MF YYC Politics - there, I mega did it

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by Faust

Calgary’s Bizarre Low-Turnout, High-Turnover Election:

https://www.sprawlcalgary.com/voter-...-2025-election

Conservatives love to suppress votes. It is their best chance to win elections.

A big stick in the wheel was Form 13, which had election workers writing out addresses and birthdates by hand when voters requested a school board ballot—even if the voter was already on the election register. With a hand count, workers also had to fold and initial three individual ballots, rather than handing voters the single composite paper ballot that was used in 2021 for tallying by tabulators.

“Once the trustee ballot was requested, you had to rewrite the entirety of the voter’s information even though they already have a voter ID,” one election worker told The Sprawl. “If I were a more cynical person I would say this reeks of voter suppression. Make it longer and harder to vote for everyone involved.”

There were reports of it taking between two and a half and five minutes to process each voter. “All those individual little steps did add to the additional processing times,” said city returning officer Kate Martin.

Lines crawled. Some Calgarians gave up and left. Others heard of the delays and didn’t go at all.

Someday we'll just have a government app on our phones and it'll allow us to vote while at work (sitting on the toilet) and our voter turnout will be 99%.

[Bigtime]

Jeromy Farkas's long, strange trek to becoming Calgary mayor

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...ysis-9.6956785

Good write-up by Jason Markusoff on our new mayor.

[Erick Estrada]

Time will tell but it sounds like he's learned a lot and will hopefully better work with others. It would be a good story and example for others if he in fact became a good mayor.

[Bigtime]

I'm surprised but not shocked that Daorcey is stepping back into the mayors office too. Being the comms guy for so many years for Nenshi would have aged me 1000 years easily. He's got some secret sauce to handle that.

“It will take time,” said Le Bray, who expects to work in Farkas’s mayoral office. “I don’t expect people to be like ‘Oh, now that he’s the mayor, I know who he is.’”

[Bunk]

Daorcey has been freelancing for a number of years now. I am sure he's keen on the stable employment again. Worked with him in Nenshi 1.0 Mayor's Office. His experience will serve the new mayor well.

[fotze2]

Gotta get rid of that O in his name though.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by fotze2

Gotta get rid of that O in his name though.

He can just go by his new title now. Hand of the King.

[Firebot]

Surprised this thread is so far down the page, but Jeromy Farkas is on the Calgary subreddit right now asking for feedback on the budget if you want to partake or give your 2 cents. Great to see and he's very very engaged.

He's already done a lot in a couple of weeks engaging genuinely with Calgarians directly on the ground, take advantage, especially if you have been apprehensive on him or his turnaround from the transgressions thread days.

[fotze2]

This has been quite the character arc. Like professional wrestling.

[Faust]

Braid: Farkas team signals return to common sense at city hall

https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/co...ense-city-hall

[Faust]

Calgary mayor to propose banning of national flag displays at city hall:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/calgary/artic...-at-city-hall/

[Faust]

Free speech amendment fizzles for first time councillor:

https://livewirecalgary.com/2025/11/...me-councillor/

[Wormius]

So I heard Chabot on the radio this morning talking about repealing the R-CG zoning. Most of it sounded populist, but I am still totally unclear why it is so difficult for them to maintain R-CG for households that want to keep it. I bet it is as simple as can be.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by fotze2

This has been quite the character arc. Like professional wrestling.

Better than winning a city election and immediately focusing on sending Calgary tax payer money to fund a religious crusade against another province.

[para transit fellow]

Originally Posted by Wormius

So I heard Chabot on the radio this morning talking about repealing the R-CG zoning. Most of it sounded populist, but I am still totally unclear why it is so difficult for them to maintain R-CG for households that want to keep it. I bet it is as simple as can be.

My understanding is: with a wave of a pen (mouse?) entire neighbourhoods were upgraded to R-CG.

Now each property owner will have to be notified/ asked / confirmed about their options to keep/ ditch the R-CG zoning. Each record will have to be updated. then zoning maps will have to be updated.

plus there will be some owners that cannot be found/ won't respond and the City will have to deal with various complains about " i didn't know..." for years.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by para transit fellow

My understanding is: with a wave of a pen (mouse?) entire neighbourhoods were upgraded to R-CG.

Now each property owner will have to be notified/ asked / confirmed about their options to keep/ ditch the R-CG zoning. Each record will have to be updated. then zoning maps will have to be updated.

plus there will be some owners that cannot be found/ won't respond and the City will have to deal with various complains about " i didn't know..." for years.

Maybe I am oversimplifying, but it should be no more difficult than anything else that can be currently done online on the City’s website where you can log in and view your assessment and request changes or update info. I just think this should be no more difficult than putting a checkbox in your property assessment page. Would there be some stragglers? Maybe. That’s on them though.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by Wormius

So I heard Chabot on the radio this morning talking about repealing the R-CG zoning. Most of it sounded populist, but I am still totally unclear why it is so difficult for them to maintain R-CG for households that want to keep it. I bet it is as simple as can be.

One thing to consider is context in the neighbourhoods. If you have a former RC1 neighbourhood that all starts reverting back to RC1, they are not going to want pockets of RCG duplexes and rowhouses.

Right or wrong, this is what was voted for and so they need to zoom out to the neighbourhood level to do zoning, not a house by house assessment.

I expect that they would maintain the main streets zoning, so even if the neighbourhood goes back to RC2/RC1 the main street corridor will have the 4-6 story mixed retail/residential (that has so far failed to deliver).

[Fuzz]

Why not keep blanket rezoning, and if you don't want it for your property, you file to revert. At that point the city looks at if reverting makes sense for your property, or if it should stay rezoned or apply a different zoning.


Most people won't bother. But it gives some freedom back to the home owners who really complain.


Oh, what's that? This was never about individual homeowner rights and is really just people trying to tell others what they can do with their property? Oh ya.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Why not keep blanket rezoning, and if you don't want it for your property, you file to revert. At that point the city looks at if reverting makes sense for your property, or if it should stay rezoned or apply a different zoning.


Most people won't bother. But it gives some freedom back to the home owners who really complain.


Oh, what's that? This was never about individual homeowner rights and is really just people trying to tell others what they can do with their property? Oh ya.

Unlikely to happen this way but this truly is the best solution. It allows those who prefer the new zoning to keep it and those who don’t to put their property back to what it was. That way everyone is getting exactly what they said they wanted and nobody has any right to be upset.

[Wormius]

Or really, if you don’t like it, don’t make use of it. Like is somebody going to build a multi-family building on their own lot and cry, “why didn’t anybody stop me??”