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Originally Posted by oldschoolcalgary
Solid no.
most of the people i've talked to, except my boss interestingly enough, are voting no.
The numbers the Yes side are putting out are as soft as butter...not sure how anyone can trust them, or better yet, call them 'a good deal'.
a couple of things i don't understand: people talk like calgary is some kind of ghost town without them, even though just this year the Financial Times ranked it the 4th best place in the world to live.
secondly, the yes side is treating this as a 'once in a lifetime' opportunity...except its not...Calgary could simply push back their bid to 2030 if they wanted too... i am betting that olympics suffers the same lack of interested host cities that has been the norm the last couple of cycles.
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I think the yes side knows and accepts that the numbers are soft. We believe the no side is also too hard on them given the nature of renovating vs building new. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Calgary is not headed in the right direction and the 4th place rank is irrelevant when looking at opportunity and economy. Canada continues to slide on rankings of places to do business and this is while most of Canada is enjoying great times.
People have already explained that not only is 2030 out of the question but 2034 would also be. I'm not sure how true it is but I think they mentioned salt Lake city as ready to roll out the red carpet for 2030 and then they would be due for a shift outside of North American for 2034.
Everyone wants to look at property tax hikes as the main driver for the no side. How about looking at property values. Even a 1% gain due to short term economic benefit has you break even. The path we are on right now, no Olympics, no injection of capital, no major temporary job growth, no office space being leases and you will see more than 1% in losses on your he value.
The no gal on the fan yesterday had a interesting comment...
As a no person, she knows we need something to kick-start the local economy but her suggestion was a new arena... This is incredibly hypocritical imo asking for tax payers to fund a smaller project with no outside capital joining in but not wanting to contribute 14% municipal taxes for 86% fed/prov taxes and IOC money.