Posts Tagged ‘nenshi’

Nenshi’s budget

- October 26th, 2011

The selection process for Calgary city council committees isn’t the most scintillating of subjects, but in advance of the fall budget talks, one move speaks volumes.

Two committees are being amalgamated and the Mayor Naheed Nenshi is taking the reins. This will either prove to be a very shrewd move on his part or make him a direct target if the budget displeases Calgarians.

From the story:

But the mayor said he wants to make sure he has direct oversight of critical and financial matters.

“The most important thing that city council does financially is crafting the budget, every three years and then review it every year,” he said.

The chair of the finance committee has been erroneously called in the past the “budget guy” or the “budget czar,” said Nenshi.

The mayor said work on preparing budget takes place mostly around council and his office and not on finance committee.

For people curious how Nenshi is going to put his stamp on the city’s finances, after watching him campaign as a fiscal conservative who will do away with waste at city hall, this should give a pretty clear indication. He may not like the term “Budget Boss,” but as chair of Priorities and Finances, and the city’s highest ranking politician, it’s not a stretch to take the view the buck stops with him.

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City has to get act together

- October 3rd, 2011

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Nearly a third of Mayor Naheed Nenshi’s first term is done, and while he remains popular with some segments in this city, some of us have been left wondering.

Where are we with the bold agenda he set out in the election? Here’s hoping he rolls out a checklist around the anniversary, because we’re wondering.

But beyond the mayor, our aldermen have a lot to answer for as I mention in this week’s column. A year later,it doesn’t feel as if anything has changed.

And things really need to change.

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The 16 Ave. bungle

- July 20th, 2011

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After a year of controversy surrounding the audit process, we’re right back into the muck again.

The Sun’s Rick Bell has been all over this story and it was the subject of my weekly column.

And while I suggested the whole mess is not surprising, given what was revealed in previous audits, I am surprised some members of council are that cavalier about the problems. Ald. Gord Lowe doesn’t call them mistakes, and Ald. Druh Farrell suggested that all is OK because lessons were learned.

Given the cost and the scope of such projects, I would expect better than $90-million lessons. Wouldn’t you?

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Maybe Bob was right

- June 22nd, 2011

This doesn’t instil confidence.

Not because we have to take out insurance on the runway tunnel. Well, based on what Rick Bell has written on the subject, maybe it’s also the insurance.

But thinking back to the fall election, the current price tag of the tunnel gives us pause.

It was none other than Bob Hawkesworth, the free-spending NDP hanger on who gave up his council seat for a run at the top job, who warned us the price tag would be too high. A half-billion dollars, as he said at a late-campaign rally:

“Personally, spending half a billion dollars for this tunnel that will run under the new north-south runway … is not the right priority for Calgary. It would be nice if we had provincial or federal funding, but we don’t. It’s something the city would have to pay for all on its own.”

Hawkesworth, whose campaign was unable to gain traction, eventually dropped out. And while he may not have been right on a lot, he is being proven very sage on the tunnel price tag, given the added expense of interchanges and other extras, like $1 million a year in insurance.

When it’s bundled all together, is it the most cost effective use of our money?

That appears not to matter, now.

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Garbage day

- April 2nd, 2011

I have to admit, I had mixed feelings when I heard about further delays to the much maligned Peace Bridge.

There was a touch of glee, because it allows me to write snarky things like this, and it has been great fodder for me over the last couple of years. Had the city not sole-sourced the project to a hand-picked architect, gone with a design competition, maybe we wouldn’t be having the same problems. Who knows, but it allows me to say a big “I told you so.”

What? I’m a small man.

But at the same time there’s a lot of frustration — frustration at the delays, frustration over a project that has been a symbol of problems at city hall, frustration that we have a great big failure of an art project being constructed on the Bow River.

But one of the things I’m most frustrated about is how the city is treating its citizens.

In the first season of the West Wing, there is an episode called “Take out the Trash Day,” referring to the Friday press briefing where White House staff dump on the media information about several sensitive stories.

Forgive me the use of this exchange between deputy White House Chief of Staff Josh Lyman and his senior assistant Donna Moss, but it is pretty good:

Donna: What’s take out the trash day?
Josh: Friday.
Donna: I mean, what is it?
Josh: Any stories we have to give the press that we’re not wild about, we give all in a lump on Friday.
Donna: Why do you do it in a lump?
Josh: Instead of one at a time?
Donna: I’d think you’d want to spread them out.
Josh: They’ve got X column inches to fill, right? They’re going to fill them no matter what.
Donna: Yes.
Josh: So if we give them one story, that story’s X column inches.
Donna: And if we give them five stories …
Josh: They’re a fifth the size.
Donna: Why do you do it on Friday?
Josh: Because no one reads the paper on Saturday.
Donna: You guys are real populists, aren’t you?

OK, so in this case it’s only one story, and I would argue people are still reading the paper on Saturday.

But it’s the Friday of Spring Break, the Flames are barely hanging onto a season and we’re in the middle of a federal election. There’s a lot competing for attention.

Maybe they just lucked out with the timing of this awful news.

Either way, I don’t expect the media will give up on the story, and here’s hoping Calgarians don’t either.

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