Updated: November 2, 2018 5:00 AM MST
REALLY, COUNCIL?
Beating a dead horse. Seems our council is completely spineless, with only a few exceptions. The typical Nenshi Kool-Aid drinkers. Really, can we not put these Olympic shambles to rest? Oh no, let’s waste another $4 million. Wrong time, wrong place. Not in my house.
(Make your mark on Nov. 13.)
NO LOVE FOR FLAMES
If I were the owner of the Calgary Flames, sitting back, watching all this ridiculous business over the Olympics, I would be phoning Gary Bettman and saying, “Find me a city that wants us, Gary.” It’s absolutely absurd to me that the city will move mountains to bring the Olympics here and they won’t even talk to the Flames about a new building. Come on city council, get your priorities straight! I guess ya’ll know how I’m voting.
(Flames fans have every right to be very worried about this development.)
Council majority lost, now it’s our turn. It was truly another sad day at city hall, listening to all the Calgary 2026 folks hemming and hawing about the costs and still no complete answers, other than the mayor and his calling the proposed funding agreement a “good deal” that came out of a “messy” few days of negotiations in the leadup to the vote. He must think all Calgarians are idiots, haven’t been reading the papers, can’t use a calculator and have open pockets for his flailing legacy project! Nevertheless, many kudos have to go to councillors Farkas, Chu, Gondek, Sutherland, Woolley, Demong, Magliocca and Farrell, a council majority, for their lively, heartfelt and very concerned debate! Now it is up to us, the citizenry, to vote the entire fiasco down on Nov. 13! No thanks to the six who voted the other way with his worship … Only $2 million more for the plebiscite, in a march towards a $30-million bid cost, and it will all be finished and hopefully swept into the dustbin of time.
(Vote how you want, folks, but it is important you have a say.)
So our mayor says “This is a great deal we’ve negotiated”. Let me get this straight. The province is paying the same. The feds are paying a bit less. The Calgary taxpayer is making up 100% of the shortfall … and you think that is a good deal? How does Nenshi live with himself knowing full well that even if we could afford this, which we can’t, and even if these cost estimates were realistic, which they aren’t, there is no chance the (people) at silly hall will ever come in on or under budget on a project of this magnitude. I guess having one wasteful big blue ring isn’t enough for Nenshi … he’s got to have all five rings and really blow the wad.
(The mayor is admittedly a huge fan of the Olympics but he alone can’t bring the Games here.)
Why should Calgary taxpayers foot the bill for this silly Winter Games? I think the mayor and council are smoking Mary Jane. The only result will be large tax bill for citizens. Way to go Calgary, for voting silly hall in.
(No one to blame but ourselves.)
IT’S ALL OUR MONEY
I can’t understand how people say we are getting “federal” money and “provincial” money. The various levels of government don’t have money. They take our tax dollars out of our hard-earned money and distribute it to their personal causes. People, it’s all our money. I can’t afford to pay. The different levels of government already take 50% or more of my limited income. We are facing a new tax in the so called climate change. The world is warming, instead of looking at measures to mitigate the real change coming (like rising sea levels), they focus on taking more and more taxes on silly ideas that only increase the size of government to move money around. That tax and the Olympic costs will really hurt families trying to live paycheque-to-paycheque, to say nothing of the squeeze on seniors and those on fixed income. Looking at the Olympic creative accounting, I remember a promise made by the mayor of Montreal on its Olympic funding in 1976: “The Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man could have a baby”. They went over by 720%. Do you trust promises made by special interest politicians?
(The vote is as much a vote on trust as it is for a bid on the Games themselves.)
Well it took over seven hours in one day and too many more hours to count, that Calgary silly hall made a decision to keep their original decision. Confusing — don’t even think it as it gets worse. The vote was to defeat a motion, really this is normal? So the Yes side win 8-6 to defeat a motion to abandon the plebiscite public vote Nov. 13. Councillors spent six hours today asking questions that were answered Sept. 11 and probably many times since. They should have been reminded that they were only deciding to continue to hold the plebiscite vote, not to rehash who was sitting on what committee, what the infrastructure would be, how much ticket prices would be, who would make the decisions on a HostCo (not formed until we win the plebiscite and win the IOC bid) on and on and on. No wonder this council cannot make a decision on anything! Every councillor had made their decision before they grilled the exhausted but polite Calgary 2026 bid committee. A complete waste of taxpayer money but winning the Olympic bid would be the best thing since 1988, in spite of these politicians! The politicians are the only ones that have complicated the information. For your $370 million, you get $4.4 billion — do the math — terrific investment! Use your voice and vote Yes on Nov. 13.
(Just vote, and take a pal to the polls.)
Kinda thought when committee chair Coun. Evan Woolley finally saw the light and advised council we need to move on (on this Olympic bid issue) the majority of council would have seen the same light. Not so. Our out-of-touch council decided to waste more time and, more importantly, more taxpayers money hoping for that Hail Mary on the Nov. 13 plebiscite. This comes on the heels of the 2026 bid committee announcing “spending cuts” to the tune of $300 million! To the uninformed, these cuts only represent shuffling of the bottom line and more blacked out data on the bid sheet us voters get to see. Don’t be disappointed when all this over-promised hoopla is sadly under-delivered in 2026 and we taxpayers are stuck with a pile of debt and interest charges. Vote No on Nov. 13.
(Calgarians wanted a say, and now they will get it.)
WATCH TOKYO
Congrats to Mayor Naheed Nenshi on his well-played leaked letter and threat to kill the Olympics. Calmed the No side down temporarily and fired up the Yes. Too bad Mayor Nenshi and selected council members don’t have the same skill at making astute business decisions. We have four partners about to sign a deal on a mega project — the IOC, province, city, and feds. Three of these partners have had enough sense to say no money for overruns. One group of fools says no problem, we will take all the risk. Overruns, there will be overruns! Look at a recent article in the Washington Post about the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Tokyo started out with a “thrifty bid” of $7.3B in 2013, sound familiar! Now at $25 billion going to $30 billion, three to four times the original estimate. Also quoted in the same Post article, “The Games overrun with 100 percent consistency, University of Oxford researcher wrote in 2012 study. No other mega project is this consistent regarding cost overruns.” What does this mean for Calgary taxpayers. A billion-dollar overrun divided among 500,000 household is $2,000. Say we only go over two times to $10 billion, that’s $10,000 per household, four times to $20 billion, that is $30,000 per household. No sane business person would take on such risk for 16 days of Games. The plebiscite should be Yes, I am willing to pay taxes to cover the cost of 2026 Olympics and overruns. No thanks, not willing to support with my taxes!
(All cost overruns seemed unlikely until they happened.)
WILL THEY ACCEPT NO?
The fix is definitely in regarding the Olympic bid plebiscite, which is going ahead on Nov. 13 despite eight city councillors voting to kill it and sensible Calgarians opposing it. Of course we’ll vote No, but question whether a majority No vote will be honoured by an elite cabal determined to host the 2026 Olympics, regardless of the cost to taxpayers. As was made clear at a meeting on Oct. 22, sponsored by The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the bid is all about satisfying giant egos at the corporate and bureaucratic level. Whatever happens, Calgarians should remember who voted Yes to hold the plebiscite (Nenshi, Carra, Chahal, Colley-Urquhart, Davison, Jones, Keating) and remove them from office in the next civic election, as they obviously care more about fleeting Olympic fame than the concerns of their constituents. Plus they’ve been drinking the IOC Kool-Aid!
(Some on council really impressed this week. Others, not so much.)
Like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Calgary now has its own fairy tale. We call it The Mayor and Six Councillors. They have just authorized spending $720 million (although they want you to believe the number is only $390 million) without so much as a napkin budget to justify this. They cannot explain where these funds are coming from, and what impact it will have on already overburdened taxpayers. They have no idea where funding will come from to cover overruns, which every intelligent person has told them will occur. They have stuck their fingers in their ears and hummed Kumbaya as economic experts have told them the 10-to-1 return the mayor is yammering about just doesn’t exist, never has, never will. I guess in their own little fairy world, they believe if you click your heels three times, money will fall from the skies. I’m sure unicorns still roam the earth in their little world. They have made their decisions based on not one single shred of factual information and despite knowing information was wrong and being withheld from certain committee persons. They have hid every single piece of information from taxpayers and you need to ask yourselves why? They are acting like the gambler in Vegas who bets it all on a “feeling”. This will turn out not to be our fairy tale but it will be our horror show if you do not vote No on the plebiscite Nov. 13.
Updated: November 2, 2018 5:00 AM MST
REALLY, COUNCIL?
Beating a dead horse. Seems our council is completely spineless, with only a few exceptions. The typical Nenshi Kool-Aid drinkers. Really, can we not put these Olympic shambles to rest? Oh no, let’s waste another $4 million. Wrong time, wrong place. Not in my house.
(Make your mark on Nov. 13.)
NO LOVE FOR FLAMES
If I were the owner of the Calgary Flames, sitting back, watching all this ridiculous business over the Olympics, I would be phoning Gary Bettman and saying, “Find me a city that wants us, Gary.” It’s absolutely absurd to me that the city will move mountains to bring the Olympics here and they won’t even talk to the Flames about a new building. Come on city council, get your priorities straight! I guess ya’ll know how I’m voting.
(Flames fans have every right to be very worried about this development.)
Council majority lost, now it’s our turn. It was truly another sad day at city hall, listening to all the Calgary 2026 folks hemming and hawing about the costs and still no complete answers, other than the mayor and his calling the proposed funding agreement a “good deal” that came out of a “messy” few days of negotiations in the leadup to the vote. He must think all Calgarians are idiots, haven’t been reading the papers, can’t use a calculator and have open pockets for his flailing legacy project! Nevertheless, many kudos have to go to councillors Farkas, Chu, Gondek, Sutherland, Woolley, Demong, Magliocca and Farrell, a council majority, for their lively, heartfelt and very concerned debate! Now it is up to us, the citizenry, to vote the entire fiasco down on Nov. 13! No thanks to the six who voted the other way with his worship … Only $2 million more for the plebiscite, in a march towards a $30-million bid cost, and it will all be finished and hopefully swept into the dustbin of time.
(Vote how you want, folks, but it is important you have a say.)
So our mayor says “This is a great deal we’ve negotiated”. Let me get this straight. The province is paying the same. The feds are paying a bit less. The Calgary taxpayer is making up 100% of the shortfall … and you think that is a good deal? How does Nenshi live with himself knowing full well that even if we could afford this, which we can’t, and even if these cost estimates were realistic, which they aren’t, there is no chance the (people) at silly hall will ever come in on or under budget on a project of this magnitude. I guess having one wasteful big blue ring isn’t enough for Nenshi … he’s got to have all five rings and really blow the wad.
(The mayor is admittedly a huge fan of the Olympics but he alone can’t bring the Games here.)
Why should Calgary taxpayers foot the bill for this silly Winter Games? I think the mayor and council are smoking Mary Jane. The only result will be large tax bill for citizens. Way to go Calgary, for voting silly hall in.
(No one to blame but ourselves.)
IT’S ALL OUR MONEY
I can’t understand how people say we are getting “federal” money and “provincial” money. The various levels of government don’t have money. They take our tax dollars out of our hard-earned money and distribute it to their personal causes. People, it’s all our money. I can’t afford to pay. The different levels of government already take 50% or more of my limited income. We are facing a new tax in the so called climate change. The world is warming, instead of looking at measures to mitigate the real change coming (like rising sea levels), they focus on taking more and more taxes on silly ideas that only increase the size of government to move money around. That tax and the Olympic costs will really hurt families trying to live paycheque-to-paycheque, to say nothing of the squeeze on seniors and those on fixed income. Looking at the Olympic creative accounting, I remember a promise made by the mayor of Montreal on its Olympic funding in 1976: “The Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man could have a baby”. They went over by 720%. Do you trust promises made by special interest politicians?
(The vote is as much a vote on trust as it is for a bid on the Games themselves.)
Well it took over seven hours in one day and too many more hours to count, that Calgary silly hall made a decision to keep their original decision. Confusing — don’t even think it as it gets worse. The vote was to defeat a motion, really this is normal? So the Yes side win 8-6 to defeat a motion to abandon the plebiscite public vote Nov. 13. Councillors spent six hours today asking questions that were answered Sept. 11 and probably many times since. They should have been reminded that they were only deciding to continue to hold the plebiscite vote, not to rehash who was sitting on what committee, what the infrastructure would be, how much ticket prices would be, who would make the decisions on a HostCo (not formed until we win the plebiscite and win the IOC bid) on and on and on. No wonder this council cannot make a decision on anything! Every councillor had made their decision before they grilled the exhausted but po
lite Calgary 2026 bid committee. A complete waste of taxpayer money but winning the Olympic bid would be the best thing since 1988, in spite of these politicians! The politicians are the only ones that have complicated the information. For your $370 million, you get $4.4 billion — do the math — terrific investment! Use your voice and vote Yes on Nov. 13.
(Just vote, and take a pal to the polls.)
Kinda thought when committee chair Coun. Evan Woolley finally saw the light and advised council we need to move on (on this Olympic bid issue) the majority of council would have seen the same light. Not so. Our out-of-touch council decided to waste more time and, more importantly, more taxpayers money hoping for that Hail Mary on the Nov. 13 plebiscite. This comes on the heels of the 2026 bid committee announcing “spending cuts” to the tune of $300 million! To the uninformed, these cuts only represent shuffling of the bottom line and more blacked out data on the bid sheet us voters get to see. Don’t be disappointed when all this over-promised hoopla is sadly under-delivered in 2026 and we taxpayers are stuck with a pile of debt and interest charges. Vote No on Nov. 13.
(Calgarians wanted a say, and now they will get it.)
WATCH TOKYO
Congrats to Mayor Naheed Nenshi on his well-played leaked letter and threat to kill the Olympics. Calmed the No side down temporarily and fired up the Yes. Too bad Mayor Nenshi and selected council members don’t have the same skill at making astute business decisions. We have four partners about to sign a deal on a mega project — the IOC, province, city, and feds. Three of these partners have had enough sense to say no money for overruns. One group of fools says no problem, we will take all the risk. Overruns, there will be overruns! Look at a recent article in the Washington Post about the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Tokyo started out with a “thrifty bid” of $7.3B in 2013, sound familiar! Now at $25 billion going to $30 billion, three to four times the original estimate. Also quoted in the same Post article, “The Games overrun with 100 percent consistency, University of Oxford researcher wrote in 2012 study. No other mega project is this consistent regarding cost overruns.” What does this mean for Calgary taxpayers. A billion-dollar overrun divided among 500,000 household is $2,000. Say we only go over two times to $10 billion, that’s $10,000 per household, four times to $20 billion, that is $30,000 per household. No sane business person would take on such risk for 16 days of Games. The plebiscite should be Yes, I am willing to pay taxes to cover the cost of 2026 Olympics and overruns. No thanks, not willing to support with my taxes!
(All cost overruns seemed unlikely until they happened.)
WILL THEY ACCEPT NO?
The fix is definitely in regarding the Olympic bid plebiscite, which is going ahead on Nov. 13 despite eight city councillors voting to kill it and sensible Calgarians opposing it. Of course we’ll vote No, but question whether a majority No vote will be honoured by an elite cabal determined to host the 2026 Olympics, regardless of the cost to taxpayers. As was made clear at a meeting on Oct. 22, sponsored by The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the bid is all about satisfying giant egos at the corporate and bureaucratic level. Whatever happens, Calgarians should remember who voted Yes to hold the plebiscite (Nenshi, Carra, Chahal, Colley-Urquhart, Davison, Jones, Keating) and remove them from office in the next civic election, as they obviously care more about fleeting Olympic fame than the concerns of their constituents. Plus they’ve been drinking the IOC Kool-Aid!
(Some on council really impressed this week. Others, not so much.)
Like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Calgary now has its own fairy tale. We call it The Mayor and Six Councillors. They have just authorized spending $720 million (although they want you to believe the number is only $390 million) without so much as a napkin budget to justify this. They cannot explain where these funds are coming from, and what impact it will have on already overburdened taxpayers. They have no idea where funding will come from to cover overruns, which every intelligent person has told them will occur. They have stuck their fingers in their ears and hummed Kumbaya as economic experts have told them the 10-to-1 return the mayor is yammering about just doesn’t exist, never has, never will. I guess in their own little fairy world, they believe if you click your heels three times, money will fall from the skies. I’m sure unicorns still roam the earth in their little world. They have made their decisions based on not one single shred of factual information and despite knowing information was wrong and being withheld from certain committee persons. They have hid every single piece of information from taxpayers and you need to ask yourselves why? They are acting like the gambler in Vegas who bets it all on a “feeling”. This will turn out not to be our fairy tale but it will be our horror show if you do not vote No on the plebiscite Nov. 13.