Should Calgary Bid on the 2026 Olympics

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

In recent years, many cities in democratic countries have held plebiscites/referendums around hosting the Olympics. Boston, Salzburg, St Moritz, Innsbruck, Munich, Hamburg, Budapest all failed to pass. The people who support hosting Olympics know this, which is why they don't like plebiscites.

Originally Posted by OMG!WTF!

You're going to have to extrapolate here. Nenshi said that the party who wants the plebiscite should be the party to pay for the plebiscite..,the province. Ergo the party that does not want the plebiscite is the City of Calgary.

This is a failure of modal logic. Stating that the party who has demonstrated a desire for the plebiscite should pay for it does not imply that another party that hasn't demonstrated that preference is against it. If anything, he's expressing ambivalence. Additionally, you're constantly conflating two "Cities of Calgary" here - City Hall, and the population itself.

Here's the issue. We've already studied this bid...for two years and ten million dollars. We have the answers we need to proceed with a 50 million dollar bid. Except we don't. And now we don't have enough time to get that information together.

Who's "we"? Do you have this information? I don't. I'm waiting for someone to put out a pdf setting it all out for me to read so I can decide if I think this thing is going to make fiscal sense. I suspect that something like that will in fact be produced in advance of the plebiscite.

Wonderful. That makes perfect sense. Agree 100%. But that's not what you're getting. What you're getting is sorry, there is no time and no information for you. So away we go.

I don't believe I should get a vote on every decision that Council makes before they make it, even if I might have an opinion on it. I can understand why people think this issue is worth it, but I don't think that a plebiscite is necessarily useful, for the reasons Cliff put out above. It's going to skew "no", even if Calgary as a whole is largely in favour but most people aren't paying enough attention to show up and cast their vote on the matter. It does seem to be a moot point now; my read of this is that there will be a plebiscite and Nenshi's trying to position it so that the City doesn't have to pay for it, or at least not all of it.

It seemed pretty accurate in Vancouver. A plebiscite was a pretty easy under taking in Vancouver in 2010. Don't you even for a second wonder why it's so incredibly hard for Calgary to figure it out?

Who says it's hard to figure out? It was costly in 2010, I'm sure, too. But in that case, if I remember right, hadn't Vancouver already submitted a bid before they held the vote there? Weren't they already further along in the process? I seem to recall it being so far down the road the the IOC was already in town commenting on the process and checking out the proposed venues.

[corporatejay]

We could also reframe it this way.

The party requesting the funding should hold a plebiscite to see if their citizens actually want that funding.

There, happy now? Why should the province pay for something when I'm sure they are happy to not have Calgary bid for the games.

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by OMG!WTF!

The party requesting the plebiscite is the city.

No, the province is making funding conditional on a plebiscite. They're the party requesting it... I think it's silly for Nenshi to try and say that the province has to pay for it (Calgary is going to be asking for a lot of money... it doesn't have any leverage here since the city can just say "fine, no money at all").

I still think a plebiscite is stupid... we elect people to represent us so that we don't have to have plebiscites. Council members should put the work in and consult their constituents so they can vote accordingly not blow 2M taxpayer bucks in search of personal validation.

[Joborule]

It is such a tight time to call for a plebiscite. Feels kinda like a move by the NDP to attempt to sabotage the bid attempt so then they don't feel obligated to have to put in lots of money. By the time it would occur, the bid would be pretty much close to completion for submission? It is wasted money at that point if the plebiscite failed.

NDP should've called for it earlier, so then if it passed, we could proceed with the costs in completing the bid after the plebiscite.

[Jacks]

Originally Posted by Joborule

Feels kinda like a move by the NDP to attempt to sabotage the bid attempt so then they don't feel obligated to have to put in lots of money. By the time it would occur, the bid would be pretty much close to completion for submission? It is wasted money at that point if the plebiscite failed.

NDP will most likely be on the outside looking in by the time the bills are due anyway. They just don't want to pick a side and alienate voters on either side in the lead up to next years election.

[OMG!WTF!]

I don't believe I should get a vote on every decision that Council makes before they make it, even if I might have an opinion on it.

I just think we should vote on things that are going to cost more than 4.6 billion dollars and tend to run over budget by 156%...or things that are more than an entire year of funding the city....or anything with "good party" in the notes column.

Who says it's hard to figure out? It was costly in 2010, I'm sure, too. But in that case, if I remember right, hadn't Vancouver already submitted a bid before they held the vote there? Weren't they already further along in the process?

It cost 600k. They submitted their bid in Jan. The plebiscite was in Feb and the IOC visited in March. However the plebiscite was planned for a long time. They did over 400 open houses and 1000 public presentations to educate the people who would be voting...kind of the opposite of what we have going on here. But I believe our timeline is similar...bids due Jan 2019, IOC visit in March. So they could still figure it out but it needs to get rolling now.

The plebiscite was the mayor's idea. Campbell went ahead with it despite warnings it was too late in the bid. It also cost taxpayers almost $600,000.
"I'd have spent a million if I had to," he said. "We're talking about democracy here. I'm sick and tired of people saying there's a price to be paid for democracy."

Who's "we"? Do you have this information? I don't. I'm waiting for someone to put out a pdf setting it all out for me to read so I can decide if I think this thing is going to make fiscal sense.

It's all on the calgary.ca site.

http://www.calgary.ca/CSPS/Recreatio...20redacted.pdf

It's going to skew "no", even if Calgary as a whole is largely in favour but most people aren't paying enough attention to show up and cast their vote on the matter

The city could develop interest in a plebiscite and endeavor to educate just like Vancouver did. Even so, I wonder if a "no" vote might actually have some good reasoning behind it. Vancouver miraculously broke even on the games...if you take out about 5 billion in infrastructure, all of which was severely under estimated. Pyeongchang is about 10 billion short so far. Sochi. But yeah, our 13 councilors probably know all that.

[Fuzz]

The costs of a plebiscite include:

• $1,000,000 to hire and train 3,000 workers.
• $400,000 on public education and mailing household voter cards.
• $100,000 to develop a question and translate it into multiple languages.
• $100,000 to print ballots and forms.
• $80,000 to rent polling locations.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgar...ment-1.4609653
I'll save the city some money and do this for $10,000. And still have lots of money leftover for hookers and blow. $100,000? WTF?

[Scornfire]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgar...ment-1.4609653
I'll save the city some money and do this for $10,000. And still have lots of money leftover for hookers and blow. $100,000? WTF?

wtf indeed

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Wouldn’t the only language they translate into be French? Since it’s an official language?

Are ballots for civic elections in more than 2 languages? How are the languages determined? Is there a legal requirement?

[OMG!WTF!]

An update in the Herald yesterday...

http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-...on-olympic-bid

“We need to get a temperature check from council, we need another vote,” Farrell said Monday. “It’s my impression that we don’t have a majority support (for the Olympics) any longer on council, let’s determine that now before we’ve spent any more money.
“We have been making basic mistakes on what could be the largest project in our history. This is bigger than the Green Line and we’re making basic mistakes.”

“When I read the report, it sounds a lot like the public engagement process being proposed is seeking support and that is not what we need to be doing,” Gondek said. “We need to be seeking input and feedback, not seeking support. We need to see whether people are actually interested in this. This is not 1988, let’s get over that. Let’s look at what’s happening now.”

[longsuffering]

Since we're apparently having a plebiscite anyway, we can add a Flames arena proposal to it as well.

Do you support the City of Calgary arena funding proposal or do you support the CSEC arena funding proposal

That would certainly provide clarity to that question as well.

While we're at it, let's add a 3rd question about funding a new stadium for the City's professional football team.

If it's all about the will of the people, this is the only way to go, right? Just understand that nothing will ever be built if every major capital expenditure has to go this route.

[Northendzone]

I wonder if the turn out for a plebiscite would be greater than an election? if only 60% of the folks turn out then 50% of those vote no (30% of those eligible) - then would you assume that the 70% of folks (30% of those that voted yes, plus the remaining 40% that did not show up) are in favour?

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

I wonder if the turn out for a plebiscite would be greater than an election? if only 60% of the folks turn out then 50% of those vote no (30% of those eligible) - then would you assume that the 70% of folks (30% of those that voted yes, plus the remaining 40% that did not show up) are in favour?

No, that would be stupid.

But actually sounds like something the city would do.

[getbak]

That's the problem with plebiscites. Turnout tends to be much lower than for a regular election, so it's hard to know if the majority of the voters actually represents the majority opinion.

Both sides try to claim the non-voters for themselves, when the reality is that the non-voters would likely split down the middle and that's why they didn't bother voting.

[Bigtime]

Posted in the Municipal politics thread but Druh brought forward a motion to have council vote on Monday either Yes or No to continue the Olympic bid process. Motion passed 9-1 (Chahal against).

[Bunk]

Likely lives or dies on an 8-7 vote Monday. Not sure which way yet. I would predict it probably dies.

[Bigtime]

City Council public seating on Monday: "We'll sell you the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge!"

[Joborule]

Seems at this point that it's gonna abruptly die.

[Roughneck]

Originally Posted by Bunk

Likely lives or dies on an 8-7 vote Monday. Not sure which way yet. I would predict it probably dies.

Now we are in a weird situation where you might have people angry they voted it down before letting the public decide in a plebiscite.

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by Roughneck

Now we are in a weird situation where you might have people angry they voted it down before letting the public decide in a plebiscite.

Gives the councilors that wanted it someone to blame though that's not the citizens that may have voted it down.