Calgary Minute: Council Attendance, Green Line, and Ward Boundary Gerrymandering

Calgary Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Calgary politics

This Week In Calgary:

• On Monday there will be a Combined Meeting of Council. Council will be reviewing traffic safety, the 2017 municipal election audit, the Calgary Planning Commission report and several Land Use Amendments amongst other items.
  
  
• Monday's council meeting is also expected to finally sign off on the new My Fare smartphone app that they are hoping to introduce this spring. The app will allow Calgarians to buy, display, and validate transit tickets on their phone. We're still not sure why Council needed to spend $5 million on a custom app when basically every other major has a solution we could have used instead.
  
  
• On Wednesday there will be a Standing Policy Committee on Transportation and Transit meeting. The Committee will be reviewing Bylaw Amendment for Carshare Parking Policy, and Truck Route Bylaw Amendments.

Last Week In Calgary:

• After the Priorities and Finance Committee voted down a motion to report on the Mayor and Councillors' attendance at meetings since the 2017 election, we released our own Attendance Tracker report. City staff claimed it would cost them $20,000 and take 3-4 months. We did it for free in 3-4 days, as part of our efforts to increase transparency at City Hall. Please share our report with your friends, family, and co-workers!
  
  
• The City released more information on their plans for Ward Boundaries changes for the 2021 election and they are already facing immense criticism over the perceived bias and undue influence incumbent Councillors have over the outcome. To make matters worse, Councillor Carra admitted on Twitter that he wants objective criteria like population party to be "blended" with his subjective belief that boundaries should be gerrymandered so that inner-city, urban voices like his get an outsized influence on elections.
  
  
• As we predicted in last week's email, the Green Line Committee meeting was filled with drama again. Councillor Jyoti Gondek put forward a motion that asked bureaucrats to recommend a place to stop the Green Line downtown and use the money that would have gone toward building over the Bow River for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), only to then withdraw her motion after a break. Instead, Council plans to extend the public consultation period by an extra month.

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