PolitiCalgary

Travel advice keeps others away from Calgary

2009-11-26T00:00:00.001-07:00

There's a random article found in the Calgary Herald about the mayor's recommendations on things to do around Calgary. That's fine and all, but the Herald made it sound so partisan, anti-Bronco, and stupid, that the newspaper is really doing a disservice to the tourism industry in the city. It reads:

Follow Bronco's Lead

Our mayor is the ultimate insider.

November 20, 2009

The consummate political animal, three-term mayor Dave Bronconnier is constantly on the move. After all, the man has a clock in his office that counts down to the next civic election. (332 days, tick, tick, Dave.) All this makes His Worship the man when it comes to recommendations for where to take out-of-towners. "There are lots of great places in town," Bronconnier says, "but two new ones worth the trip are the recently renovated ENMAX CONSERVATORY at the CALGARY ZOO and the HISTORIC TOWN SQUARE and GASOLINE ALLEY at HERITAGE PARK."

I'm very surprised the mayor was open to doing that interview with such a terrible introduction. By the 5th word in, I didn't really care about where to go in Calgary. All that was running through my head was "this city sounds already tehhh lame even if the city thinks the mayor is teeehhh lame."

I think the Travel section needs to stick to travel and less on consummate political animals.

Maybe this is why a lot of people want a better daily newspaper instead of snippets like this. The Herald's subscription department should advertise this. Would be great!

Is protesting in an office the best way to get attention? Cowbell missing the beat

2009-11-25T00:00:00.002-07:00

Seems like the biggest problem concerning climate protection isn't the government, it's us. We're probably the biggest threat the environment. A few extra garbage bags, and a few more styrofoam plates here and there.

The picture on the left may just be water vapour! You never know!

The recent invasion of Minister Jim Prentice's office seems to counterproductive more than anything else. I'm probably doing more damage to the environment than the government is. What if someone sat in my house and refused to leave? I too would probably call the cops and have them removed.

Maybe here's the time when we can agree to disagree that perhaps this new civil disobedience is not quite like what Gandhi's or Martin Luther King's.

I really haven't seen any sit ins over the homeless problem or sit ins regarding continued government invasion into our privacy.

Following the Calgary Cowbell has been interesting. I probably have more in common with David Wilson than a right wing person, but the message is being lost when it comes down to some of the material being written. There's only a target, but never a solution, and the latest demonstration seems to miss the whole point about climate change.

The whole tactic of getting attention seemed weird to me. We had to destroy the environment a little more by getting the news media to drive their SUVs to the office to interview them and waste more electricity and ink, in order to save the environment. Sounds weird doesn't it?

I wish these 7 individuals offered the public a solution rather than a sit in. It's great to call on the government to do more, but give the masses some solutions that are plausible. And why not go to the big businesses who you are targetting? No like Greenpeace, but see what they are doing to mitigate the effects of their business.

Big oil companies would love for you to give them solutions that can help them save money and reduce environmental damage. As much as you don't like hearing it, it really all comes down to money. Find a way to make tailing ponds history while reducing that clean up cost, and the big business will start listening. Invading their territory, or anyone else's, isn't going to solve the problem.

Note: This is coming from a chemical engineering student. And yes, chemmies do love the environment too.

References

7 arrested for sit-in at environment minister's office
- CBC News

''Civil'' climate change protest at federal environment minister''s Calgary office - OilWeek

Some will go to the ends of the universe to save a speedway, but not transit

2009-11-24T00:00:00.001-07:00

Do we have to use taxpayer dollars to bail out a speedway?

It's a question I honestly don't know the answer to, but I can tell you that our city council has some strange passions.

One of our main goals as a city is to manage transportation. By that definition, some would put speedways and transit in the same category. By some further retweaking of that definition, we would put speedways and transit on the same level with equal weighting.

We'll cut the budget so that transit hours are cut. We'll cut it in the way that the communities who benefit the most from transit will see their line cut due to under usage. The communities that have sprawled will continue to have no links to transit lines because our city managed our geographical layout very well.

At the same time we cut our transit hours and services, we see aldermen supporting Race City. No doubt this facility offers a wide range of services and unique opportunities for those who would like to experience high speeds or even school projects. However, is it a government's job to bail something out if it is not financially viable?

It was a close vote too. 8-7.

Now people will argue that somehow if Race City isn't viable, then why should the city be supporting the arts or organization X. If the city has to cut there, then it will. We've seen cuts to the arts before, so it's not a matter of this blogger favouring arts over Race City.

You know what it's all about right? It's the fact that aldermen aren't willing to sacrifice the excess instead of the essentials. I'm pretty sure transit is much more of an essential than Race City. As a politician, if you weigh an election potential heavier than a long-term needs potential, you're bound to make a terrible mistake in city planning.

Saving Race City sounds really good, but we're cutting the budget right? Gotta look at all avenues, including the ones that will get you votes.

There might be many who don't like what I say, but what can you do? You either raise the tax (which you don't want) or you cut other services (transit in this case, which to me is much more important because I use that everyday to get to school). I can hold back my temptations to speed 150000000 miles per hour.

So what's the right thing to do? Politicians always talk about "the right thing." Some people say there is no definitive answer because everyone has different opinions on these matters. I think I do.

The right thing, in my opinion, is whatever an election promise says it is.

Oh no! One less coffee a month! Is a hike of 4.8% that bad?

2009-11-23T00:43:00.000-07:00

I find it most interesting that Rick Bell from the Calgary Sun told us that the recession wasn't that bad. I agree with him on that. Except he didn't take that notion when he talks about tax hikes.

Let me tell you one thing: this blog started because of the tax hike last year. The huge 20% over 3 years thing didn't sound great.

And then you try to figure out how much that amounts to per month with the new tax increase that council decided on a while ago. According to CHQR, it's about $54 increase for the year. That's an average of $4.50 a month.

So here's to not being angry at council all the time.

However, when it comes to let's say cell phones for example, we won't get angry. Canada is worse than Rwanda when it comes to mobile data access, and we as citizens care about how our Twitter feed is going to get RT'ed more than anything else.

I remember reading the Herald and their readers said that they were willing to fork over more money to get better services. Yes, that was during the boom, but is it that bad?

Is it bad as watching farmland turn into a wasteland like the 1930s? Was it so bad that it caused us terrible spasms and shock and grief when we found out we couldn't' take a vacation to the Bahamas, again. Oh, I guess that's one less coffee a month.

Why don't we just use our GST cheques to cover that increase? This $54 is not going to hold you back from getting that HDTV you've always wanted.

I know many of you hate Bronconnier, but he's being honest. He's the only guy tough enough to say "hey guys, you want more except you guys want to pay less at the same time, that's not happening."

While many of us will read Ian's column on how great our fiscal hawks will be, and how cutting 10% of the workforce will be great, it's really morbid if you think about it.

We pride ourselves in cutting other people's jobs so that we'll save a few dollars. We pretend that if we elect Alderman A, who promised tax increases to a minimum or even lower them, that it'll be the best solution.

We got that in the 1990s, and now we're playing catch up. Crumbling infrastructure that we had to fix. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.

I'm ok with paying my taxes. Most people are, and according to our election results, most people don't really care if they go up or down.

What do you take from this story? You'll probably blog about it, Twitter it, and put the #crapImadeup hashtag on it.

Note: Sorry, I don't have a family and mortgage yet. I guess you can discount me from having an opinion.

Good luck, Ms. Anderson!

2009-11-22T01:12:00.000-07:00

Yet another promising journalist is leaving town for a gig with the Vancouver Sun. Katy Anderson from the Gauntlet will be leaving for Vancouver after the last issue of the the Gauntlet this semester. She was my news editor when I first started writing for the newspaper.

She's also the host of the half hour Gauntlet news show called "Off the Page" that airs Tuesday at 10am.

Why are all the better journalists leaving? Maybe this city isn't all that great for media for them to stay behind.

You can visit all her work for the Gauntlet here and be sure to check our her personal website for other things she wrote. Here's her twitter that she never checks anymore.

Wasn't that guy who offended the Premier the same guy that ran that millionaire's mayoral campaign?

2009-11-21T16:10:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, the Premier of Alberta got mad at Stephen Carter, who is an advisor to Danielle Smith, for making inappropriate comments that supposedly targeted the Premier's Ukrainian heritage.

The twitter post was,

"Just saw da premier making a speech. Dat was quite a speech. Dem media better report it right," - Carter_bbold

Stephen Carter also ran Alnoor Kassam's unsuccessful bid for mayor of Calgary in 2007.

Is there a correlation? Probably not.

I think this whole thing is a non issue. What is Mr. Cater was a Ukranian himself? Would that have caused such a stir?

What if Danielle Smith was Ukranian too? Then he'd be fired immediately... maybe.

What if the Premier wasn't Ukranian and he put that? Would the media have jumped on that?

What if Mr. Carter made fun of a regular Ukranian? Would the media have done anything there?

What about that thing when NDP leader Brian Mason called or referenced (I'm not too sure so don't quote me on it) the premier of being a Stalinist? The media didn't really cover that.

But this... this WAP Vs. PC fight is really big over a twitter post. By a non-politician.

I guess the Willrose Alliance is more credible than the NDP.

*Update: Is Daneille Smith actually Ukranian? That changes the story, doesn't it? Can anyone confirm this for me besides Wikipedia.

Del.icio.us Politics: Municipal union targets boy scout for volunteering for the city

2009-11-20T00:00:00.001-07:00

Here's an interesting story. The city of Allentown's largest union is targeting a boy scout after he had cleared a path in a local park. This took more than 200 hours to do. Below are two of the stories.

Union Bullies Boy Scout for Dastardly Good Deed

By Teresa Masterson for NBC Philadelphia

A 17-year-old Boy Scout worked more than 200 hours to clear a path in his local park so that people could enjoy walking and biking along the river.

Bad move Boy Scout. Now grown men who didn’t get around to doing it for a paycheck are after you.

Kevin Anderson, a junior at Southern Lehigh High School, a varsity soccer player and a Boy Scout hoping to get his Eagle Scout badge, spent 250 hours over several weeks creating a path on the partially complete 165-mile Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor that runs through Kimmets Lock Park in Allentown, reports The Morning Call.

"I decided to do my part in completing this part of the trail. In that way, others could enjoy walking along the river, without having to walk on the busy road," Anderson said in an e-mail, says The Morning Call.

But once the city’s municipal union caught wind of this do-gooder breath of fresh air, it put up a stink at Tuesday’s city council meeting. Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Unions said its considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing such good, free-of-charge, work to happen.

"We'll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails," Balzano told the council, reports The Morning Call.

Anderson’s act of carving out a 1,000-foot path is not seen as good community service by the union because it was the only group to suffer layoffs in the city’s current financial downturn.

"We would hope that the well-intentioned efforts of an Eagle Scout candidate would not be challenged by the union," said Mayor Ed Pawlowski in an e-mail Friday. "This young man is performing a great service to the community. His efforts should be recognized as such."

Union troubled by Eagle Scout project in Allentown

By Jarrett Renshaw for the Morning Call

In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.

Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city's largest municipal union.

Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.

"We'll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails," Balzano told the council.

Balzano said Saturday he isn't targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city's decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said "there's to be no volunteers." No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path.

Balzano said Saturday the union is still looking into the matter and might cut the city a break.

"We are probably going to let this one go," Balzano said .

The possible entanglement of a local Boy Scout in a union dispute underscores the frustration and anger SEIU members feel after being the lone city union to suffer layoffs in the ongoing financial crisis. It may also serve as a preview of future labor battles as the city tries to outsource some necessary jobs as a result of the layoffs.

Anderson, a junior and varsity soccer player at Southern Lehigh High School, is a member of Boy Scout Troop 301 of Center Valley.

He got the idea for the trail while taking hikes along the partially complete, 165-mile Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor. He noticed there were a few missing connections to the trail in Kimmets Lock Park, which is on the Lehigh River near Dauphin Street. He already has logged 250 hours trying to carve out a walking and biking trail along the river.

"I decided to do my part in completing this part of the trail. In that way, others could enjoy walking along the river, without having to walk on the busy road," Anderson said in an e-mail Friday.

During last week's budget hearings, where City Council reviewed the Public Works and Park and Recreation departments' funding requests, it was made clear that the layoffs and early retirements -- all of which have led to the lowest city staffing levels in two decades -- are bound to create union disputes in the weeks and months ahead.

For example, the city currently does not have an electrician available because of the layoffs and an employee on an extended sick leave. As a result, the city has been forced to hire an outside union electrician to oversee the installation for the popular Lights on the Parkway holiday display.

"In the spirit of the holiday, we decided to let that go," Balzano said.

Greg Weitzel, head of the Parks and Recreation Department, which lost 17 full-time employees as a result of the layoffs and retirements, said the low staffing levels will require more outsourcing of labor and a greater reliance on volunteers.

"There are some things that we can do in-house and other things we will have to bid out," Weitzel said Tuesday. "We originally had plans to do more with our labor force, but now we have to bid out that work."

Calgary Transit Peace Officer Brutality? You be the judge (VIDEO)

2009-11-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

Here is a video I found with transit peace officers responding to a disturbance. Some say the person in the video deserved it, while others are calling foul for excessive use of force. You be the judge.

Stand By Me by Calgarians

2009-11-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

I saw this on TV the other day and I thought I would share with everyone. Local Calgarian artists coming together for a good cause.

Calgary Herald subscription department sucks (403-214-1305)

2009-11-17T00:00:00.001-07:00

Dear Calgary Herald,

Recently one of your associates called me and was trying to persuade me to get the Herald for $6 a month. This person from the subscription department was very aggressive and was quite frankly, not very nice. I've done interviews with the people that write the news and they seem good, but the people who try to sell you guys really suck.

They also asked for my new address (I told them I moved), but when I asked if I had to give it to them, they pressed me to give it to them. Let me tell everyone that they are not obliged to give their addresses away to anyone unless you are willing to do so.

The person on the other line tried to convince me that it's a great deal and it was only 25 cents a day. I told her I get it online for free and read it, and that no one else in my family will read it because they read the Chinese newspaper. She got very frustrated after saying "what's there to think about?" several times. Surprisingly, she was the one who hung up on me.

I don't know about how awesome this 6 dollar a month deal is, but I'm pretty sure a $0 a month deal is even more awesome. To the staff at Calgary Herald: maybe you guys aren't 'that' bad, but the people who try to sell your stuff are doing a not so great job.

Since the Herald decided to bother me with their intense marketing tactics, it's going to be a start of a great relationship between this blog and that newspaper. The Calgary Sun wins hands down for the whole not bothering me ever thing. Maybe this is why they are winning more readers.... like readers that actually want to read the Sun. Interesting.

Unfortunately, the blog uses stuff from the Herald and some of their archives to do blog work. As well, this blog likes a lot of the people who do work (oh I love you too Calgary Sun even if I don't agree with everything you do), so this blogger is conflicted. However, it's all about the subscription department.

Maybe this is why I like the Metro and Fast Forward Weekly better. They thrive on the fact that they make things for free. Or blogs, they do that too. See how the whole free and not being bothered things make most people happy? Of course, like Rupert Murdoch, the Calgary Herald will move to make their online material a subscriber's only website after reading this blog post about how much their subscription department sucks at being respectful to people who just don't want to subscribe right now.

Oh no! Then they'll start sending me emails about how it'll be a great deal to sign up for the digital version of the Herald for only $3 or something.... And then Don Braid will have to cancel his Twitter account because he won't be able to ever link it. And we would have to spend hours watching Mr. Braid type it all out on Twitter, 140 characters at a time.

Even a bigger horror! We won't be able to see a Nenshi Naheed versus Ric McIver showdown ever again for free on the Internet after the subscription department fails to get enough money for its fight against Rick Bell and the Calgary Sun. The horror! The horror!

And then Markham Hislop will claim victory! Sweet, sweet victory!

And this blog went off course.

A series of blog posts to follow! (This is going to be 'omg' so exciting!)

Note: I just can't believe the Herald was so rude. That's about it. I'll probably get another subscription later on if they are nice to me again.

Good luck Mr. Klaszus

2009-11-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Klaszus is leaving Fast Forward Weekly and will be heading to Edmonton. Today's blog post is dedicated to him for writing unique and thought out news articles each week. There might not have been that many, but they were truly wonderful.

Some say the ones that cause controversy are usually the ones that are the best. Jeremy's story on grandstanding in city council did just that. It made Alderman Diane Colley-Urquhart so upset she won't let him interview her again. The same fate happened to this blogger when the ward 13 alderman ran in a provincial by-election. Good times.

You can view all his work here, and his personal website here.

I hope Fast Forward Weekly finds another person who can bring some awesome news stories, or else it's going to be up to the bloggers (I'm looking at you and you and you).

Conan O'Brien: Is a corn or is a nut?

2009-11-15T00:44:00.002-07:00

Back to good old Conan O'Brien

1 year anniversary

2009-11-14T00:00:00.004-07:00

Lost is a great show but producers and executives knew it had to end and they knew exactly how the plot would play out. Like Lost, this blog has to come to an end at some point. It won't end tomorrow, but it'll be done by 2013 when the next civic election will be held.

Why would you announce the end of something so early?

It gives me a timeline to work with. This blog has its own influences and crazy ideas, and that can breed power. I wish I was more optimistic, but I know influence can turn into power, and power ultimately corrupts. It may start out with good intentions, but it almost always does not. There are other people so much better than I am, and I see this blog as more of just a rant than anything positive. It's fun and creative, but it has no place in telling how others should think (although I'm pretty sure it hasn't actually changed anyone's thoughts).

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." - Lord Acton, 1887

People need to think for themselves and understand the consequences of their actions. It will be nice to blog about city council from now till 2013, but I think that's all I am giving it before I move onto other projects.

I never meant for this blog to be a big thing with followers, just a small blog for me to create my own ideas and thoughts. I have never had the intention of making things big because I was never good at that. I've noticed that some of my ideas have brought out pretty negative reaction from people. That scares me because it's either my ideas are too controversial and uncool, or it's them not seeing the big picture. Either way it scares me a lot.

Thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you until 2013.

It's fun to have hidden text. It's time to transform.

Opinion: The city's got it all wrong with social media

2009-11-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

A Wikipedia definition of social media is as follows:

"Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media supports the human need for social interaction, using Internet- and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many)."

Maybe it's just me, but social media implies that there is a two way communication between author and reader. It also means it's updated more than once every blue moon.

When I look at how people treat and use social media these days, especially those trying to use it but unintentionally make it pointless and even more difficult, it makes me shake my head.

Look at the examples of Aldermen Diane Colley-Urquhart and Joe Connelly.

Both are using blogs for the sole purpose of their potential election campaign. That's not what websites and social media outlets are designed for. For Alderman Colley-Urquhart, she used it for her Calgary-Glenmore by-election campaign and then shut it down after the election. Personally, I think people would have liked to see it up and running as to inform Ward 13 constituents of things going on. Alderman Colley-Urquhart did the exact same thing with her Twitter account. Social media is not a Swiffer wet wipe: you don't use it once and then throw it away.

For Alderman Connelly, it's almost the same thing. While the telljoe.ca campaign seems interesting, but a site used to gauge public opinion on whether or not you can become mayor of this city kind of defeats of the purpose of... well... about everything. I would have liked to see a blog and website up earlier by our ward 6 alderman.

Don't worry, the other aldermen don't have it quite there yet. I decided to go to other aldermen's websites to show how social media was theoretically there, but when put into practise, it's like as if it wasn't there at all.

- Alderman Jim Stevenson has a Facebook account. The last time he did anything with it was when he was running for alderman and won. Don't be fooled by the activity on his wall, it's just people posting messages and tagging him in photos.

- Bob Hawkesworth has a blog and it's probably the most updated and consistent one of them all. It's a good blog, but I rather have it updated more than once a month. Also, what's up with the random links? Racquet Network?

- Druh Farrell's updating her website. However, it falls into the swirling vortex of under construction pages. Always launch the site immediately, and don't let it go on for months without any updates. It reminds me of those under construction GeoCities websites in the 90s.

- John Mar has a website and blog, but the blog isn't really a blog. It's just a page updated once in a while. Note the huge one year gap between blog posts. Try answering his poll question. Yes, I don't know, or No? Which one will you choose? However, he uses Twitter a lot. Like... a lot.

- Joe Ceci's got a blog too. Except the RSS feed disappeared so we can't conveniently check out updates without having to go through a million posts on Joe's Cleam Team. It looks great, but all I ever see are pictures of his clean team. So unless the message is about.... the clean team.... then I guess social media is being put to good use. (not really).

- Andre Chabot's got a very spiffy website that looks the exact same as Brian Pincott's. It's a beautiful thousand dollar website, but no social media. So here, we see a lack of social media. Your money is being wasted Alderman Chabot! Get an RSS feed or something at least! (Oh wait, technically that's my money being wasted cause he didn't exactly buy it...)

- Brian Pincott's got the same website as Andre Chabot except with an RSS feed. Last time the blog was updated: June 2009. You can catch him on Twitter though or his Facebook account. Oh wait he hid it after the methadone joke... (that's when social media works against you and Alderman Pincott learned it the hard way).

- Ric McIver's got a Twitter account. That's about it.

So really, no one has a grasp on social media yet.

Just a quick note on the City of Calgary's whole new website which apparently will be up sometime next year, there's one thing you want to avoid when you deal with social media. I know they are doing a lot of revamping and testing, but it's an example of how not to incorporate social media.

If you look at Edmonton's website, it looks good. It's got RSS feeds embedded in. It's just a good website to look at.

For Calgary though, social media is hidden in a little corner on the right as it's own category. Social media is not its own category on a website. It works hand in hand with the website to provide the best experience for a user. So I'm hoping that when the new website comes out, a link to Twitter and Facebook is not in its own special corner.

References:

via CalgarySocialMedia.com

Opinions on West Village Re-Development: Saving money short term, but no vision long term

2009-11-12T00:00:00.004-07:00

I was reading the West Village proposal that the City of Calgary had released, and it got me thinking again. It's more like reverting back to what I had known all along: if I want a mayor who has vision, it would still be Dave Bronconnier. When I went through the document, it felt like as if I had just a small bit of faith in my elected officials. They are actually planning the city and progressing. While the whole Expo thing was kind of pointless, if you read the document, the bid actually had a purpose. It would be accompanied by the West Village revival. We know $300,000 was spent to look into the feasibility of an Expo bid against our neighbor to the north. We know that this was another great opportunity for our fiscal hawks on council to jump on it and say they are going to question it. These are all givens. I don't need the media to tell me Ric McIver and friends are going to be criticizing the mayor, again.

If you put all that aside for a second, consider this: Would our fiscal hawks ever have this vision? Would our current council, beyond an tunnel under an airport runway or a place for people to race their cars, ever look into the West Village redevelopment? I personally don't think so because I've never heard of them do anything of that sort. Our fiscal council is reactionary, yet I have never ever see them suggest alternatives. They are willing to go to the ends of the universe to scrutnize the city's spending (not that it's bad), but they have never dared to plan for the future.

I can't say I would be very happy with short term planning. I want to take Race City as an example. The Solar Team at the Schulich School of Engineering is very happy to see Race City extended so that they can utilize the space for their project. Certainly as an engineering student myself, this is a good thing. Yet behind this alternative energy initiative to make solar-powered cars is a terrible reality. We need that land to extend the Shepard Landfill, perhaps the most poor use of land in this small world of ours. Did a vote to extend Race City have an alternative to it? So what's going to happen to this landfill? You know what we did? We said hurray to extension and didn't look back at the future consequences.

Our need to race and our need for cars overshadowed our need to think about the future. Appeasing a NASCAR electorate is fine and the payoff may be great for future Mayor McIver, but 50 years down road, I may be living in a city dependent on landfills instead of clean parks.

When I read the news and all I hear is how potential mayoral candidate Ric McIver and Joe Connelly keep asking about where this $300,000, it gets a little tiring. $300,000 is not even a 1% tax increase.I want my aldermen to ask questions about the millions of dollars spent later on for this redevelopment. I want them to ask about capital costs, savings, and societal impacts.

In order to highlight what I mean and how I feel, I want to show you the differences between the tone and perception presented by two different groups. Group A is the mayor. Group B consists of the fiscal hawks and the media. The mainstream media disappoints me because they've decided to go the route that's easiest to elicit readership and passionate online participation. I don't want that kind of participation because it doesn't get anywhere.

I want to show what Group B sounds like. I looked through news documents relating to Calgary's withdrawal from the Expo bid and this was the tone:

Calgary Herald headline: Calgary's West Village blueprint features designer bridge

I'm tired of hearing about the designer bridge and any attempts to bring back something so pointless.
Calgary Herald headline: Calgary aldermen question early withdrawal of Expo bid

I want to point out that for this article, the Herald used the exact same photo as it did for an article they did about how Ric McIver and Dave Bronconnier would go head to head in the election. Leave this to bloggers to be one-sided, but having a newspaper do this discredits it even more.
For all the articles I read, not once did any of the media outlets ask the aldermen who decided not to continue with the bid. Not once.
For all the aldermen that were interviewed, not once did they talk about the positives of West Village or any of its cost. Not once.
For all the aldermen that were interviewed, not one offered any suggestion to an alternative. They questioned, but they did not answer.

Now for group A. Our 'beloved' mayor.

- You know what Jeremy Klaszus from the Fast Forward Weekly wrote?

"As part of the plan, the city hopes to reclaim land contaminated by industrial use. Mayor Dave Bronconnier has estimated the cleanup will cost $30 million to $100 million."

Remember that whole environmental consciousness we've all been taught. Somehow that didn't make it on the mainstream media's agenda. I'm learning about that in my ethics class for engineering, and somehow the media is really dropping the ball on this one. (Some do, not all).

- In the West Village blueprint, guess what the city estimates the projected profit would be in 2035? Between 72 and 470 million dollars. Profit. You heard me.

I know we all want to save money. It's a recession. Rick Bell mentioned in one of his video rants that the recession wasn't that bad. He had it spot on there. I see people still buying their iPods and their Starbucks. We're still shopping. This is nothing compared to the Great Depression. Nothing.

I want people to understand two messages from this opinion piece that 5 people will read:

a) The city spends money on certain things in order to find out about something. This is extremely small compared to what the whole plan is. If you have a problem with something, don't go for the easy figure, go for the consequential cost.

b) You love your conservative aldermen, but you won't get a vision out of them unless you demand it. Have you ever heard of them talking about a vision for which they could be criticized for? Not yet right?

If you want to win my vote, then give me a plan or else the incumbent's going to get it.

Quotes:

“I want to know where the money went. I don’t see a lot of effort for the Expo bid — I see a lot of effort for a new development project,” McIver said. “Were the taxpayers fooled?” - Metro News

References:

West Village Re-Development Plan

Remembrance Day 2009: Thank our troops

2009-11-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

Please take a moment today to reflect on the work our troops have done around the world. They have done great things to allow for people like me to keep blogging. Thank you.

In Flanders Field

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders Fields.

- John McCrae

References:

Government of Canada

CBC Archives

Why the poppy?

Free wireless internet in Hawkwood! Yes!

2009-11-10T00:00:00.001-07:00

I totally didn't see this coming, but Hawkwood is getting free wireless internet! Thanks to a company called GoNaeco, the entire community will be getting free basic internet! It's slow, but it'll do when your router dies, or when Shaw or Telus decide to stop for a couple of hours. You can check out some of the links below for more information.

For your rabid fiscal conservatives who complain about the taxation system, you'll be glad to know this cost you absolutely nothing. I recommend you listen to the X92.9's interview with Gord Lowe. Young people really dig him (not really, he just happens to be Hawkwood's alderman).

It's free internet! That's amazing!

References:

X92.9 Interview

Calgary neighbourhood gets free Wi-Fi

No wires attached in NW

Hawkwood Residents to Get Free Wireless Internet

Free Calgary Wifi Twitter Feed

The Alberta A Team: A crappy film on politics in Alberta

2009-11-08T12:50:00.001-07:00

I spent a while trying out video editing with Sony Vegas and I thought this would be a cool thing to show. It's pretty crappy, but I added it just for the A-Team theme song. I hope you enjoy it.

Simcity Calgary: 1980-2000

2009-11-06T00:00:00.001-07:00

It's Friday, and it's the last blog post about this model Calgary. Let's see what the 80s and 90s were like.

1985: Yes the Klein era. Look at the city go.

1990: Oh look! Another fire! This time a helicopter crashed into the industrial complex. Luckily I had more than one fire station this time.

1995: Enter the Duerr era.

1997: It reads:

"Calgary city wins Gold! - Larma Silva, calgarycity resident and world famous decathlete, has taken the gold at the International Games held in San Francisco. Silva has been competing for two years, and just last December won a position for the SimNational Team. Silva's story is allegedly inspiring, since he has been a long time llama pox sufferer. He sighed in a private interview that he credits his ability to overcome llama pox to calgarycity doctors. "They're just the best," he blurted. A spokesman for the family called a press conference, but was late. One reporter stayed behind to berate the spokesman. Drummers everywhere halted lightly at the news. "Omigawsh! I I just can't believe it," sighed one.

Thank you calgarycity doctors.

1998: Council votes 8 to 2 to lure industry into the city. Those who voted against the measure, in my view, are double trouble.

2000: And that my friends, is the city in the year 2000.

I hope you enjoyed this week's blog posts on how the city evolved. I'll revisit this city later on and maybe attempt to build a new one with interactive feedback from all. I may even use Simcity 3000 for another test run. This was not a perfect city and it was an attempt to show how the city looks like right now in Simcity. Just a couple of things that I found were interesting.

1. Sims hate suburbs. They really do. They abandon their homes if they aren't near some kind of commercial place.

2. Sims don't mind living near industrial areas.

3. Parks do nothing.

4. Highway building features sucks in Simcity 2000.

5. The maximum number of people that I could fit using the current model of Calgary is 50,000.

6. Sims apparently don't like our transit system.

7. Build more than one fire station.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Simcity Calgary: 1960-1980

2009-11-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

This period was marked by major growth, northwest development, and a bunch of weird news articles. No more major fires!

1965: Calgarians are concerned with pollution. I chose not to put in the "fusion powered" plant because it doesn't exist and I'm trying to follow Calgary's growth pattern (except for that whole fire thing...)

1967: Looks good. I know that's not how Calgary was developed (what is this extreme SE calgary doing there?), but it's hard to plan out everything. Give me a break.

1967: Apparently it was time to build a train connection and some highways because residential roads weren't good enough for the industry. Let's blow some stuff up!

1970: Looking good...

1972: Although I'm not charging any tax, people still can't find work and are selling their ankles to make extra cash. This whole 1973 oil embargo didn't make us that desperate, did it?

1972: Apparently pollution is really bad. But it tastes excellent!

1978: Great education systems in calgarycity! And I have just one school!

It's a great day in Calgary!

Simcity Calgary: 1940-1960

2009-11-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

This was a period of rapid growth as I tried to copy how our city looks like right now. However, in doing so, I forgot that one fire station cannot stop small fires. The police don't even do anything. In 1958, a huge fire consumed half the city and the entire north region of the city. The fire was started by a small airplane crash and spread like wildfire. The pictures alone are hilarious though.

The city is slowly recovering in 1948. We're now connected to Cherryton via the Cherryton 6 connection. I hear they have a ton of cherries.

The first power plant ever build was ready to explode because it had reached its 50 year limit. I just had to find out about it through a newspaper rather than Enmax themselves...

1951: After not caring about the power plant, it just blew up. Thankfully no one was hurt. Kind of hilarious too because the firestation had no power for a short period of time.

1956: With a lot of money on my hands, I had to modify the landscape so that it would have the two islands for the zoo and Prince's island. I left them out earlier because I wasn't paying attention. Also note that by the time I got all the money, I was not charging for any tax on the citizens to encourage just 10000% RCI (Residential, Commercial, Industrial) growth.

1958: I took this screenshot because it was the first accident that caused some damage on my city. I thought it was small and could be contained with one fire station and a few police stations. As you can see, that is not adequate.

1958: So Simcity freezes time when accidents happen. You can see that the entire airport is gone and the fire is jumping to other industrial areas. The next picture is the best. I even laughed.

1958: So the fire spread... a lot. Downtown was safe for the most part thanks to the river.

1958: There's my lone fireman icon. Charred land everywhere.If you can't read it, my current population is sitting at 16130.

1958: The fire has been largely contained except in the north west. The only way the SE was saved was where I had bulldozers destroying roads and buildings to prevent the fire from jumping over into the residential areas. That's another way to save your city from fires in Simcity.

1958: Simcity sends out this beautiful little news article about the fire after the last fire is put out.

1958: Population: 11710. Oops.

1960: 2 years later, calgarycity is pretty much back to what it used to be. Ignore that whole brown area.

Lesson learned.

Simcity Calgary: 1920-1940

2009-11-03T00:00:00.002-07:00

Not going to lie to you. The Simcity loan system screwed up the simulation and it put the city into tremendous debt. The point of this whole series is to show you how a city with urban sprawl would look like. By the end of 1940, I had to infuse a whole bunch of cash into the city to make it work again. Great Depression really happened here. Weird. Consider it as a huge grant from the federal and provincial governments.

All you could build at this stage was either coal or coal given the amount of money I had in the bank. I'm sorry global warming.

There was a time when debates about tunnels under airports never existed.

This should be the city during 1930. I took out a $10,000 loan for a coal plant not realizing that the interest was $700 per annum and not $700 for the entire loan. I was making about $500 per year. Thanks stupid brain. Essentially here marks the city being screwed over by everything,

1935 was not a good time for me. No one was living here. Houses abandoned. Time to cheat.

So here is where a magical $500,000 just appeared and I could rebuild calgarycity again. Let me remind readers that my point was to try and show what the city would like based on how our growth is currently based on a Simcity model. I am not attempting to build a city from scratch. (1940).

Simcity Calgary: 1900-1920

2009-11-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

In order to show off how the city progresses based on Calgary's current growth pattern, the next 5 days worth of blog posts will be mainly pictures to illustrate just what is going on. The point of this week's blog posts is to highlight how the city would look like in SimCity. How I developed was completely random and was based on trying to figure out where to put things. I hope you enjoy this week's blog posts because I had a lot of fun playing with SimCity 2000 again.

Right when Calgary started in 1900, aliens were already probing the land. Thankfully no one was hurt.

This is what the budget looks like in 1905. Modest compared to what they are in real life.

So here's what Calgary looks like as of 1905. There really isn't much going on right now.

The citizens love me so much, they raised funds for a private mansion so that the mayor could move in. I won't see that from Calgarians these days.

900 Calgarians are killed in an earthquake in 1909. Just so you know Calgary will never have earthquakes. Wait for several million years, then we might.

Calgary 1910. Lots of dark spots. Means people are abandoning their homes. My skills are getting rusty.

Yet another earthquake in 1911. When will these stop? Where's the snow?

Calgary 1915 looks pretty good so far. We're slowly growing

By 1920, something weird is happening where a certain part of the city is not getting any electricity even though there's enough electricity going around. Come on Enmax!

What if Calgary was modeled in SimCity? Let's test it out!

2009-11-01T00:00:00.032-06:00

In reference to a great to a great article written by Jeremy Klazus, the idea has always been there to build an actual SimCity model based on how Calgary was built. Over the past couple of weeks, this blog has been doing exactly that, and trying to model an approximate model of what Calgary would look like. Along with that though, there were a few hilarious moments along the way because I decided to let SimCity issue random disasters, so anything from aliens to earthquakes were possible during the game.

The city was called "calgarycity" for reasons I don't know, but I tried to really demonstrate the effects of urban sprawl. I also understand that the geography and topography of my SimCity map may not be 100%, and I will improve on that later. This is something I believe has never been done for the city of Calgary in particular. SimCity 2000 has a lot of other model cities including Portland and Chicago for example. 2000 is also great because the game is just 30 megabytes and is easy to use. I remember playing this in grade 6 and it was a top notch game, even for today's users.

Starting November 2nd, 2009 on this blog, I will be posting an update for every 20 years of "calgarycity" growth. I've paused the game at the year 2000 so that people can see where the city has developed and the things that were needed in order to grow the city really quickly. However, I do not intend to stop there with this SimCity project.

I will be deciding whether or not to start from scratch again on a second city where people can contribute ideas and thoughts about how Calgary should have been planned, or continue on with this city and have Internet input. It's a great way to be interactive and understand that things like Plan It is not as simple as a SimCity game. It's also a great way to highlight how important city building is and the administrative side of building up things.

Below are some of the resources I used to plan "calgarycity". You can see that a lot of the information was actually derived from Plan It documents and research. Other references included Google Maps and a neat feature I found called "Calgary Mapped." You can choose certain parameters and Calgary Mapped will automatically find all of those parameters in Google Maps. For example, if you wanted to know where all the police stations were in Calgary NW, you could do that with one click.

References:

Calgary Mapped

Calgary Municipal Development Plan

Calgary Energy Mapping Study

Calgary on Google Maps

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T02:32:00.002-06:00