Should Calgary Bid on the 2026 Olympics

[Hockeyguy15]

Originally Posted by Bunk

The City Manager stated that since West LRT, which opened in 2012, no significant infrastructure project has run over budget or behind schedule. You can reasonably criticize the City for lots of stuff, but building stuff is something they do really well.

But how much of a say did the City have in the budget for the Olympics?

It's great the City can come up with an accurate budget and stick to it, but it means nothing if BidCo is the one giving the city the numbers.

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by Hockeyguy15

But how much of a say did the City have in the budget for the Olympics?

It's great the City can come up with an accurate budget and stick to it, but it means nothing if BidCo is the one giving the city the numbers.

It's a good point. I would imagine the games corporation would be set up something like CMLC, with City (and other governments) intertwined as shareholders or something like that. I would guess that infrastructure building resources from the City and CMLC would be executing the capital development. In other words people that build stuff at the City will be the ones building this stuff (not say people from the federal level).

[chemgear]

Listening to the radio station and they were already waxing nostalgia: "Don't you remember how great it was to have the Olympics? Don't you remember how great Blockbuster was too? When you could drive to a Blockbuster and walk in to pick up any movie you wanted?"

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by chemgear

Listening to the radio station and they were already waxing nostalgia: "Don't you remember how great it was to have the Olympics? Don't you remember how great Blockbuster was too? When you could drive to a Blockbuster and walk in to pick up any movie you wanted?"

Is your analogy here that elite sport competition is obsolete...because of what?

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by Bunk

Is your analogy here that elite sport competition is obsolete...because of what?

It wasn't my analogy.

[Hockeyguy15]

Originally Posted by Bunk

It's a good point. I would imagine the games corporation would be set up something like CMLC, with City (and other governments) intertwined as shareholders or something like that. I would guess that infrastructure building resources from the City and CMLC would be executing the capital development. In other words people that build stuff at the City will be the ones building this stuff (not say people from the federal level).

Yeah, unless I missed it I haven't seen which numbers the City came up with vs what BidCo came up with. I'm skeptical on how accurate this budget is and have concerns that they can actually stay on budget.

It doesn't sit well with me that they can just axe a bunch of money from housing and security and play it off as basically "we found we didn't need it". Really? Just out of the blue with the bid on life support you "found" that you didn't need something? That's either poor budgeting or you're just fudging the numbers to make it work.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Originally Posted by Bunk

Is your analogy here that elite sport competition is obsolete...because of what?

I think the real take here is there's no real financial case to sell to the public, it's extremely underwhelming. So it's going to be two weeks of being beaten over the head with all the emotional arguments, because that's all the Yes side really has that's effective.

And yeah, actually, elite sport competition is pretty clearly becoming obsolete, hence why the IOC has struggled so mightily to get even one solid bidder.

[OMG!WTF!]

As as mentioned before it's way easier to build new. Renovating a 60 year old stadium is anyone's guess. I would also challenge the city's statement that everything they've touched since 2012 is on time and budget. The BRT lines in the se and sw are really behind and the 17th ave sw repaving is like two years behind. The reconciliation bridge was supposed to be done Sept 15. Which was kind of true until they did the other side. I also suspect budgets are revised yearly to make them work. Could be wrong but it just seems like it.

[gasman]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

—Slicing more than $150 million from the initial security budget of $610 million, which bid leaders say came after they applied scrutiny to the numbers the RCMP and other agencies compiled. History makes it abundantly hard to believe Calgary’s Olympics can reverse the trajectory of nearly every Olympics and major-events security costs; Vancouver Games’ costs ballooned from $175 million to $900 million. Securing Sochi cost more than $2 billion. And if with a few hard questions the bid group seriously managed to lop off one-quarter of the police and screening costs, every politician in Canada should take a long hard look at what police chiefs and RCMP superintendents have been asking for all this time.

https://www.macleans.ca/olympics/cal...-bid-lives-on/

Lol. There is a published source indicating exactly what I said happened... They took the numbers supplied (which were likely already optimistic) and cut them down to fit the bid

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

I think the real take here is there's no real financial case to sell to the public, it's extremely underwhelming. So it's going to be two weeks of being beaten over the head with all the emotional arguments, because that's all the Yes side really has that's effective.

And yeah, actually, elite sport competition is pretty clearly becoming obsolete, hence why the IOC has struggled so mightily to get even one solid bidder.

sounds familiar to something else recently

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

I think the real take here is there's no real financial case to sell to the public, it's extremely underwhelming. So it's going to be two weeks of being beaten over the head with all the emotional arguments, because that's all the Yes side really has that's effective.

And yeah, actually, elite sport competition is pretty clearly becoming obsolete, hence why the IOC has struggled so mightily to get even one solid bidder.

I think you'll hear a lot more "Good deal for Calgary. Local taxpayers put in x, other parties put in y, we get most of the benefit."

I don't think the difficulty in attracting bids is that competition is obsolete, it's that they let the games hosting get out of hand - hence Agenda 2020. It's still quite a bit of money, but I think the benefit - tangible and less tangible with the cost and risk spread across multiple parties will on balance be really worth it for the city.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

Lol and there's the nightmare scenario, majority of council votes to kill, but not enough to actually kill. The clown show continues, but now with more athletes and bigwigs trying to save this thing.

It's Druh asking the reasonable questions?

https://calgarysun.com/opinion/colum...lking-dead-bid

Calgarians will vote Nov. 13 on a bid the city council majority want to kill.

On a bid even the chairman of city council’s Olympic committee wants to kill — and he loves the Olympics.

An Olympic bid where the city is not setting up open houses explaining the details because there isn’t time.

An Olympic bid where the Yes side will spend a million bucks and carpet-bomb the city with ads and commercials.

An Olympic bid where a cost-benefit analysis isn’t done, where the city brass are still going through the convoluted arithmetic, where blacked-out facts are still blacked out.

And it is an Olympic bid where those who whine most about misinformation are the ones who love to go behind closed doors and give us as little info as possible.

Olympic bid boss Scott Hutcheson decides to be snarky, giving the No side city councillors a little of the high-and-mighty treatment. “Some of you will say today there’s still not enough information and others will say we don’t understand the financial deal well enough.

Coun. Druh Farrell talks about similar comments made behind closed doors Tuesday where people on the No side are painted as not caring about Calgary as much as the Yes side.

Then Druh asks the question on every reasonable person’s mind.

“If we’re struggling to understand the complexity of this new agreement, how can we expect Calgarians to understand?”

[RM14]

Druh's Liberal Arts degree coming in handy when presented with economic decisions.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Originally Posted by Bunk

I think you'll hear a lot more "Good deal for Calgary. Local taxpayers put in x, other parties put in y, we get most of the benefit."

I don't think the difficulty in attracting bids is that competition is obsolete, it's that they let the games hosting get out of hand - hence Agenda 2020. It's still quite a bit of money, but I think the benefit - tangible and less tangible with the cost and risk spread across multiple parties will on balance be really worth it for the city.

The problem is the benefit. Some people are over the moon at improving winter sports facilities, the majority of Calgarians simply will never benefit from the facilities and thus do not care. It's not moving the needle like a new arena or transit investment would. The fieldhouse is basically the big selling point, and I actually think the McMahon renovation shouldn't be touted at all because it isn't what most people wanted which was something new. It sort of reinforces the poverty/refurb nature of the games, which isn't exciting at all.

And I do think the competition is obsolete. It's too expensive and the events the vast majority want to see are basically impossible to attend unless you are rich, or connected. Sports are more and more becoming an elitist thing, not so much for the plebs. Events like this really serve to reinforce that.

[chemgear]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...heck-1.4886988

The bid corporation touts gains of $4.4 billion for the city, $1 billion in wages, over 15,000 jobs, and a 10-to-1 return for city funds invested. It's one of the main talking points of the Yes campaign and of the bid corporation.

But they're mistaken. Demonstrably so.

First, the broader employment and GDP gains are based on questionable economic models that few economists take seriously.

A particularly bold claim by the bid corp. is that Calgary will receive back $10 for each $1 the city puts in.

This is creative accounting.

It counts as "money coming back to Calgary" such things as: spending on soldiers, police, and so on. It counts spending by Calgarians themselves on such things as Olympic tickets and merchandise — money that would likely have been spent on other things anyway. It also counts spending on compensation for Olympic staff that aren't Calgarians. And it counts imported materials, equipment, and so on.


The city raises just over half its property taxes from businesses, and just under half from homeowners. Split between the two, the $390-million cost is equivalent to more than $350 per residential property in the city and nearly $15,000 per non-residential property (i.e., business).

We don't know how the city plans to fund this, but let's presume it simply takes out more debt. This means future interest costs and repayments that would require something around a 1.3 per cent increase in annual property taxes, or $25 annually for the median home owner, but significantly more for the typical business. (This is napkin math, but gives a good sense of scale.)

The city is already challenged by rising property tax bills on businesses in the city, as downtown vacancy rates are high. Without higher bills for residential property owners, business have made up much of the slack. The Olympics may make this challenge even more difficult.

Given such constraints, finding money for Olympic infrastructure means taking it away from somewhere else. It's fair enough to prioritize the Games above other projects, but we must recognize that is the choice before us. This is true even if the government borrows more to cover the costs — the trade-off is merely pushed into the future.

Public funds have alternative uses. It's a difficult reality. But it's a reality nonetheless.

[chemgear]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1057690083023712256

https://twitter.com/user/status/1057696538586079232

https://twitter.com/user/status/1057698526811975680

https://twitter.com/user/status/1057718483004272642

[sleepingmoose]

Ironically, a lot of the people I see making comments across social media and in person say "I'm worried that it will go over budget, and we'll be stuck with a big bill", but at the same time say "maybe if we were getting more LRT or roads it would be a good deal" - the games itself have shown consistently that operationally they are break even (or make modest profit)....it's the infrastructure add-ons that make things late and over-budget.

I think that there's a good chance that the budget numbers (with contengency) will be pretty close to correct, assuming people don't start adding big infrastructure projects that don't actually have anything to do with staging the Olympics (Vancouver, for example, had accelerated Canada Line and upgrading the Sea-to-Sky highway). Sure, those things can make hosting easier, but they're not needed to host. Realistically, they shouldn't really be part of the Bid Budget.

I'm not sure how you can complain about the Olympic budget, and then ask for more costly infrastructure projects at the same time.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by sleepingmoose

I'm not sure how you can complain about the Olympic budget, and then ask for more costly infrastructure projects at the same time.

Because those are the things that last.

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by RM14

Druh's Liberal Arts degree coming in handy when presented with economic decisions.

Disagree with elected officials all you want, but this kind of discourse is just counterproductive. Besides, she was a business owner before she ran for council - and ran the Kensington BRZ too.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Bunk

Disagree with elected officials all you want, but this kind of discourse is just counterproductive. Besides, she was a business owner before she ran for council - and ran the Kensington BRZ too.

But she closed down part of Memorial drive on a Sunday afternoon once, so practically Satan.