Calgary Municipal Politics

[Mountain Man]

Farkas has my vote, just hope I don't regret it.

 

[ByeByeBaby]

I'm baffled how so many people believe that Farkas has changed anything but his marketing.

There's a world where Farkas came into council as a headbanger nut, and then over the course of four years learned the nuance that the City needs to deliver services and became more pragmatic, and then ran on that pragmatic centrist platform, but people remembered his dumbassery from his first days in office and he lost, and he has continued to grow and is now running again. But that's not our world.

In our world, he was the exact same ideologue councillor on his last day in office as his first, and ran his first mayoral race on promising more of the same. He spent four years working in civic politics, attending council meetings, meeting with constituents and none of that changed his policies or outlook one bit. But apparently he changed his stripes completely 20 minutes after the polling results came in because he went hiking.

I don't think Sharp would be a good mayor, but I believe she at least believes in what she says (which is not an endorsement). Gondek is much better at policy than politics; she's wasted a lot of political capital on things with low impact and that's what she's been tarred with, even though the actual main job of getting housing built, buses run, and so on has been broadly done well especially given the incredible challenge of our city's growth. There's a lot of room for a better mayor, but in my opinion, there's not a better mayoral candidate running.

 

[trtcttc]

I'm baffled how so many people believe that Farkas has changed anything but his marketing.

There's a world where Farkas came into council as a headbanger nut, and then over the course of four years learned the nuance that the City needs to deliver services and became more pragmatic, and then ran on that pragmatic centrist platform, but people remembered his dumbassery from his first days in office and he lost, and he has continued to grow and is now running again. But that's not our world.

In our world, he was the exact same ideologue councillor on his last day in office as his first, and ran his first mayoral race on promising more of the same. He spent four years working in civic politics, attending council meetings, meeting with constituents and none of that changed his policies or outlook one bit. But apparently he changed his stripes completely 20 minutes after the polling results came in because he went hiking.

I don't think Sharp would be a good mayor, but I believe she at least believes in what she says (which is not an endorsement). Gondek is much better at policy than politics; she's wasted a lot of political capital on things with low impact and that's what she's been tarred with, even though the actual main job of getting housing built, buses run, and so on has been broadly done well especially given the incredible challenge of our city's growth. There's a lot of room for a better mayor, but in my opinion, there's not a better mayoral candidate running.

Don't really disagree that this could all be a farce with Farkas. His platform is quite different from the past, and not focused on stupid things like council pensions and other menial expenses. He's also not proposing things like property tax freezes even if it sounds good on paper. But things like zero-based budgeting would actually be useful. This isn't even a city only problem, many private company departments also have this spend it or lose it mentality.

Gondek is a good city administrator. Agree she spent her political capital on the climate strategy that is still dogging her. I did find during her term she is too much like an administrator. The role of council is in part, to challenge city administration, whereas she often aligned with their recommendations and it feels like there isn't a mayor but the city is just ran by the CAO.

Sharp is closely aligned with the UCP. Communities First in general, I hope doesn't get entrenched in city politics