[GT] Calgary Municipal Election 2021

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Aside from being a stupid, meaningless bit of moral grandstanding, that approach actually concerns the hell out of me. In the lower mainland, having everything the municipality does filtered through the lens of "climate emergency" language really just hurts people who aren't already settled. Try to get a house built there and the changes to building code explicitly for climate-change-oriented reasons has basically increased the cost of building to approximately double what it was ten years ago, in exchange for dubious or negligible environmental impact. You see municipalities demanding that solar panels be installed on city buildings even when the costs and recovered energy don't justify it because they want to "set an example". It is not a good mode for a municipal government to be in.

It’s a symptom of a bigger problem with politics. As the media and tools we engage with become global, the common touchstones of citizens - especially the extremely online ones - become these big value issues. In the U.S. it’s called the nationalization of politics. As these big issues that people from Seattle and Boston and Omaha argue over with one another take up all of the oxygen, local issues fall to the wayside. Which is not a good thing. It’s the local issues that directly affect people, especially those less advantaged.

I don’t want my councillors and mayors contending over high-level issues and cultural battlegrounds. We have other levels of government for that. I want my councillor to dedicate herself to acting on behalf of my neighbours and myself on the practical, day-to-day workings of our neighbourhood: roads and infrastructure, parks, public transport, waste collection, property zoning, and bylaw enforcement. Take our concerns to city administration and advocate on our behalf. That’s all.

[The Fisher Account]

LOL at people thinking your Councilor can't be dedicated to addressing climate change and still escalate your whiney 311 SR to the Roads Dept.

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by The Fisher Account

LOL at people thinking your Councilor can't be dedicated to addressing climate change and still escalate your whiney 311 SR to the Roads Dept.

"Wah wah wah I reported this pothole like 2 days ago and it's still not fixed!?!?!?!?!?!?!"

[Looch City]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

I don’t want my councillors and mayors contending over high-level issues and cultural battlegrounds. We have other levels of government for that. I want my councillor to dedicate herself to acting on behalf of my neighbours and myself on the practical, day-to-day workings of our neighbourhood: roads and infrastructure, parks, public transport, waste collection, property zoning, and bylaw enforcement. Take our concerns to city administration and advocate on our behalf. That’s all.

Why can't these things you mention be looked at alongside tackling the climate emergency?

I see protecting the climate being an aspect of all of those. Sustainable roads, more parks, sustainable transit, recycling, zoning for sustainability/carbon capture, etc.

ALL levels have to work on this together. Can't just delegate to "the higher ups" and say it's not our problem.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

It’s a symptom of a bigger problem with politics. As the media and tools we engage with become global, the common touchstones of citizens - especially the extremely online ones - become these big value issues. In the U.S. it’s called the nationalization of politics. As these big issues that people from Seattle and Boston and Omaha argue over with one another take up all of the oxygen, local issues fall to the wayside. Which is not a good thing. It’s the local issues that directly affect people, especially those less advantaged.

I don’t want my councillors and mayors contending over high-level issues and cultural battlegrounds. We have other levels of government for that. I want my councillor to dedicate herself to acting on behalf of my neighbours and myself on the practical, day-to-day workings of our neighbourhood: roads and infrastructure, parks, public transport, waste collection, property zoning, and bylaw enforcement. Take our concerns to city administration and advocate on our behalf. That’s all.

Most of those issues can be looked at throguh a climate change lens, though. Waste management can deal with things like methane recovery. Roads and transit have obvious connections. Parks, managing golf courses etc all can and should be viewed in regard to their overall climate effect, and how to do it in the best way possible.

[bizaro86]

Things like broad declarations tend to ossify thinking, and it gives decision makers an out when they do something illogical.

I know the art spending is a touchy subject, but I contend that buying huge amounts of public art at freeway overpasses is a bad way to spend money. But because of a mandate it happens and everyone points the finger elsewhere. Would we be better off spending our public art dollars in parks and on walkable boulevards - almost certainly.

Similarly, I think its possible this gets used to justify illogical decision making. Putting a few solar panels on the north side of a partially shaded building with a full inverter setup.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

It's amazing how much people talk past each other on here. "I don't like A, because it leads to B and C." "Okay, I hear you, but what's so wrong with A?"
FFS.

[getbak]

The results are now official.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1451620583549112324


Some of the final counts were adjusted up as they discovered that some of the mail-in vote counts weren't properly included in the unofficial numbers. None of the adjustments were enough to change any of the final results, in fact, the two closest races, Wards 4 & 9 saw the margin of victory increase.


In the end, more people voted this year than in 2017. 390,383 votes cast for mayor compared to 387,583 4 years ago.

[mrkajz44]

I've got to be honest, I'm surprised turnout was so low. With so few incumbents and a pretty polarizing mayor race, the best we could muster was 46%? I guess there is still the idea out there that municipal politics don't matter as much, even though it's the opposite of being true?

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

The whole campaign snuck pretty much under the radar. You can remember all the drama over Nenshi's last campaign, that was back and forth in the spotlight for months. This one is coming on the heels of a federal campaign that I'm sure pretty much exhausted everyone's patience for politics, and no one made much noise. It was one of the things Nenshi kept saying during the race; none of the people aiming to replace him had articulated any bold new vision for the city. Trying to name what the various candidates stood for in any of the races probably would be challenging for 90% of the population.

[RedHot25]

Farkas didn't even win his own Ward?!

https://twitter.com/user/status/1451634226084777985

[getbak]

I'm not sure where Dippel got that percentage from. In 2017, the turnout was 58.1% with a total number of eligible voters at 666,663.

For this year's turnout to be 46.38%, there would have needed to be 841,705 eligible voters. That's an increase of about 180,000 in four years, but from what I can tell, Calgary's population only grew about 100,000 in the last four years.

Obviously, those two numbers aren't going to be perfectly linked because the number of eligible voters is impacted by people turning 18 and others gaining citizenship while straight population increases are about immigration and births/deaths. It does seem unlikely that so many more people would become eligible to vote than the population increased though.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by RedHot25

Farkas didn't even win his own Ward?!

He only won the ward with about 38% of the vote in 2017, so it's not a significant drop-off for him.

----------


Not surprising, Chu won on the backs of the advance vote...

https://twitter.com/user/status/1451633781232656386

Even still, nearly 7,000 people still cast a vote for him on Monday.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by getbak

Even still, nearly 7,000 people still cast a vote for him on Monday.

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by RedHot25

Farkas didn't even win his own Ward?!

https://twitter.com/user/status/1451634226084777985

And this:

Paul Fairie
@paulisci

Calgary had 187 voting stations throughout the city on election day.

Jeff Davison won the most votes in 1, Jeromy Farkas in 15, and Jyoti Gondek in 171.

This is mind blowing to me that her support would be that widespread and geographically distributed, even in quite conservative areas of the city. A thorough victory.
__________________

[Krovikan]

Originally Posted by RedHot25

Farkas didn't even win his own Ward?!

https://twitter.com/user/status/1451634226084777985

I was talking to a couple of people who are from his ward. According to them their was some big controversy over a dog park water station that was removed twice, and he staged a photo op handing out water. But then it came out that he was the one that was responsible for the removal, so people were getting quite annoyed with him.



Sent from my Pixel 5 using Tapatalk

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by Bunk

And this:



This is mind blowing to me that her support would be that widespread and geographically distributed, even in quite conservative areas of the city. A thorough victory.
__________________

Gondek isn't exactly a crazy left person where she would be unelecteable for right wingers (she has some pretty strong developer connections as pointed out but nothing earth shattering)...while Farkas seems to be a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian and a very suspect voting record on many issues.

Even accounting for partisanship, Gondek seems like the better choice. For municipal issues, partisanship plays a much lesser role (as can be seen with Nenshi where people think he can run for the UCP provincially or the Liberals federally, or may be in bed with the NDP where people are trying to pigeonhole him to a party and failing). That basically makes him a centrist, and Gondek as well.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Krovikan

I was talking to a couple of people who are from his ward. According to them their was some big controversy over a dog park water station that was removed twice, and he staged a photo op handing out water. But then it came out that he was the one that was responsible for the removal, so people were getting quite annoyed with him.



Sent from my Pixel 5 using Tapatalk

That is so on brand for Farkas lol

[getbak]

Originally Posted by getbak

I'm not sure where Dippel got that percentage from. In 2017, the turnout was 58.1% with a total number of eligible voters at 666,663.

For this year's turnout to be 46.38%, there would have needed to be 841,705 eligible voters. That's an increase of about 180,000 in four years, but from what I can tell, Calgary's population only grew about 100,000 in the last four years.

Obviously, those two numbers aren't going to be perfectly linked because the number of eligible voters is impacted by people turning 18 and others gaining citizenship while straight population increases are about immigration and births/deaths. It does seem unlikely that so many more people would become eligible to vote than the population increased though.

The city has updated their results page it indeed shows that there were 847,556 eligible voters this time around. An increase of over 180,000. I guess a lot of people either turned 18 or became citizens in the last 4 years.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Bunk

And this:



This is mind blowing to me that her support would be that widespread and geographically distributed, even in quite conservative areas of the city. A thorough victory.
__________________

I think a big part of that is how terrible Farkas is. I voted Nenshi every time, but am usually a right wing voter. This election had two choices and one of them was Farkas, so I think lots of people who would have preferred a right wing choice over Gondek picked her as the lesser of two evils. She probably benefited from the right wing leader being an imbecile.