Quote:
Originally Posted by sailor734
I get the feeling that people are less unhappy with the mayor and council in recent years than back in the bad old days. There seem to be fewer questionable decisions than in the Court/Macfarlane/McAlary eras and councils in general seem somewhat more serious. It's far from perfect but the city's finances are steadily improving from the mess we were in 10-20 years ago. In short, I don't think there is a great groundswell among voters to shake things up. That may well be contributing to a lack of a strong candidate to run against the incumbent mayor.
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I agree with this for the most part, take for example the main public complaint last year seems to have been bellyaching over the roadworks on Main Street which cost barely cost the city $1.5 million (so less than 1% of the annual budget), whereas we had $195+ million in pension fund deficits just 10-12 years ago. Now the city's pension and finances are in order, and in just a couple of years those payments will be finished and ~$10 million/year will be off the books and we can spend those dollars on city infrastructure and services again. If the City's lobbying to the province to review the industrial tax transfers works, that's another $7-9 million a year added to the bottom line.
Basically anyone who runs for mayor and wins just has to hold course and not do anything stupid, and they will come out looking like a saint, as before the end of their term they will be able to either add nearly $20 million in new services or infrastructure fixes or reduce the tax rate even more than it already has recently.
(I know I'm oversimplifying this, but my point is that you are right about the City being in a much better position than it was before)
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