Calgary Minute: LRT Secrecy, Unhomogenized Planning, and the Guidebook Forced Through

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

This Week In Calgary:

• Another busy week ahead at City Hall, starting today at 8:00 am with yet another Green Line Board meeting (the rumour is that it's over budget again!), followed by a Combined Meeting of Council at 9:30 am.
  
  
• On Wednesday at 9:30 am there will be a meeting of the Standing Policy Committee on Community and Protective Services at 9:30 am.
  
  
• As of a few days ago, there were meetings of the Intergovernmental Affairs Committee and the Gas, Power, and Telecommunications Committee planned for this week, but these have now disappeared off the agenda. We assume these meetings have simply been cancelled or delayed, but the City would normally post official cancellation notices on their website, which hasn't happened this time, so we can't be 100% sure.

Last Week In Calgary:

• Council used a sneaky loophole to pass the Guidebook through a Committee, rather than bringing the document back to Council for another debate as they promised last month. Sure, they renamed the Guidebook to the "Guide for Local Area Planning", which is a better name for the document since it describes what it actually does more than the Orwellian title they had previously conjured up, but nothing much else has changed overall, however. You can read more details in our summary of what happened here.
  
  
• Common Sense finally prevailed in the case of the reconstruction of the Dairy Queen on Centre Street. The land and franchise owners will finally be allowed to rebuild their business which burnt down way back in 2019. This just goes to show how important it is to speak up against all the ridiculous ideas coming out of City Hall, and remind Councillors they work for us, not the other way around. Questions remain how this was allowed to happen in the first place, however.
  
  
• Finally, this year's Mayoral race is now up to 14 candidates, while every ward race now has at least two candidates running. The 2021 Calgary municipal election is going to be incredibly important for the future of our City. If you'd like to contribute towards our Election Coverage Fundraising Drive, you can do so here.

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