Plan It, round 2: The most important decision facing Calgarians
Next week is a BIG week in Calgary. As Naheed Nenshi correctly states in his Calgary Herald op-ed today, “On Monday, Calgary city council makes a decision bigger and more important than all the other decisions it has made since being elected . . . combined.”
Plan It – the document that lays out how Calgary will grow for the next several decades – is coming back to council for a second reading.
Plan It has been the hard work of many years of public engagement, determined to define how Calgarians want to manage their city’s growth. In short it is all about the kind of city we want Calgary to be and how we will ensure it becomes that.
In June, after the final public hearings, council made about 100 suggested amendments to the proposed Plan It document and gave it first reading.
The city’s administration (the author of the document) went back to their desks and poured over the amendments to determine which were good ideas and strengthened the document, and which were poor ideas and weakened the document or contradicted other pieces of legislation. The results have been released here. But I’ll break it down for you a bit.
A summary of Administration’s recommendations are as follows:
That Council:
1. Receive for information Attachments 1 and 2, which summarize Administration’s response to key issues brought forward by Council in the proposed amendments to the MDP and CTP.2. MDP Amendments:
a) Adopt Administration’s Recommended Amendments to the MDP (Bylaw 40M2009) as proposed in Attachment 3.
b) Receive for information Attachment 4, which lists suggested amendments to the MDP that are not recommended by Administration.
c) Receive for information Attachment 5, which contains red-lined pages for the entire MDP (based on amendments proposed in Attachment 3).
d) Amend Bylaw 24P2009 by deleting Section 4 in its entirety and substituting with “This Bylaw is effective February 1, 2010”.
e) Renumber and format the sections in the MDP (Bylaw 24P2009) required to account for the inclusion of all Council-approved amendments.
f) Give second and third reading to the proposed Bylaw 24P2009, as amended.3. CTP Amendments:
a) Adopt Administration’s Recommended Amendments to the CTP by Resolution, as proposed in Attachment 6.
b) Receive for information Attachment 7, which lists suggested amendments to the CTP that are not recommended by Administration.
c) Receive for information Attachment 8, which contains red-lined pages for the entire CTP (based on amendments proposed in Attachment 6).
d) Renumber and format the sections in the CTP required to account for the inclusion of all Council-approved amendments.4. Direct Administration to report to LPT no later than January 2010 with the terms of reference for a MDP/CTP Sustainment Committee, implementation program and an ongoing monitoring framework.
Okay. Now what about the attachments? What’s in those? Answer: a whole lot of reading that we all have to do. Here’s a summary about what attachement includes (all links are PDFs):
1. MDP Key Issues Summary
2. CTP Key Issues Summary
3. Administration Recommended Amendments to the MDP
4. List of Council-proposed MDP Amendments Not Recommended by Administration
5. Red-line Amendments of the MDP (as per Attachment 3)
6. Administration Recommended Amendments to the CTP
7. List of Council-proposed CTP Amendments Not Recommended by Administration
8. Red-line Amendments of the CTP (as per Attachment 6)
I encourage you to click on the links above and learn more about what Administration recommends including and not including. These are what will frame the discussion on Monday at Council. A discussion that WILL change the future of Calgary forever. If ever there were a time to know what your council is doing, this is it.
And we all have a lot of reading to do between now and then.
I’ll provide my comments here and to the Aldermen once I have read the documents. Please do the same.
The one thing that excites me is the 4th recommendation – the creation of a Plan It “Sustainment Committee”. The idea behind the goal of this group was laid out in my comments to council during the June public hearing. At the time I said to council, “It will have to be a living document… Personally I’m more concerned with the City’s track record of follow through on ambitious plans.” This was also the theme of the questions I was asked by Ald. McIver following my presentation. I then followed up with some more detail in a two part blog post on Alberta Venture’s Think Alberta blog the next day where I said:
The good news – or bad news as the case may be – is that the success of Plan It will fall directly on the shoulders of the City of Calgary and how the plan is implemented. Calgary City Council has done a very good job over the years looking down the road and helping set a vision for the city’s future in motion. Plan after policy after plan have been enacted, but clearly the citizens of Calgary feel unaffected for the most part by these plans and policies…
I’m glad the City is taking this seriously and I think a sustainment committee will be a great addition. After all, it is almost exactly the kind of “Citizen Response Team” my group at the first CivicCamp in April suggested was needed.
Administration has echoed mine and Ald. McIver’s concerns by stating:
Two of the issues raised by Council and stakeholders that apply to both the MDP and CTP are ongoing stakeholder engagement, and plans for implementation and monitoring.
The Draft Implementation Framework included with CPC Report M-2009-012 provided high-level actions The City will need to undertake in order to enable achievement of the Plan It Calgary goals and objectives. Some of these actions are already underway, and Administration is currently developing more detailed implementation plans. These plans will be complemented by an ongoing monitoring framework that will provide useful data to aid in growth and investment decisions. Both the implementation plans and ongoing monitoring framework will be brought forward to the Land Use Planning and Transportation (LPT) Standing Policy Committee no later than January, 2010.
Administration recognizes the critical role that external stakeholders will play in achieving the goals and objectives of Plan It Calgary. In order to facilitate effective communication between The City and stakeholders, Administration proposes the creation of a MDP/CTP Sustainment Committee. This committee would require a broader stakeholder group than the Advisory Committee for Plan It Calgary. Terms of reference for this committee will be developed in consultation with stakeholders, and will be submitted to LPT along with the implementation plans and monitoring framework by January, 2010.
That’s all for now, but I’m excited by the direction this is all heading. Time to go do some reading…
Someone can’t do basic math
On August 13 Naheed Nenshi wrote a column for the Calgary Herald titled “Labels confuse our political understanding” in response to a comment Wildrose Alliance leadership candidate Danielle Smith made. Smith herself responded in print on August 16. (Shane over at Calgary Rants has his take on the exchange.) While this conversation is a good – and interesting – one that I normally would be happy to enter into I wanted to instead comment on something that grew out of the ensuing conversation that occurred on Twitter.
Jeremy at PolitiCalgary beat me to the punch a little bit by publishing the text of the Twitter conversation (although he is missing a few of the comments in the exchange). I agree with him that it was a bizarre conversation between Naheed Nenshi defending his position and someone only identifying themselves as “Alberta Conservative” arguing the need for political labels. I entered the fray at this point. I shouldn’t have but I did, because I feel political labels (not to be confused with party labels) add a layer of annoyance to the political process that hinders a lot of citizens’ ability to discuss the issues on their individual merit. Especially at the municipal level where there are no parties. I immediately tried to exit the conversation as it went in a bizarre direction I wasn’t interested in following. But I digress.
At one point in the conversation, long after the original debate had been abandoned in favour of speculation about conservative and liberal slates for the upcoming 2010 Calgary municipal election, Alberta Conservative mentioned, “@Nenshi If Calgary adopts civic parties like @RicMcIver may do your chances would be very slim in 2010.” Naheed then replied with “@ABConservative PGIB [Progressive Group for Independent Business] ran a slate for years and elected no one, BCC [Better Calgary Campaign, of which Nenshi is part of] had all but 2 endorsed candidates win last time (inc. Mciver – I’m a fan)”.
Now, and this is what this blog post is ACTUALLY all about, Craig Chandler, who is a part of the PGIB entered the conversation with this tweet:
@nenshi PGIB ran a slate once and in that slate Ric McIver was elected. We have endorsed since and all have won every time! Do your Homework
I couldn’t bite my tongue at this comment. Having just finished some reading on the 2007 election a few days earlier I saw this interjection for what it was: a lie. This kind of political hyperbole is something I just can’t stand. If you are going to make a comment as direct and challenging as that, the least it should be is accurate. In my opinion it is comments like this that make people outside politics have such distaste for people inside politics. It is what Stephen Colbert would call “truthiness”. If you say something that sounds true, with enough emphasis and determination, it doesn’t matter if it is true or not because people will begin to believe it. I’m not about to let that happen. So I interjected with:
How does “every time” equate to 2 for 7 in ’07? RT @ChandlerRadio: @nenshi We have endorsed since and all have won every time! Do your Homework
.@ChandlerRadio And here’s MY “homework”. In the future, please know your own record before throwing it in someone’s face http://bit.ly/qekg
I know I shouldn’t be surprised that it is Craig Chandler who undertook such a tactic (he doesn’t have a great track record with staying on people’s good sides). But this is the kind of thing we need LESS of not MORE of.
A surprising number of people have been trying to encourage me to run in the 2010 election. I’ve been saying the whole way along I’m not convinced I want to run. But if the rumours are true and Chandler is eyeing up an aldermanic seat, I’m half-ways convinced to run against him. Wherever he may run. If anything just to make sure this kind of rhetoric stays as far away from our council chamber as possible. No, make that three quarters convinced to run. (As you can tell, I really don’t like this kind of commentary.)
Our council has been bitterly divided on too many issues these past three years. False comments like this from from an alderman would be the exact opposite of the kind of camaraderie and cooperation we need to help Calgary fix the issues we are facing. Let’s pray that doesn’t happen because the results could be disastrous.
By the way, in case you are wondering, Chandler hasn’t replied to my “homework” yet. It was sent four days ago. I’ll provide an update if he does.
“Let’s broaden the discussion”
After all the hoopla these past few weeks at Calgary City Council, it has been easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. And I think this is what a lot of Calgarians have been critizing their council of. To be honest I just think the shear amount of business being conducted has split everyone’s focus and created a frenzy of hard to follow activity. Thus we’re all frustrated, and there many things confusing someone.
Today I came across this letter from the Calgary Chamber of Voluntary Organizations. I believe it was published in the Calgary Herald, but below is the full unedited version of what they had to say. I appreciate its tone and how it helps put somethings that have happened these past few weeks in perspective so I wanted to share it.
Appraising City Council – Let’s Broaden the Discussion
By Katherine van Kooy
President and CEO, CCVORecently the Calgary Herald has offered extensive coverage of Aldermanic doings. Last month the Coalition for Property Tax Fairness released their evaluation of City Council members. According to headlines, half of the aldermen received failing grades. An excellent publicity grabber, but is this the way we want to build the discussion of our city and what is important to us?
Last week, readers were presented with a series of articles on the detailed office budget expenditures of the Calgary’s aldermen, mayor and top staff. Is this really front page news? Is this really what we want to focus on?
Perhaps we should be keeping our eye on the prize. It’s a simple concept – one that many Calgarians put into practice last week on the Stampede grounds. Keep focused on the goal – don’t get side?tracked by distractions. Otherwise you’ll miss your target.
In grading City Council, the Coalition, comprised of seven business groups plus the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, provides an outline of their scoring method. Eighty per cent of the evaluation was based on perception of the “tax?payer friendliness” of aldermanic motions and voting records. Who defines taxpayer friendliness? There seems to be an assumption that taxpayer friendliness means tax cuts, low taxes and low expenditures – assumed to the point that this goes without saying. Is it possible that taxpayers have concerns beyond tax cuts, low taxes and low expenditures?
Let’s suppose for a moment that these tax and expenditure issues are the sole or primary focus of taxpayer’s concerns. As such, Calgarians would be interested to know that our residential taxes are the lowest of any major city in Canada. And, while it has been suggested that Calgary’s business taxes are unfair and should be reduced, they are in the lowest quartile nationally. In terms of expenditures, the business community has called for Council to both trim spending and provide value?for?money. As we all know from our own consumer experience, the lowest price is attractive but does not always equal the best value.
Speaking of value?for?money, a recent report announced that “for the vast majority of Canada’s population, public services are, to put it bluntly, the best deal they are ever going to get.” Canada’s Quiet Bargain, released by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows public services funded by taxes make a substantial contribution to most Canadians’ standard of living – middle?income families utilize public services worth about $41,000 annually (or 63% of their income). It would be interesting to see a similar study indicating the value of public services that benefit Canadian businesses, such as business grants, economic development programs, government funded business development services and tax incentives.
In a public debate about how we view our city, taxes and expenditures should be part of the discussion. But what else might be of concern to taxpayers? Safe streets, a clean city, recreation, affordable and available housing, fire and police services, arts and culture, homelessness, environmental issues, roads and traffic – these are just a few of the other priorities and concerns raised by Calgarians, and discussed in the City report Calgary and Region Social Outlook 2008?2013. Do we want a city where we feel safe only in our homes? Or do we want a city that in layout, design, planning and policy nurtures vibrant, safe and community?focused public spaces? Do we want a city that is dominated by individual private interests at the expense of the quality of public and community life? What makes a liveable city?
We need to take care in how we talk about the questions that shape our city. Healthy public debate requires that we define our terms, provide details, explain our reasoning, and be transparent about the values that are informing our positions. And we need to understand that all evaluation of public policy and public decisions is subjective. While a report card with scoring methods may sound objective, it is a value judgment – and what has value depends on one’s perspective.
These questions and issues are not about pitting the business community against other citizens of Calgary. We all have a vested interest in these broader questions. All Calgarians, including business owners are affected by social and economic negatives – homelessness, poverty, crime, violence. Likewise, there are many positive urban elements – parks, attractive urban design, arts and culture, good public transit, sports and recreation – that create an economic and social environment that makes cities attractive, benefitting both residents and the business community. Experience has taught us that if we don’t engage now in long term planning and discussions of the future of our city, that we will pay later – how Council responds to these issues today will either worsen or improve the problems and the opportunities.
Tax collection and expenditure is how we pay for amenities and services in our community. Many of us are taxpayers, but we are also employees and employers, business owners and customers, patients and parents, residents and citizens. From these different perspectives, let’s talk about what we want in our city, what the municipal government’s role is in delivering that, what we are prepared to pay for it and how those costs should be shared across the community.
We should evaluate our politicians, and we should have high expectations from them. As we move towards the 2010 municipal election let’s focus on all of the issues and let’s make sure that the discussion is robust and encompasses many points of view. Let’s keep our eye on the prize.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Hopefully we ALL take this advice to heart.
The oncoming death of local news
Also available on the Calgary Herald’s Q.
This article by James Warren proves to be a very interesting read for those of us that like to complain there is so little local arts coverage in the Herald or Sun. (Or even those that like to complain there is not enough local coverage period.)
Newspapers are slowly dying because people are getting their news from the internet whether we like it or not. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It’s what I do. I read all my news online for free, usually via RSS; that’s how I find out what is going on – and quickly. Am I part of the problem? Is it the paper’s fault for having an outdated business model?
Maybe. Either way, it’s a reality. It’s happening and it’s going to keep getting worse.
But the big question that has been plaguing me for months is: What does this mean for local content?
Sure the Herald and Sun are trying to save their papers and cut costs, but the only way to do that is to centralize more of their work and streamline. The Calgary Sun for example had already moved the responsibility for the layout of the paper to Toronto. Recently the Edmonton Sun replaced their editor-in-chief with the editor-in-chief of the Calgary Sun, who is now doing double duty. We in the arts already are aware of the trials of getting an article into the one of the papers. Celeb focused stories straight off the news wire are always going to be less expensive than employing a flesh and blood writer to research and write specifically for that papers audience. The Herald only has two writers who have to write 365 days worth of performing arts articles. The Sun doesn’t even really have an Entrainment section – showbiz news/movie Friday hardly counts.
Even hyper-local weeklies are being hit. FFWD in Calgary has gotten thinner and thinner and I’ve been told in the past by a former editor the number of arts stories published all depends on how many pages of advertising are sold. I lost count of the number of stories in a year that they went through the trouble of sending a writer to an interview only to never actually publish the article because there was no room in that week’s paper. And in a world of instant news it certainly isn’t timely enough to leave for another week when the demands were equally as tight.
Yahoo News, CNN and others (including AP and Reuters) can produce content at a fraction of the price a local paper can because they can sell it to many papers or have readers from across the country read the articles. But does anyone other than a Calgarian care about a puppet festival going on downtown? How will that news ever make it to the front page of CNN? It won’t.
How do we fix this? How will we stay connected to local events once the local papers die? Are bloggers the right group to pick up the baton and make it all accessible?
And yes I’m aware of the irony I read this Atlantic article online after someone on Twitter pointing it out to me, and no I don’t anticipate buying a hard copy. I am the future – deal with me! (Seriously, how do we deal with people like me? We have to find a way.)
Starting over from scratch: creating a gallery of contemporary art for Calgary
Also available on the Calgary Herald’s Q.
The recent “resignation” of Jeffrey Spalding from the Glenbow Museum has created a new call for a gallery of contemporary art. The Herald is all over it. And I’ve had several of my colleagues bring up the thought as well since Spalding’s departure.
The Herald article is the one I find the most interesting however. The first thing I see is they talk to the IMCA pushers (the group that tried their damnedest to secure the old AGT building on 6 Ave SW for the gallery a couple years back) and they mention the $165 million the City of Calgary has available currently as a possible starting point. Yes, that is a good fund to draw from, but you didn’t make it to the short list last year – assuming you put in an application. The money won’t help you if you don’t ask for it. But first you need to get organized better. This is the one over riding thing I’ve heard from people: the group is a high profile group but not well situated to lead the creation of a new gallery. Trust me: after being part of building two new cultural space in the city you need to have a good solid group of people who know what they are doing and are connected in the right ways to get it off the ground.
Which leads me to the second thing I noticed in the article: the IMCA pushers think Spalding may be the man to lead there charge. This is a very good idea – but have you talked to him? I’m not sure this is the best time for him personally. The article says he is has not made any comments since his “resignation”. True, but I’ve had a conversation with him, albeit a shortened one over email. Let’s just say my thoughts are not baseless. (And those quotation marks aren’t for gramatically incorrect emphasis.) I emp
The long and the short of it is – the opportunity for a contemporary art gallery is upon us. But someone is going to have to get a supportive organization organized in the very near future it make it happen. Spalding is just one man – as evidenced by recent events. Someone else will have to step up to lead the organization.
The Glenbow will not and cannot be that gallery. I’ve said it several times over the last few days – they don’t have the space or the brand to make it happen. Don’t even try. We’ll have to wait and see if someone else can make the seemingly impossible happen.
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