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Originally Posted by Joborule
Not a response to Senator or anything in this thread in particular, just more of a generic comment. But this city seems to have a very vocal crowd that has a phobia to anything that looks like it costs a lot of money, but could benefit the city in the long term. The bump of the peace bridge thread reminded of that. If it's not road or LRT related, high number figures get a lot of negative vocal responses, and even with the arena negotiations this could fit under.
Not sure if in all these cases if it's a vocal minority, or it actually represents the majority views. With how the US elections went, as well as the recent Quebec one, public perception isn't as obvious anymore.
Either way, this Olympic bid was going to draw a vocal negative responses no matter what since it's a contributions of billions involved from multiple parties. When +9 figures is involved, there's a worried responses from many no matter how good the project could end up being in the long term.
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I mean I've certainly earned my #### the arena/#### the Olympics reputation around here, but I am definitely not against spending money on things. I have actually made one of my more consistent refrains that I think it's gross we need to invite corrupt groups like FIFA and the IOC to get public dollars for meaningful projects, rather than simply doing them because of citizen need/benefit. That to me is so insane, impressing outsiders supersedes all when it comes to public infrastructure investment. I fully get that not hosting the Olympics means some projects won't get done, but my issue is with why can't they get done without the Olympics? Why does it have to a zero sum game of no Olympics, no project?
If you wanna know why Trump and the related are happening, it's things like catering to groups viewed as elitist like the IOC and FIFA rather than serving citizen need. Populism is more about riling people up, and when we're talking about a city that is facing tax increases and service cuts, turning around to throw money at the Olympics isn't helping quash that, it's fueling the "They don't care about me" narrative populists spin.