Municipal Politics

[MichaelS]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

Very interesting! I'm going to stay in my nice inner city community with all the servicing we will need already taken care of, and watch the shit hit the fan in the burbs!

Don't act too smug. Remember Strongbow's story of the watermain on 10th ave last week? A lot of old infrastructure is coming up (or maybe already past) its best before date, and the city isn't sitting on a nestegg to replace it.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by MichaelS

Don't act too smug. Remember Strongbow's story of the watermain on 10th ave last week? A lot of old infrastructure is coming up (or maybe already past) its best before date, and the city isn't sitting on a nestegg to replace it.

It affects everyone. Suburban infrastructure and urban infrastructure are not separate systems. Pretty much all of north Calgary's sewage goes to Bonny Brook, so people in Evanston are using some of the same pipes as people in Inglewood. Unless you build a city entirely from anew, you are going to have to rely on tying into and using existing pipes and mains. Which really throws a wrench into the argument that greenfield infrastructure is somehow cheaper.

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by MichaelS

Don't act too smug. Remember Strongbow's story of the watermain on 10th ave last week? A lot of old infrastructure is coming up (or maybe already past) its best before date, and the city isn't sitting on a nestegg to replace it.

There will always be maintenance on infrastructure, that cannot be avoided and hopefully the city has the foresight to know this.

[MichaelS]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

There will always be maintenance on infrastructure, that cannot be avoided and hopefully the city has the foresight to know this.

The whole West Memorial Sanitary Trunk issue doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by MichaelS

The whole West Memorial Sanitary Trunk issue doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.

Haha. You get blindsided by that too?

[Calgarian]

What I have heard about that trunk is that there is enough capacity in the line, the problem is that the flood last year made them realize that the line gets flooded when the water table rises (which means it's leaking as well) and backs up. Not sure if this is true, just something I heard.

[Full Mountain]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

What I have heard about that trunk is that there is enough capacity in the line, the problem is that the flood last year made them realize that the line gets flooded when the water table rises (which means it's leaking as well) and backs up. Not sure if this is true, just something I heard.

I heard this too, I also seem to recall that someone posted on here that they were considering lining the existing pipe to keep things moving.

[MichaelS]

Originally Posted by fusili

Haha. You get blindsided by that too?

Not really blind sided, but couldn't believe the problem arose in the first place when I had it explained to me.

Originally Posted by Calgarian

What I have heard about that trunk is that there is enough capacity in the line, the problem is that the flood last year made them realize that the line gets flooded when the water table rises (which means it's leaking as well) and backs up. Not sure if this is true, just something I heard.

The west memorial sanitary trunk has nothing to do with the June 2013 flood*. The problems were known about well before then. Basically, all the sewage for a large part of NW Calgary (and Cochrane) drains through one big line in Bowness. This line filled up, due to the large amount of growth in the NW. This caught the city by surprise, and I think it was discovered when people were calling in complaining about sewage backups in their basement.

While the whole pipe might not be "full", there is a definite pinch point in the vicinity of the River, so that is what the fix is for.

*While the trunk was experiencing capacity issues before the flood, I am sure there was all sorts of infiltration during the flood, which certainly didn't help matters.

[jawagord]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

Royalties in the oil sands are already 3 times higher than mining royalties in Ontario. And will grow higher as project payoff continues.

The issue is not that royalties are too low, it is that to encourage more royalties in the long term we decided in the late 1990s with the federal government to collect less in the short term.

But the payoff is slowly coming.


Captureceri4 by Odarwin1, on Flickr

Coming faster now! Thanks to Ralph's 1% upfront/25% back end royalty the oil sand facilities his policies helped get developed are churning out big bucks for Alberta.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/edmont...able+resource+revenue/9989781/story.html

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/nati...evelopment-of-oil-sands/article10584433/

[suburbia]

Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi is the cover story on today's edition of The Toronto Star:
http://www.thestar.com/news/ken_dryden_c...ising_things_that_make_calgary_work.html

[googspecial]

"Nobody in Calgary cares what you look like, or where you came from, or where you worship, or whom you love."

Except these guys...
VICE -A NEW LOOK AT CALGARY'S NEO-NAZI MOVEMENT

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by jawagord

Coming faster now! Thanks to Ralph's 1% upfront/25% back end royalty the oil sand facilities his policies helped get developed are churning out big bucks for Alberta.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/edmont...able+resource+revenue/9989781/story.html

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/nati...evelopment-of-oil-sands/article10584433/

Great news. Is there any political will to put some of this into a Norway style wealth fund?

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Great news. Is there any political will to put some of this into a Norway style wealth fund?

Yes. All surplus either goes to top up the contingency fund, which once it is topped out a $5 billion, money can either be used instead of borrowing for capital expenses or can go to the Heritage Fund. Right now since returns are higher on the Fund than the cost of borrowing, it makes sense to put money in the fund. But politically since the opposition as a whole doesn't like borrowing the easy thing to do politically would be to spend it all instead of borrowing.

Edit: depends if you included Norway style the requirement that the fund not have domestic assets. At least right now the fund is small enough in comparison to the economy that that isn't a concern.

[Spring2008]

I hear Nenshi's a finalist for top Mayor in the world this year??

[DizzyEdge]

Currently Alberta allows:

Hamlets - named group of 5+ houses with some non-residential
Villages - 300+ people with their own tiny council
Towns - 1000+ people with their own council
Cities - 10,000+ people with their own council and a ward system (Village and Town councilors represent the Village or Town as a whole)

Do we need another level for large unicities like Calgary, where eventually the interests of the inner city and the far flung suburbs diverge more and more? Some sort of Borough system?

[MalcolmTucker]

We have the regional partnership, and edmonton has the capital board. There is consensus at the provincial level that all changes to governance structures going forward will be voluntary to the local municipalities.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

We have the regional partnership, and edmonton has the capital board. There is consensus at the provincial level that all changes to governance structures going forward will be voluntary to the local municipalities.

Which is exactly why Calgary will continue to use the water weapon. Until there is a mandated regional plan and some level of enforcement by the province, Calgary will use water to control neighbouring municipalities. Not saying that is bad, just the way it is.

[DizzyEdge]

I was meaning more another type of internal city political setup to retain the benefits of the unicity model, but avoiding the sort of innercity vs suburban fights that lead to electing Rob Fords due to the suburbs outvoting the innercity users.

[MalcolmTucker]

People over play the urban suburban split in Toronto. Quite frankly, if Miller hadn't screwed up on the garbage strike, the centre/centre left would have likely had a good shot. Instead the race became right versus centre right, with only diehards further to the left.

Toronto is burdened with a city council that is highly interventionist, and when they screw up in either direction they get punished. And that election was about punishing people that were too close to the unions.

The only thing that Ford has changed is one LRT/Subway project, and cutting one tax (while raising others). Otherwise, Toronto continues on its previous path.

[DizzyEdge]

Hopefully you're right. Any examples of the sort of interventionist actions TO's council have taken?