Notes From The Fringe

9 Replies to “Notes From The Fringe”

1. Ian Robinson writes with humour, a slight sarcasm.
   The big city mayors with big ideas are coming for yuor wallet.

2. This is absolutely coming down the road at 100mph. They can’t cut back on what the cops and fire fighters get (that’s about 35% of the budget) and the infrastructure and transit needs in the city are growing every week, which leaves little to pay for all their legacy/pet/kickback projects.
   As an aside, a woonerf would be great in Inglewood but stuff like that never happens in this city. The revitalization of the East Village has been way ahead of schedule – for years, and years, and years -and it turns out it’s basically just going to be another condo ghetto with few amenities to be found. Oh, there was suppposed to be a woonerf there, too.

3. Woonerful,woonerful. Turn on the bubble machine.

4. Turn on the Bubble Machine (8th Ave mall, downtown Calgary)

5. That’s just what Nenshi doesn’t need, more taxation power so he can add more useless, empire building programs. Case in point, the green bin program. It’s not enough that we sort recyclables from other garbage, we now must also sort compostable materials. In the name of saving the planet we will up the garbage truck fleet by one third, hire additional city workers and handle compostable waste not once but three times…I shit you not… http://www.calgary.ca/UEP/WRS/Pages/Recycling-information/Residential-services/Organics-recycling/Green-Cart-Composting.aspx

6. Nenshi has been making a lot of noise lately about the need for a “City Charters” and opening “revenue” opportunities such as municipal surcharges on vehicle registration, gasoline taxes, local sales taxes and so forth. God only knows what his well-intentioned but clueless air-heads on council might come up with. He’s also saying that property taxes are fundamentally unfair – but that’s just a clever ruse for opening a Hegelian dialectic. If I’m not mistaken the moon bats at Calgary city hall are also seriously considering bicycle initiatives similar to those which recently failed in Vancouver and Montreal.
   As my mom used to say – “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

7. Calgary hasn’t developed enough to the point where it can afford a leftist municiple government without significant damage.
   Ralph Klein, Al Nuerr, and to a lesser degree Dave Bronco, were all pretty middle of the road Mayors.
   Nenshi is the first real Leftist with a cabal of Leftists pushing to make Calgary Leftist. He’s adopted the folksy populism of the “Cleaning the streets isn’t left-wing or right-wing” variety, but underneath it all you know he’s an elitist ideologue that is doing Harper-style incrementalism in reverse.
   It’s too bad that the enormous influx of people into Alberta has so changed the political and cultural landscape. Calgary is fast going the way of just another Vancouver or Montreal. Piles of leftists that like to make money and hate conservatives, without being able to connect the irony between the two.

8. Why would a woonerf be good in Inglewood? It chews up green space, congests traffic and panders to the miniscule component of the population that bikes or walks to work, without really helping their commute, since sidewalks already exist and a bus/bike lane was rammed down our throats last year. The woonerf was our councillor’s baby, with expensive studies already performed before the backlash from those affected but not consulted produced an apology and backdown. He still won re-election, but maybe he noticed the number of opposition campaign signs on lawns. When he assumed the community newsletter editorship a few years ago, he proclaimed himself “The Emperor of Inglewood.” He did not fare well in the local letters.to.the.editor, despite his degree in urban planning.

9. This is certainly not unique to Calgary. I’m on the board of our local ratepayer’s association and today our city council was busy passing out the lolly. Here’s a couple of examples:
   A Capella Plus Choir Society – $1750
   African Heritage Society – $ $1900 (because we have sooo many ‘Africans’ in Nanaimo)
   Ballroom Dance Society – $1150
   Pacific Institute of Bagpiping – $2500
   And that’s just a few of many ‘cultural grants’ adding up to $209,000 in local taxpayer’s dollars. I’ll bet not one in a hundred property owners has ANY idea that their hard earned dollars are going to groups they wouldn’t support by buying a ticket.
   With elections coming up this fall, we’re going to have to step up our game. I’ll be sending the list to everyone on my local e-mail list and ask them to share it with all those on theirs. If two people tell two people, who then tell two people…..