Is it just me, or is this election gone way overboard in contentiousness? I don't recall an election like this before. I wonder how of that is due to social media?
|
|
|
Calgary Municipal Politics
- Thread starter Always_Biking
- Start date
MichaelS
Senior Member
Good figures, but I think it is fair to say it hasn't been followed. Planning has likely not lost 30 staff, unless you count the staff that have moved over to "Urban Strategy", the new department created for Rollin Stanley when he was removed from the GM of Planning role. I don't see that group in the budget documents. Same with the relatively new business unit of Calgary Approvals Coordination.
Can't speak to the other departments in as much detail. I have heard they are hiring 2 director level positions for the greenline, in addition to the already existing 4 directors in Transportation
ferreth
New Member
I found The Herald (limited free page reading warning) has done a pretty good bit of interviewing on the candidates for various wards:
http://calgaryherald.com/tag/calgary-votes-2017
It was helpful to see how for my ward 10, some candidates were so abysmally poor at answering the question "You are inviting several friends to join you for dinner. Two live on the outskirts of the city and their car is out of service. They must travel 20 km to reach the restaurant and they’ve asked you for advice about the best way to get there. What would you recommend? and why?"
Many of the candidates, including the incumbent(!) missed the fact that THEY-HAVE-NO-ACCESS-TO-A-CAR.
Gar Gar gets extra negative points for having the most nonsensical answer of "I will try to an hour early" (Yes, I could vote for messa Gar Gar, if I was stoned, drunk, and insane)
Pretty much decided I'm not voting for my inherited incumbent alderman Ray Jones - he seems to be entrenched in 1997 thinking on how to run the city. Still waffling where to throw vote - not happy with any of the candidates, but some are outright appalling in their lack of understanding of how a city works.
It is too bad they didn't come up with better "out of the box" questions for the mayoral candidates, the super - hero thing wasn't that illuminating in my books, although Nenshi had some fun with it at least.
I don't really have time to read all the other wards, but was wondering if anyone else is unhappy with the quality of the candidates running in their ward?
http://calgaryherald.com/tag/calgary-votes-2017
It was helpful to see how for my ward 10, some candidates were so abysmally poor at answering the question "You are inviting several friends to join you for dinner. Two live on the outskirts of the city and their car is out of service. They must travel 20 km to reach the restaurant and they’ve asked you for advice about the best way to get there. What would you recommend? and why?"
Many of the candidates, including the incumbent(!) missed the fact that THEY-HAVE-NO-ACCESS-TO-A-CAR.
Gar Gar gets extra negative points for having the most nonsensical answer of "I will try to an hour early" (Yes, I could vote for messa Gar Gar, if I was stoned, drunk, and insane)
Pretty much decided I'm not voting for my inherited incumbent alderman Ray Jones - he seems to be entrenched in 1997 thinking on how to run the city. Still waffling where to throw vote - not happy with any of the candidates, but some are outright appalling in their lack of understanding of how a city works.
It is too bad they didn't come up with better "out of the box" questions for the mayoral candidates, the super - hero thing wasn't that illuminating in my books, although Nenshi had some fun with it at least.
I don't really have time to read all the other wards, but was wondering if anyone else is unhappy with the quality of the candidates running in their ward?
Silence&Motion
Senior Member
Could be. There is definitely a lot of ugliness. On the other hand, this could be a sign of Calgary's maturation into a big city with multiple power centres. Calgary (and Alberta) as a whole have been a one-industry, one-party town for so long people probably aren't used to contested elections. I was reading some stats on Calgary's electoral history and it's pretty crazy how uncontested municipal politics has been. The last elected incumbent mayor to lose re-election was Ross Alger in 1980 (defeated by Ralph Klein). The average margin of victory for incumbent mayors is 35% of the vote. (I'm getting this from Jack Lucas' twitter feed - U of C Political Scientist). The conservative "old boys club" basically dominated the city until Nenshi won in 2010 and the NDP won at the provincial level in 2015. Even if conservatives take over City Hall and the Provincial Legislature, I'd like to think that it won't represent a return to the bad old days of one-party rule.
Probably right, it's partly due to the evolution of the city and what people want to get out of it. The nastiness seems to filter out of social media. I like social media and forums and the fact that people don't just have to listen to the media, but instead get to respond to it....the downside is that anyone can respond with anything. It can get pretty ugly at times.
Whatever the election result ends up being, at least people seem engaged. There's no question the younger crowd wants a different style of city than in the past. The direction we've been going is probably the one we will continue to go over the long term. If Smith gets elected I get the feeling it'll be one term and then back to our more recent course.
Last edited:
I'm not happy with Sean Chu who's in my ward, his whole stance with the Green Line still burns me.
MichaelS
Senior Member
Meant to reply to this last night, but my son needed attending to...
Just wanted to clarify that ARPs are NOT created by the community. Council approves the planning workplan, which then has the administration write the policy documents (in consultation with the community, but not at their sole voice). Council then reviews and approves the ARP. And when it is statutory policy, it is supposed to be as close to written in stone as municipal planning law can get (however, that seems to be very inconsistently applied by this council for multiple statutory plans, making it difficult for developers to understand what will be allowed, and residents to understand the same thing). If you feel an ARP is poorly written, the people to blame are the Councillors who approved it.
I again think it is completely unfair and oversimplification to paint conservative minded candidates (something that is difficult to actually claim a candidate is, because there are no political parties at the municipal level, so it is just projecting your personal bias on someones limited policy releases) as simply pro-sprawl. For instance, do you think Chris Davis is an anti-urban NIMBY, conservative candidate (as the leading contender to unseat Wooley)? Can't someone be concerned about the rising cost of the city administration, but still support good planning? In other words, promoting the cutting of red tape, a la Nenshi?
As mentioned earlier, Nenshi has great ideas, just really struggles to implement them,
BKha
Active Member
Duking it out on social media is the new norm, and when people can say whatever they want from behind the keyboard, they often will. We'll see more of this when the provincial election comes around I'm sure. I don't follow social media much, but yesterday I looked through a pile of tweets, and saw there is some crazy stuff out there.
Also coupled with the fact that Nenshi himself is a bit of a polarising candidate. Some don't like his arrogance or 'elite academic' type persona. I don't doubt his faith has created polarisation as well. Recent terrorist events have given his religion a negative image. I'm not sure how religious he is, but for many people he's tied to that image like it or not. Yesterday I saw someone posted a tweet showing an old video of him defending the Niqab, so certainly some people are pushing that angle.
Silence&Motion
Senior Member
That's true. I mischaracterized the process. However, council has little motivation to get in a fight with a community when these plans are created. The real compromise comes when someone wants to do something that violates the ARP.
I think it's fair to call the former president of the PC party a conservative. I also think it's fair to call a candidate who's slogan is "tax warrior" and who has the full support of SaveCalgary a conservative (e.g. Davis). As for calling them pro-sprawl, their platforms (what little has been released) speak for themselves. Davis has come out AGAINST secondary suites. He has stated that low-rise, single family neighborhood should be preserved in the inner-city. He has expressed doubt about bike lanes. He has repeatedly said that Calgary is a "car-centric city", which is not a explicit endorsement but is basically an argument used to justify car-centric planning. Is that enough proof for you, or should I go on? Because there's a lot more to say about that.
Last edited:
Silence&Motion
Senior Member
It's a cruel irony that many of the people blasting him for "playing the race card" are, in the breath (or tweet), are attacking him based on race and religion.
ferreth
New Member
CBC has a nice summary of "Wards to watch in this Calgary election":
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...calgary-election-almost-all-of-them-1.4346805
City Hall may get a shake up not with a new Mayor, but with a lot of new councilors.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...calgary-election-almost-all-of-them-1.4346805
City Hall may get a shake up not with a new Mayor, but with a lot of new councilors.
Arcticle about the two recent polls: one showing Smith way ahead and the other showing Nenshi way ahead.
http://calgaryherald.com/news/polit...-day-nears-are-voters-turning-away-from-smith
Braid: As election day nears, are voters turning away from Smith?
Interesting quote from the article
http://calgaryherald.com/news/polit...-day-nears-are-voters-turning-away-from-smith
Braid: As election day nears, are voters turning away from Smith?
Interesting quote from the article
This is by far the most interesting election in a long time.
Cowtown
Senior Member
The problem with polls is the outcome depends on the question. If both pollsters used the same simple question of 'who are you voting for?...Smith....Nenshi..Chabot...other" you get a more accurate idea. I bet the true numbers are probably somewhere in the middle, but I also agree with Braid in that many people who just wanted to unseat Nenshi, are now taking a hard look at Smith and asking themselves, do I really want this guy as the mayor?
Alex_YYC
Senior Member
So tomorrow’s the big day. Any predictions? I’m gonna call it for Nenshi, he pulls it off, but not by a wide margin. Something like 44% - 38% for Smith.