Browsing posts in the ‘Alderman – Ward 6’ category

Calgary, meet your new council

1
October 19, 2010 - By

The unofficial results are in and we have seen a mix of change and returning of the old guard happening. It’s a whole new ball game now; an entirly new dynamic. Here’s the list of who the fifteeen around the table will be:

Mayor - Naheed Nenshi
Ward 1 – Dale Hodges
Ward 2 – Gord Lowe
Ward 3 – Jim Stevenson
Ward 4 - Gael Macleod
Ward 5 – Ray Jones
Ward 6 - Richard Pootmans
Ward 7 – Druh Farrell
Ward 8 – John Mar
Ward 9 - Gian-Carlo Carra
Ward 10 – Andre Chabot
Ward 11 – Brian Pincott
Ward 12 - Shane Keating
Ward 13 – Diane Colley-Urquhart
Ward 14 - Peter Demong

The biggest question facing how this new council will work together is what kind of a chair will Naheed Nenshi be. Will he be a bullying mayor (not likely) or more laissez faire in his control of meetings? Or might he be more like Bronconnier and give alderman some leeway, but keep them on a short leash if they stray too far outside what is prescribed in the procedural bylaw. An alderman like Druh Farrell will live and die [...]Read More

yyc Twibates Part II: Aldermanic

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October 17, 2010 - By

This is Part II of getting the Twibate answers up.  There’s some more information about format and decisions on our first post, yyc Twibates Part I: Intro and Mayoral.

We held two twitter debates for aldermanic – one for odd-numbered wards and one for even-numbered wards.  We had 10 participants on the first night, and 12 on the second night.

Because of the number of participants, I will merely list answers in order that they came in rather than a column for each candidate.  Unless you don’t want it to be readable

A number of candidates answered with multiple posts.  They are grouped together, and the time of the first post determines order.

Odd-Numbered Wards

Participants include:

Ward 1: Ric Lockhart and Chris Harper (First two questions answered during, the rest answered later that evening)

Ward 3: Gary Tremblay

Ward 7: Michael Krisko (Krisko’s tweets unfortunately did not show up on the feed, but we acknowledge his participation), Druh Farrell (answered all questions after)

Ward 9: Steve Chapman, Gian-Carlo Carra

Ward 11: Brian Pincott, Wayne Frisch, James Maxim, Ernest McCutcheon (post-event – see comments section)

Ward 13: Andrew [...]Read More

What Do These Schmucks Do? – Alderman Edition

1
October 14, 2010 - By

(Nation, the following is a re-post, with edits and additions, of a post I put out in October 2007.)

The City of Calgary, whether by design or by unbelievable oversight, has NO information available on-line as to what, exactly, an Alderman’s job really IS.

Therefore, I have little recourse but to consult the Book of Armaments – er, I mean, the Queen’s Printer, and take the words right from the legislative horse’s mouth:

General duties of councillors

Councillors have the following duties:
(a) to consider the welfare and interests of the municipality as a whole and to bring to council’s attention anything that would promote the welfare or interests of the municipality;
(b) to participate generally in developing and evaluating the policies and programs of the municipality;
(c) to participate in council meetings and council committee meetings and meetings of other bodies to which they are appointed by the council;
(d) to obtain information about the operation or administration of the municipality from the chief administrative officer or a person designated by the chief administrative officer;
(e) to keep in confidence matters discussed in private at a council or council committee [...]Read More

Analyzing The Aldermanic Polls

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October 7, 2010 - By

Today, VoteCalgary released their All-Wards Aldermanic Poll done by O’Connell Enterprises. In each ward, 280 people were surveyed, which allows for a ±5.8% margin of error, 19 times out of 20. Here is the voter breakdown for those surveyed:

Age 18-34: 11%
Age 35-49: 25%
Age 50-64: 33%
Age 65+: 30%
Refused: 2%

Now, it’s clearly a skewed poll when you consider only 36% of the respondents were younger than a half-century, but clearly there wasn’t an age quota guideline for this poll. This was indicated by the fact that age was the LAST question instead of a screening question. Regardless, they did a solid job of matching their gender quota 50/50 split.

For the purpose of analyzing this poll, we will take “total support” as the first number and include the firm support, e.g. Candidate X – 20% (15%).

Ward 1
Dale Hodges – 37% (24%)
Chris Harper – 3% (1%)
Ric Lockhart – 2% (1%)
Bill Scott – 2% (1%)
Judi Vendenbrink – (1%)
Undecided – 43%

It looks like Ald. Hodges is well on his way to re-election, as the amount of voters for the also-rans don’t [...]Read More

cjsw’s 2010 civic election coverage!

October 6, 2010 - By

HOLY. So basically CJSW 90.9FM is super rad. We’ve launched our civic election coverage featuring over 80 interviews and forum recordings and honestly, it blows my mind. Back in August when we started sending out e-mails I honesty had no idea how it would turn out and how many interviews we’d really be able to do – there were so many candidates! Click the image to check it out!

Each interview had to be booked (and then re-booked, as the case was at times), conducted, edited and uploaded. We also needed a rad website to showcase all our interviews and Aendrew and Reid nailed it. In short, we had about 25 volunteers who put this all together for your benefit. Twenty five volunteers, two months, and over eighty interviews. I’m insanely proud of it. Kudos to Joe Burima, CJSW’s News Director, who works like a madman 24/7 and makes the world a better place.

Anyways, listen to the interviews, subscribe to the podcast and take our interviews on the go. Be informed. AND VOTE. Don’t let all our hard work go to waste. Kudos to all the candidates who were [...]Read More

Ward races to watch for this election

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September 27, 2010 - By

With 14 other pseudo mayoral races, there has to be an analysis somewhere of the potential ward races. Here is a breakdown of some of the more crucial races that people should be keeping their eyes on (especially if you live in them):

Ward 1: This is a battle between challenger Chris Harper and veteran Dale Hodges, as many political observers note. Harper has been door knocking very early on in the year, and has hit over 10,000 homes by the end of August. Jennifer Banks last time ran an extremely successful and close campaign against Hodges, taking 40% of the popular vote. This is an important race because Harper may end up losing because of the split vote in that ward. In 2007, only 3 candidates were in the ward 1 race. Now we have 6, and Jennifer Banks is not in the race. Ward 1 is also home to the University of Calgary. Ward 1 will be an indicator of whether or not those aged 18-24 will be coming out to vote. Should they not, it would mean that the city will continue to struggle with the youth for a least another decade.

Candidates who are running:

Harper, [...]Read More

How Many Calgary Municipal Election Candidates Will Get The Nomination Day Blues?

2
September 6, 2010 - By

Anyone that is actively following the 2010 Calgary Municipal Election scene should be getting excited that the races for Alderman, Mayor and School Board Trustee are about to become official!  With nomination day fast approaching, the race is also on for some of the candidates to get their paperwork in order in advance of the September 20, 2010 deadline. 

The 2010 election is expected to include the most candidates that Calgary has ever seen and some of the races are becoming more and more crowded every day, which is a good thing for local democracy.  While I believe that everyone has a democratic right to run for office and respect those who put their names forward for this election, I wonder how many of these candidates will actually be on the ballots after nomination day.  I took a look at the City of Calgary website for more information on the nomination requirements, which I have summarized below:

Required Signatures

All candidates must be nominated by eligible electors. The required number of signatures are:

  • Mayor – 100 Signatures

 

  • Alderman – 100 Signatures

 

  • School Trustee – 25 Signatures

If running for Alderman, and/or Public or Separate School [...]Read More

Contender updates in wards 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11

1
August 6, 2010 - By

This is not a big as the mega post, but there are definitely some candidates that were not reported last time, and some new ones that have popped up.

Ward 4 – Brad Northcott: He will be the 8th candidate in a very crowded race in Ward 4.  He is an owner and operator of a plumbing and gas fitting company. He supports the airport tunnel and an eventual LRT connecting to the airport. As well, he will not support secondary suites unless the parking issue is addressed (adequate parking is what he wants). Ward 4 now becomes an unpredictable race with so many different candidates to choose from, which is on top of the numerous number of mayoral candidates to have a headache over.

Website

Ward 6 – Robert Wills: There is very little information about Robert Wills than what is provided by the VoteCalgary.ca website. From the response that Wills gave to the site, he states that he work with in the city and has 19 years of experience in municipal planning development and building [...]Read More

Who’s running for Calgary City Council in 2010?

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April 4, 2010 - By

There sure are a lot of names coming out of the proverbial woodwork right about now saying they are going to run for Calgary City Council. Now it’s a long way off from nomination day on September 20, and everyone can change their minds still, but it’s already getting hard to figure out who is who, and who’s saying their running and who is not.

So with this in mind I decided to put together a list of everything I’ve seen reported, heard personally and have heard rumour of. I’ll try to update this list regularly as we hear or see other things. If you know of anyone missing, please just let me know and I’ll add it!

PS – Try not to read too much into the difference between “rumoured” and “declared”. At this point it doesn’t really mean much. It’s more a degree of veracity in their statements up till now that made me choose one over the other. Some however, are just rumours.

Mayor
Dave Bronconnier – Incumbent (not running)
Craig Burrows (rumoured)
Joe Connelly (rumoured)
Bob Hawkesworth (rumoured)
Kent Hehr (rumoured)
Paul Hughes (declared)
Alnoor Kassam (declared)
Jon Lord (declared)[...]Read More