Election Surprises?
This week we were joined by University of Calgary instructor and fellow municipal nerd Paul Fairie to discuss the referenda, city charters, and the more than 25 people who want to be mayor of Calgary.
The Referendum No One’s Talking About
Despite the fact that advance polls are open and people can already vote, there hasn’t been a push getting Albertans out to vote for one of the United Conservative Party’s “Fair Deal” notions — the referendum on whether Alberta should pay into equalization.
Five Wild Ideas
Co-editor Tim Querengesser gave us five wild ideas on how to save Alebrta’s cities as a conversation piece this week. He talks about re-drawing wards, city charters and how senior city staff should have to live where they work
Trustee Ballot Mix-Up
The Edmonton Journal has a troubling story coming out of the advance polls for the municipal election. Some voters have cast a ballot for the wrong school board trustee.
This isn’t the kind of mistake people in Alberta expect to see and it will be interesting to find out more about what went wrong. Messing up ballots is a pretty big deal. It also isn’t clear how this can be fixed.
Gondek v. Farkas
In a race where recent polls show that 33 per cent of Calgarians are still undecided, mayoral hopeful Jeromy Farkas is taking every opportunity to draw a distinction between himself and candidate Jyoti Gondek, who has 40 per cent support among those voters who are decided or leaning towards decided.
Not to be outdone, soon to be also-rans Jeff Davison and Brad Field threw out a few graphs too.
Knock knock Knocking on Renter’s Doors
Rage threw out a question about how people reach out to those who live in multi-family housing. The responses were interesting.
Amarjeet the Musical
File under … whaaaaaat?
Also Sohi may be capturing the youth vote…and the youth are weird.
Taxes?!?!
With a projected shortfall of $75-million in Edmonton, property taxes are going to loom large as the first topics for discussion for a newly elected council during the fall supplemental budget adjustment.
The current budget has an approved tax increase of 1.8 per cent but in its most recent financial update to council, the City is projecting a shortfall of $75 million next year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic that would need to be made up. To recover the money through taxes alone would mean a 4.3 per cent increase.
At a virtual mayoral candidates forum hosted by the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce Thursday, five contenders in the race shared their priorities for council’s budget conversation that will decide how much of the revenue shortfall would need to be made up through property taxes.
All of the candidates say they will work to keep taxes as low as possible as Edmontonians continue to struggle through the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, but their approaches all differ.