[Envitro]

Well, not going to lie, I was pretty bummed out about the result. I haven't really posted much in this thread or on this topic, but here are my general thoughts.

1) As previously mentioned, I think this is a huge missed opportunity for the city
2) The massive fail from the Yes side can probably be attributed to a bungling of this issue from the city, BidCo, and the province (and somewhat the feds). I think that the two other levels of government weren't really in it to win it, and were just going through the motions so that they couldn't be accused of not being supportive. Politically they didn't want to stick their necks out
3) The whole "binding plebiscite" thing was such a joke to begin with. A plebiscite is non-binding in the first place, so you shouldn't be able to attach funding conditions to it. Should have called it a referendum then...
4) Lack of leadership from Nenshi and Council is what got us here in the first place. I do believe that this was a referendum on them and not so much the Olympics being hosted in Calgary. A divided council is what got us here in the first place, and nobody wanted to take the political risk of backing this bid, so they took the easy way out of a plebiscite so as to not risk re-election
5) The people that voted no that I spoke to did so with hardly any real information and went off of feeling. One excuse was "I don't want more traffic or construction delays leading up to and during the Olympics" and "there's going to be too many people here", etc. What a small-minded way of thinking, but oh well I guess they got their way.
6) Some people are now saying "that money can now be spent on ...". Sorry, don't think so. You wanted a rail line to the airport? Wait about 10 years and see what happens. You wanted a field house or a new rink, fat chance that happens now
7) As for the new rink/fieldhouse/stadium combo a la Calgary Next, I think that the way that ended with the Flames was a contributing factor to these not being in the bid package. I think that they threw in the 5000 seat arena that was of no use as an earmark for this kind of project (that plus the reno fees for McMahon and Saddledome would have been enough for a Next-type of project as a PPP project).
8) People, rightly, didn't vote for this because there was no new shiny toy included. Renovations of existing facilities isn't sexy and people had no tangible new public space that was going to be part of this bid. They should have approached it as "check out all this stuff that you'll be getting for your money" and would have had a better result.
9) Pretty much every rally that I saw from the No side was people over 70 (for the most part). I guess they already got their Olympics and could care less if the young-ens get to experience it too. F you, I got mine, it what it felt like.
10) Lastly, there was too much nostalgia about '88. For ####s sake, nobody cares about Kurt Browning any more. Watching the Yes campaign's social media for the last few weeks was infuriating. None of the intended audience of social media like Intagram care about the '88 Olympics, and it was a major miss.

All in all, this City is symptomatic of the failure of this Country in recent years to get any meaningful large projects done. I don't have much hope for us going forward. With the economic climate getting worse seemingly by the day, I'm just not optimistic that we'll be able to get out of it all on our own without a major cash injection from the feds and the provice that a project like this would have brought with it. Good luck getting anything meaningful done in the next decade.