was taking place.

The final report of the task force is currently being reviewed by staff and will be presented to Council for its consideration in the near future. It is hoped that the results of this Task Force will not only respond to some of those concerns, but also provide the City with some guidance on how to better support our residents living in condominiums in the future.

From 2009 until early 2012 I had the opportunity to Chair the City’s Budget Committee (now called the Finance and Administration Committee). In that position I helped to provide a budget that found an appropriate balance between the quality of our services and the tax levy. During that period and continuing today residential tax rates are consistently amongst the lowest of any GTA municipality.

A continuing major interest is to keep the Yonge Street subway extension project viable and to secure the funding required to begin its construction. I continue to work with VIVANext and my colleagues in Markham and Richmond Hill on this project.

Rapid Transit

It is totally clear to me that the viability of our future as a modern dynamic urban municipality is linked to the development of rapid transit in York Region and the GTA. I am committed to doing everything possible to champion intelligent rapid transit development based on the following principles:

A dependable and substantial ongoing funding source must be defined by the Provincial Government. Only when these funds are in place can proper, long-range planning be viable.
The Toronto Transit Authority must be replaced by the Greater Toronto Transit Authority. This is a critical component of intelligent, region-wide transit planning.
The Presto smart card must be fully implemented asap throughout the GTA to allow for movement without artificial fare barriers
Transit planning must move from a project basis to an incremental build approach. That is rather than fund one project or even two or three projects at a time, provide funding to move many projects forward incrementally component by component.
Plan transit to reflect the current need and future requirements. The bus Rapidway currently being built along Highway 7 is an example of smart transit planning whereby the bus based system will fulfil current needs and will be convertible to an LRT system in the future.

A continuing major interest is to keep the Yonge Street north subway extension project viable and to secure the funding required to begin its construction. I continue to work with VIVANext and my colleagues in Markham and Richmond Hill on this project.

Communications and Events
One of the most difficult tasks for any municipal official is to find effective ways to communicate with residents. While we talk to hundreds of Ward 5 people who call our office, we are always looking at ways to reach out to more people. For a number of years now we have published a print version of our newsletter, W5Update. This newsletter is delivered to all homes in the Ward. Recently we expanded this publication to two editions a year.

On the other hand, we do reach well over 1500 homes in Thornhill on an ongoing basis through the electronic version of W5. If you don’t get it, subscribe today!! If you want to keep current on issues in the Ward and across the City, you will find the W5Update a very helpful source of information.

Our major annual community event is “The Event in the Park.” This enjoyable, fun evening is held in conjunction with the Concert in the Park organized by the City. Residents are invited to enjoy free ice cream, corn on the cob and watermelon during the program. Look for the date of the 2015 event being announced in the early Spring.

A Growing City – Ward Boundaries Continue to Change

A Growing City – Ward Boundaries to be reviewed this term In both the 2006 and 2010 elections, the boundaries for Ward 5 were expanded. As a mature community with slower growth than many other parts of the City, our boundaries have captured various parts of the adjoining Ward 4. As of the 2010 election, Ward 5 had the largest population in the City with over 60,000 people.

Council has committed to do a comprehensive review of these boundaries in this term with the goal to provide more parity amongst the wards. With the extraordinary growth in population over the last ten years in the City, consideration will be given to adding a sixth ward for the 2018 election.

The current boundaries are: Steeles and Yonge north to the 407, west on the 407 to Dufferin Street, south on Dufferin to Centre Street, west on Centre Street to roughly the 407 and then south along the railway tracks to the west of the Glen Shields community.

I look forward to continuing to work with the residents, staff and members of Council to ensure that we all have in Vaughan a great place to live, work and play.

Contact the Councillor

Phone:
905-832-8585 ext. 8349

Fax:
905-832-8538

E-mail:
alan.shefman@vaughan.ca

Council Executive Assistant:
Debi Traub
905-832-8585 ext. 8685
debi.traub@vaughan.ca

QUICKMENU

Contact the Councillor

About the Councillor

Follow Online