Calgary Minute: LRT Complaints, Budget Commitments, and a Second Councillor Running For Mayor

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

This Week In Calgary:

• Good news! Starting today, the Province has repealed some of the public health restrictions, as we called for in our recent petition. Outdoor social gatherings of up to 10 people will be allowed, while personal services such as haircuts and pedicures will also be permitted to reopen but only by appointment. Unfortunately, restaurants and gyms are not included in the reopening, and their reopening date has likely been delayed a second time, past the already-revised January 21st date, as Premier Kenney said they would receive one week's notice and there's been no news yet.
  
  
• Council meetings will return this week with a Combined Meeting of Council being held today at 9:30 am. Council will be briefed on Sound Wall Lifecycle Replacements, receive an update from the Green Line Committee, discuss the Corporate Land Strategy, and deal with a bunch of Land Use Amendments.
  
  
• Wednesday's planned meeting of the Standing Policy Committee on Community and Protective Services has been cancelled as there were no reports for the meeting. On Thursday morning there will be a meeting of the Intergovernmental Affairs Committee which will review a number of the City's taxpayer-funded attempts to promote bad governance, like Business Improvement Areas and the Calgary Metropolitan Regional Board. On Thursday afternoon there will be a meeting of the Calgary Planning Commission which will focus on Land Use Amendments.

Last Week In Calgary:

• In probably one of the worst kept secrets at City Hall, Councillor Jyoti Gondek announced her bid to become Mayor of Calgary. That brings the number of declared candidates up to four, including two sitting Councillors after Jeromy Farkas announced his bid back in September 2020.
  
  
• Council Keating complained about Green Line delays, explaining that his opinions are facts, but everyone else's facts are just opinions. What he fails to recognize is that different people can all have the same set of facts but come to different conclusions due to preferences. Worse, many of his facts aren't actually facts, especially his claim that there is no chance of a cost overrun on this project. That kind of claim is just not credible when the project has ALREADY doubled in price, despite being just half the originally planned length! That's the reason why the Province are taking a second look at the project, and why we support letting Calgarians decide in a referendum.
  
  
• Finally, in classic City Hall fashion, the City is already backing away from a budget commitment to eliminate 162 of the 17,000+ positions at the City. How come City staff can get things done in less than 24 hours when it's something they want to do, but when it's something they don't want to do the decision will come "mid-2021" because "we are just currently working on what that would look like". Maybe they are hoping they can delay it until after the election and get the new Council to cancel the job cuts and raise taxes again instead?

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