Quote:
Originally Posted by PsYcNeT
So this would be solved by City Hall being staffed with Manning Centre cronies, how?
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I am not suggesting any specific candidates or political affiliations. What I am saying is that we need to do a re-think and have a proper strategy going forward. Doing what we have been doing hasn't helped anybody.
We are now headed into a 7th year of poor economic conditions in Calgary and there really isn't much expectations of end in sight.
This has been an epic failure across everybody in charge in every step of government in city, provincial and federal. I mean nobody really has much in the way of ideas and made any progress.
I keep up with news very very closely but I am very hard pressed to any meaningful impact that any of the economic organizations have had in attracting business. We may have landed some new jobs in Calgary but I don't even think we have landed any existing companies to move here and take advantage of low commercial rents! I am sure a few have come but it's not like we have landed a few big deals and with that, tens of thousands of jobs.
A lot of the vacant and commercial lease space hasn't really dropped in price for small and medium sized business, one of the reasons why is high property taxes, business taxes, utilities and other costs.
The same thing can be said on the residential rent front. Does anybody know a lot of people these days skinning landlords on rent? Have rent's really come down for a lot of people? Nope, they are still fairly high considering the same factors above.
Like I had said in my first post, I don't think we can try and do everything at the same time. High rents, high taxes, high fee's, high vacancies, expensive parking, expensive utilities, a poor economy, negative demographic changes and a whole host of other things. We have situations where some big business are leaving the inner city due to costs and rents and we have the little guy who can't afford to get into space in the burbs.
A lot of changes will need to come and some of them are going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people. Cut's in services are going to come, taxes will need to be either flat or reduced, we will need to start building a city that has some more spice that attracts a lot of people. We literally have a massive amount of commercial and residential real estate that we need to fill and are in the process of building even more!
I am just frustrated with the situation in Calgary, Alberta and Canada as a whole and I do think we all deserve better. It is getting hard to see when we will get there