Yes, there is a lot of spending on the table. However, fundamentally he is about creating a more compact and financially sustainable city. This will save us billions more than continuing the business-as-usual approach to grow, which is truly the largest factor contributing to out of control spending and costs.
In many ways, Nenshi is more of a REAL fiscal conservative. People like McIver, who while is good at grabbing soundbites about "waste", does very little to actually save the City money. Fighting for lower densities on behalf of the development industry during the Plan It process for instance...
Also, one of Nenshi's strong policy thrusts is quite simply securing more necessary revenue to run a city of Calgary's size. This might include more financial autonomy from the province (an idea the Wildrose Alliance is actually pushing), retaining a higher proportion of the education portion of the property tax. Municipalities get about 8% of the share of the overall tax pie, but deliver a lot of services and build a lot of infrastructure. The balance of revenue between Municipal/Provincial/Federal is fundamentally out of whack and needs to be addressed. Like Bronconnier, who made initial steps in this regard (securing the Municipal Sustainability Initiative for instance) Nenshi is very interested in solving this issue.
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Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame
I'm liking Naheed Nenshi's platform as well, he seems to be passionate about municipal politics, and whether you agree with him or not, you can't be Mayor if you don't love your city enough to suggest new directions and changes.
That said, I am a little weary about what seems to be his spending ideas. His ideas for Calgary Transit (expansion into the North-Central route, GPS, Smart Cards, removal of the Park 'n Ride fee, better performance measures), his advocation of building the Airport Tunnel and contracting private services for snow removal seem noble. But these sorts of things can quickly spiral out of control in terms of logistics, technology, manpower, etc. . . . It seems like he's planning to do alot of spending while concurrently calling for better transparency at City Hall.
At some point, his call for more spending coupled with public support and transparency will likely contradict themselves. I sure hope he has a master plan for this all to work cohesively.
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