My comments to City Council on the future of Calgary
For those that follow my Twitter feed and my blog you know I have have had an entirely split focus for the past couple of days. My blog has dealt exclusively with the Doug Elniski issue while on Twitter I have posted dozens of tweets over the same time regarding the City of Calgary’s PlanIT public consultation process going on at City Hall.
PlanIT is an extremely important document laying out the ‘plan’ for how Calgary will grow over the next 60 years. As a result public input has been sought for quite sometime and ‘for’ and ‘against’ side are now providing their thoughts in person to Council. The ‘pros’ concluded last night after two days of presentations (about 110 people signed up to speak) and the ‘cons’ began immediately following (about 60 people signed up to speak).
Last night – at number 97 – I provided my thoughts. Below are my comments to council:
Thank you for allowing me to the opportunity to speak. My name is DJ Kelly, I am an administrator in the not-for-profit sector and president of the Winston Heights/Mountview CA.
I’m happy to answer questions from the point of view of our CA but today I’m simply talking as an engaged citizen.
I wanted to begin, if I may, by thanking Council and Administration for showing vision in creating this document. I’m confident we can all agree, that no business or organization can possibly be effectively run without a big picture strategic plan.
I’m reminded once again of one columnist’s comment from sometime in the late 90s that Calgary is “the city that planning forgot”. With the approval of PlanIT no longer will we be able to be the butt of these kinds of jokes. PlanIT finally provides Calgary with the strategic growth plan columnists and citizens alike have requested oh so frequently.
I’m hopefully the cries of “those fools down at City Hall have no idea what they’re doing” will be, if not eliminated, at least lessened because of this document.
The benefit of speaking toward the end of the “for” or “pro-PlanIT” list is I don’t need to get into the reasons why you should or should not support PlanIT. Instead I can marvel at some of the fantastic comments made by previous speakers.The main one that comes to mind is Derek the Urban Studies student from UofC. I think he brought forward a perspective that many have not thought of when discussing PlanIT and it bears repeating: our generation will not live the same kind of life our parents and grandparents did. Just as they did not live the same kind of life as those a generation before them. There are no pioneers or gunfighters in our midst any longer.
None of us in this room are psychics. We cannot predict the future and should not purport to. Even the City’s own marketing for the PlanIT response process makes light of this fact. I cannot say what the city will need in 60 years, and despite the protests of others that I’m sure are coming, they cannot either.
Look at what we planned on 60 years ago. Those are the very things we are now struggling with and that people smarter than us have shown to be unsustainable. Even the poor bulging city budget shows that at the very least we need to think differently.
This is why the “spirit” of PlanIT is far more important than anything else. So long as we can agree with the points and goals laid out in the first few pages we are heading in the right direction.
The one thing we can say for sure is that PlanIT will change and grow over time. It will have to be a living document. There will be variations as we move forward. We do not need to approve the perfect plan this week. However I think PlanIT lays an excellent the groundwork for the future and I’m proud to live in a city with this kind of vision.
Another thing I think is important to note is that every speaker who has lamented the non-inclusion of the airport tunnel has self classified themselves as “in favour” of PlanIT. I’m encouraged that despite their disappointment, they still have the foresight to see what PlanIT can do for the city.
I am interested to hear the comments of those not in favour of PlanIT. From what I have heard through the press it sounds like the majority are from one single industry, whereas those who have spoken in favour appear to represent a large swath of industries. Having PlanIT receive such wide-spread support leaves me further encouraged.
Personally I’m more concerned with the City’s track record of follow through on ambitious plans. My thoughts on that can be found in tomorrow’s post for Alberta Venture’s Think Alberta,
I won’t get into them today other than to say I encourage City Council to have the courage of our convictions, approve this big picture plan, and get on with the process of building the better city I know this council wants.
Questions followed from Ald McIver about my statements around implementation. I answered that, yes, indeed I do see this as the major concern facing council moving forward and regardless of what planning document we approve it will continue to be the major issue and Council and Administration has serious work ahead of them. More background on that is in my Alberta Venture Think! Alberta post that will be available at 1pm today. (I’ll cross post here following that.) Part II goes up on Friday.
Ald Chabot congratulated me on my timing for showing up shortly before my presentation time. I thanked the internet and the Council webcast. He followed up with another question but to be honest I don’t remember what it was. I remember it being akward and me not really understanding what he was asking. It felt adveseraly (is that even a word?) and I certainly didn’t mean for it to. Sorry if it came across that way!
Civic arts funding approved
Thanks to the efforts of the members of the CPAA and some thoughtful deliberation by our Aldermen, today Council defeated two motions to cut arts funding from the 2009-2011 civic budget.
The first motion was regarding the Public Arts Program while the second was a motion to cut increases to Calgary Arts Development’s granting budget.
I am very pleased to report that the second motion fell unanimously. Even Ald. Chabot, who put the motion forward, voting against is own motion after indicating he was swayed by the arguments of Ald. Ceci among others.
A big thank you goes out to everyone who took the time to call or write your Alderman or the Mayor. It was those arguments formed the discourse Council participated in today. I hope all those folks take the time to send them a personalized thank you note. They deserve much credit for making such an informed decision today.
PS – It has been a busy past couple of months on the advocacy front for the CPAA and our members, so I encourage everyone to, yes, celebrate today’s “victory”. Hopefully you will see less email directly from us in the near future!
When is a good time to invest in our future?
Also available on the Calgary Herald’s Q.
Several years ago Rick Bell wrote one of my favourite lines about Calgary. He called it, “the city planning forgot.” At the time, I whole-heartedly agreed. It was the mid-90s and it seemed the city was pulling itself apart after a period of growth that all areas of civic infrastructure had not kept up with. In short, Calgary was not prepared for the kind of city it was becoming.
I am very impressed with recent Councils determination to not see this happen again. Even the average citizen can see that planning is a priority for the Mayor and Alderman. And everyone will agree Calgary will be better because of that foresight.
As someone who works in the creative industries, I was especially impressed with the creation of a Civic Arts Policy because, at the time, this kind of advanced planning by our Council almost seemed foreign to me. After extensive surveys, focus groups and reviews of best practices Council set forth determined to invest in “creat[ing] a city where people want to live and do business … by establishing a community enriched by artistic, recreational and cultural choices”. A noble cause, and yet one with its expectations planted firmly in reality. They knew this would not happen overnight and that it would require continued vision and creativity to make this goal come to life.
There is no good time to invest money – especially with all the competing interests City Council deals with on a regular basis. During the recent “boom” arts and culture funding increases found it hard to come to realization because of the high cost of everything else Council was trying to build. That investment would have to wait. And now that the economy has slowed, the citizens of Calgary hear from some that we need to tighten our belts and arts and culture funding might need to be a casualty of that. It is a no-win situation. When is the right time to focus on the noble goals of the Civic Arts Policy?
Here are some interesting numbers that show the “uncultured” stereotypes about Calgary are not true:
- Calgarians more per capita on art works and events than any of Canada’s major metropolitan centres.
- Maclean’s magazine recently published a scientific study proving Calgary was Canada’s “most cultured city”.
- 13.5% of Calgarians work in the cultural industries.
- At $29.43 dollars leveraged from other sources for every City dollar invested, Calgary’s arts organizations achieve the highest leverage of funds from other sources on the City’s municipal investment ($19.86 Winnipeg leverage, $17.53 Edmonton leverage, $15.00 Toronto leverage; and $12.78 Vancouver leverage).
- Albertans spent 75% more on live performing arts ($140 million) than on live sports events ($81 million in 2005. In addition, nearly twice as many Alberta households spent at least some money on live performing arts (43% of households) than on live sports events (23%) in 2005.
Given these numbers ranking us so high on the cultural front, I think it is fair to say Calgary should not rank last on a list of benchmark cities’ investment in the culture per capita.
To create the kind of city we all want to live in we need not only planning but commitment to achieve the goals we have set out for ourselves. That includes reducing EMS wait times, improving traffic flow, increasing LRT ridership, and “establishing a community enriched by artistic, recreational and cultural choices.”
We need to be prepared for the kind of city we are becoming. And there will never be a better time to invest in our future than right now.
But now where will I watch drunk businessmen wearing cowboy hats hit on college age girls?
Since when does the planning department actually take into account crime statistics? That’s great news if they do. It must mean the City of Calgary has some of the best inter-departmental communications of any major corporation in the country.
Stop laughing. They might! What’d you know anyway?
Either way this news means something for Calgary. Are we about to get really tough on crime? Is our boozy Stampede identity about to get a little less surly? Time will tell how this turns out.
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