All posts tagged St. Albert

Purely local issues: Fear and loathing on St. Albert’s dog runs

by David Climenhaga on October 10, 2012 in Pets, St. Albert with 1 Comment

Lots of St. Albertans love their dogs and want to see them run. St. Albert dog owners, of course, may not be exactly as illustrated. Below: Councillor Malcolm Parker striking out with his leash law idea.

ST. ALBERT, Alberta

If you don’t think much about municipal politics, you may not realize that among the biggest issues that bedevil city councillors anywhere is pets, what they do and what to do about them. So for those of you who don’t live here in St. Albert, Alberta, welcome to the wacky world of the St. Albert dog bylaw, which works just fine, but which Councillor Malcolm Parker, who is apparently not a dog owner, wants to fix anyway.

“If a dog is on a leash, the owner has it under control,” said Mr. Parker told our local twice-weekly newspaper. “I find it hard to believe that we let dogs run free in any area.”

This suggests to me that Mr. Parker hasn’t been paying attention to either the small children being dragged by big dogs or the well-behaved small doggies in this town. But he’s forgiven for this omission … by me.

But for a guy who says he studied psychology at university and depends on voters to be re-elected, I’d suggest he’s also not been paying attention to what happens to politicians who tick off large numbers of voters.

Just in case he missed that lesson, to stick with the canine metaphor, here’s what happens: They step in it!

My guess is that most of St. Albert’s many, many dog owners aren’t yet aware of what their City Council has been talking about doing – that is, making it illegal to let your dog run off its leash anywhere in the city but one small and crowded dog park on the west side, which isn’t really a dog park anyway but merely a shrinking hunk of un-zoned land.

When they find out, it will most likely be when a crabby city bylaw officer hands them a stiff fine. They will be furious. Let me say that again: They. Will. Be. Furious.

Tomorrow, we’ll get back to the weighty matters of provincial and federal politics. For today, though, here’s my letter to St. Albert City Council – which you won’t likely be reading on Rabble.ca or in the Calgary Beacon or any of the other places this blog sometimes appears – on this issue. And if this sort of thing isn’t your cup of tea, just remember, all politics is local!

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Dear Mayor Crouse and St. Albert City Council:

As a citizen of St. Albert, a taxpayer and the owner of two small and well-behaved dogs I am writing you today to express my serious concern with City Council’s apparent plan to require all dogs to be leashed at all times in the city.

This strikes me as a classic example of elected officials moving to solve a problem that doesn’t exist in a way that is extremely unfair to a significant group of taxpayers. At the very least, if an unneeded law like this is to be put in place, the city must provide its dog owners with appropriate and accessible off-leash areas for our pets in all parts of the city. After all, as I noted above, we are taxpayers too and have a right to enjoy our city’s parks with our pets like other St. Albertans. Indeed, we are not only taxpayers, but have to pay a significant additional fee to license our pets. But what we have seen in reality is the sole informal off-leash area in the city, the un-zoned land west of Lacombe Lake that is not in fact a dog park, significantly reduced in size.

Most dogs in St. Albert are small, but big and small they need to run a little. They bring enormous joy to their owners and all but a few present no threat to pedestrians, other dogs or children. Those that do are adequately governed by the traditional municipal bylaw approach, which calls for dogs to be “under control” at all times. With the rule change proposed by Councillor Malcolm Parker, a large and out-of-control dog on a leash held by a small child would be “legal,” but a small obedient dog walking to heel with no leash would be subject to a fine. What’s wrong with this picture?

While there has been some discussion of this proposal in the local media, I would be surprised if many people in the pet-owning community know about it, so I think council can be quite confident that there will be a backlash with consequences in the polling booth for those councillors who support this measure when municipal bylaw officers start handing out fines.

Moreover, it is my personal belief that when governments pass foolish laws like this one, they actually make the situation worse, because many dog owners will simply ignore the law – and possibly start ignoring other laws as well, such as picking up after their pets.

Naturally, there are bound to be some people in any community who just can’t stand dogs. There are also some who hate cats, despise natural gardens or disapprove of gasoline-powered lawnmowers. But the laws we pass as a community need to reflect a reasonable compromise between the concerns of such individuals and the rights of all taxpaying citizens. I find it very hard to believe that there are very many St. Albertans who are all that concerned about a few dogs, mostly tiny house pets, off leash in the company of their owners in St. Albert’s parks. On the other hand, I am reasonably confident council will find there are a lot of dog owners made extremely unhappy if this foolish change manages to become the law.

There are many more serious issues than a few well-behaved pets off their leashes that need to be tackled by St. Albert City Council. I would strongly advise council to heed the advice of that well-known bit of folk wisdom: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

Respectfully,

David J. Climenhaga

Remember where you heard it first! Former St. Albert city councillor James Burrows gets Wildrose nomination

by David Climenhaga on August 26, 2011 in Uncategorized with 4 Comments
Former St. Albert city councillor James Burrows on municipal election night 2010. The TV monitors in the background did not display particularly good news for Mr. Burrows. Now he has the Wildrose Alliance nomination for the St. Albert riding. Below: St. Albert Conservative MLA Ken Allred.



ST. ALBERT, Alberta

Timing is everything, I wrote of former St. Albert city councillor James Burrows back in February 2010: “If Mr. Burrows can get the Wildrose nomination, the timing could be perfect for him.”



Well, the party announced yesterday that Mr. Burrows has indeed got its nomination for the St. Albert riding in the next general election. But if a week is a long time in politics, a year and a half is darned near an eternity, and it’s a different Alberta now than it used to be back then.

So it remains to be seen if the timing will be as good for the ambitious and locally controversial former three-term councillor and sometime Alberta Liberal, who was turfed from office by a mere 14 votes in the October 2010 civic election, as it looked as if it might be back in the spring of 2010.

One could argue, of course, that what’s really interesting isn’t what party Mr. Burrows, 47, is going to run for, but whether or not Ken Allred, St. Albert’s 70-year-old Conservative MLA, will run again.

There was a day when it was widely rumoured that Mr. Allred would himself switch to the Wildrose Alliance, or perhaps retire, but he’s played his cards pretty close to his vest on his plans. Here’s a bet, though, that Mr. Allred will run again for the Tories, now that the wind again appears to be blowing their way with Premier Ed Stelmach about to go over the side.

He has vocally endorsed far-right Conservative leadership candidate Ted Morton, so it is possible the outcome of the leadership race will now influence his decision whether to stay or to go.

If Mr. Allred seeks re-election, he won’t be the only retirement-age Alberta Conservative politician re-considering another kick at the electoral can now that the Tory elevator seems to be going up again as the Wildrose elevator goes down. A week ago, Alberta Speaker and longest-serving MLA Ken Kowalski announced that he will be seeking his tenth term since 1979!

No doubt part of Mr. Kowalski’s motivation is the desire to hand his annoying Wildrose opponent in the Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock riding, far-right bloviator and sometime “senator in waiting” Link Byfield, his metaphorical ass. But the real story is that these kinds of decisions by politicians who could gracefully fade into the woodwork strongly suggest that no matter whom they choose as leader, the Alberta Tories no longer fear the Wildrose Alliance as much as they did a year ago.

So this could be bad news for politicians like Mr. Burrows, for whom not too long ago the Wildrose Alliance have looked like a certain ticket to electoral success.

Mr. Burrows has no shortage of detractors in St. Albert, but he has also proved in the past he knows how to get elected whether his political enemies like it or not. If he hadn’t been suffering from a cold the week before the 2010 municipal election, it’s likely he would have been able to squeeze another 15 or so votes out of the electorate. And he’s sure to work harder for a prize like a seat in the provincial Legislature.

It’s not clear if being a former Liberal will help or hinder Mr. Burrows in one of the few Alberta regions with a strong history of voting for Liberals. Traditional Liberal voters may distain him as a turncoat gone over the loony right, or may find him less threatening than a candidate from the party’s scary ultra-right.

Or they may simply not care, because St. Albert is a rare Alberta where other parties win votes from time to time too.

Despite their historical strength in the region, the Alberta Liberals don’t yet appear to have found a candidate to nominate in St. Albert. Perhaps local Liberals are waiting for the outcome of their leadership race?

Nor have the New Democrats, who could benefit from warm feelings for Jack Layton and the lingering Orange Wave.

Meanwhile, while they have barely registered in any polls so far this year, the Liberal-like Alberta Party, has two potential candidates fighting over the nomination in the riding – former New Democrat Tim Osborne and St. Albert fire fighter local firefighter Victor Fernandez.

NOTE: A reader informs me that Alex V. Bosse is seeking the Liberal nomination. Readers can look at his tweets at http://twitter.com/#!/ALXV5 .

Starbucks, Servus and St. Albert: just another P3, after all, and not a bad deal at that!

by David Climenhaga on July 19, 2011 in Uncategorized with 6 Comments
Starbucks and Servus Place: Both high on the hit list of St. Albert’s CAVE (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) people. Below: St. Albert Mayor Nolan Crouse.

What’s wrong with the City of St. Albert opening a Starbucks franchise inside the Servus Place community recreation facility? After all, it’s a good idea likely to help the still-controversial recreation centre become a financial success.

So City Council should stick to its guns and not back away from this particular deal. Indeed, to do so would be fiscally irresponsible. The suggestion Mayor Nolan Crouse and another member of council should resign over it is risible.

What’s more, a Starbucks franchise at Servus Place would not amount to unfair taxpayer-supported competition for the operator of the Booster Juice franchise in the same facility, or indeed offer any kind of meaningful competition to that business.

Finally, whether you hate the Starbucks plan or not, the campaign of vilification against St. Albert’s city manager is odious. If you don’t like decisions made by the city, take it up with the responsible body – and that would be our city council, which we put there with our votes. If you don’t like what council is doing, there’s a mechanism for dealing with them.

Now, for some reason, opposition to this particular Starbucks deal seems to have really struck a nerve with a group of people in our community who basically disagree with anything council does short of slashing services to reduce taxes. Some folks call them the CAVE People – “Citizens Against Virtually Everything.”

An on-line petition claims council and the administration have lost the trust of St. Albert voters, and therefore that Councillor Cathy Heron and Mayor Crouse, whom the petition author identifies as key supporters, should resign. Worded and distributed as it is, this petition has no legal validity and little political value. Still, if you disagree with me and think it will put some pressure on them, be my guest and sign it. It’s found here. Just remember that what you’re asking them to do is to take $30,000 or more of our tax dollars and throw them out with the coffee grounds because you believe in an ideology that says there’s no place for government in commercial enterprise.

Some of the people associated with this campaign – whom I would guess have some overlap with the members of the St. Albert Taxpayers Association – are folks who post on-line pictures of our new squarish garbage cans not lined up perpendicular to the curb and argue that this means municipal garbage collection system is a failure. Well, I have some issues with the garbage collection plan too, which I’ll save for another day, but I’m not persuaded the tidiness the cans post-pickup is evidence on which any decisions about the efficacy of the system should be based.

Now, some opponents will argue government has no business in business. This in my opinion is a load of hooey, but then – as someone is bound to point out – I make my living working for a public-sector trade union. Here in North America, we’ve let the so-called business community run everything in the name of market fundamentalist purity since Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States 30 years ago. Ask yourself, is our corner of the world a better place as a result of this emphasis on the ideology of privatization? Not likely!

Back in the day, the city might have run a cafeteria in a place like Servus on a break-even basis and we’d all have been fine with it. Nowadays, the right having won that fight, there’s lots of pressure on governments to get involved in “public-private partnerships,” which usually don’t amount to more than a creative way for taxpayers to subsidize private businesses to do work the public sector does better for less.

We have a couple of city councilors who are frequent proponents of P3s – the same councillors, oddly enough, who oppose the deal with Starbucks.

But what is the Starbucks deal but another kind of P3? And if P3s are such a great idea, what’s wrong with this P3?

The private sector provides the marketable product and the city provides some of the start-up cash. Indeed, it’s a much better deal than the usual P3, because it actually has the potential to turn a profit for the city instead of being just an outright taxpayer subsidy like the Anthony Henday highway that will run right past Servus.

One could argue, I suppose, that in a true P3, the business and not taxpayers bears the risk, but everyone knows this is baloney. If the business fails or walks away, the taxpayer is always left holding the bag. Plus, there’s almost no risk in operating a Starbucks at this location, which is no doubt why city council liked the deal in the first place.

You don’t think the city should run a business? Fine, that’s an ideological position, which all of us don’t accept. If that’s the way you feel, deal with it at the next election.

Then there’s the matter of competition with Booster Juice. Please! If Starbucks and Booster juice have anything in common, it’s only that they both sell drinkable liquids. What’s the difference between competition from a private coffee shop operator (with which the petitioners would presumably have no problem) and a P3 coffee shop (which outrages them)? None from our perspective as taxpayers.

Was the Booster Juice franchise operator promised there would be no other competition in the facility? If he was, then he has cause for complaint.

But, you may argue, his taxes are supporting his competition. True, I suppose, but his taxes are also supporting a favourable place for him to do business, and council is doing everything it can to drive business his way. Sorry, but the Booster Juice complaint is a red herring.

Finally, there are the attacks on the city manager, who nowadays is not only being vilified for decisions made by several past councils, but for the recession and the downloading of provincial services on municipalities by Alberta’s Progressive Conservative government – which I’ll bet every person screaming for his head voted for.

This is way out of line, and the people responsible should take their complaints to the actual decision makers.

Yes, taxes are too high in this community. Reasons include decisions made by past city councils, but also the lack of industry here, which also has obvious benefits, and the ridiculous tax structure of the Capital Region, blame for which belongs squarely with our Conservative provincial government.

Solutions include being thoughtful about what services the municipality offers, not wholesale privatization, which will cost us more, not less. They sure as heck don’t include cutting municipal services right and left. Maybe we should also think about replacing the provincial government with a party closer to the centre of the political spectrum.

These are not grounds, as it were, for killing the Starbucks deal.

St. Albert downtown redevelopment needs a second look

by David Climenhaga on June 11, 2011 in Uncategorized with 4 Comments
Looking north on Perron, St. Albert’s uninspiring but maybe serviceable main downtown street.


This column appeared in yesterday’s edition of the Saint City News.

When it comes to redeveloping downtown St. Albert, our city council is asking the wrong question.

What city council seems to be asking is, “Can we afford to re-develop the heart of our small city?”

While at $135.8 million the price tag is a shocker, council has clearly concluded that the answer is yes. A significant group of our fellow citizens vociferously disagrees.

The question councillors really ought to be asking, however, is this: “Are St. Albertans all that unhappy with their downtown as it is?”

If citizens are not unhappy – if, for example, they think downtown in the vicinity of St. Albert Place is just fine, or even if they simply feel no urgency to improve it – then council has an obligation to explain to us clearly why we need to proceed quickly with this expensive redevelopment. This has not been done, and one only need listen to the conversations in St. Albert’s coffee shops and public places to know this.

Without access to public opinion polling data to prove otherwise, it’s a safe bet most St. Albertans are perfectly satisfied with our city’s downtown just as it is – professional offices instead of retail stores, central parking lot, four lanes of traffic on Perron Street and all. A significant number surely like it that way, including many who commute to Edmonton via St. Anne Street and Grandin Road.

So what’s the hurry? St. Albert taxpayers deserve clear answers to these questions.

Even if it can be shown we need this redevelopment, however, it is far from clear the proposal now before council is the right one.

The city administration’s original plan called for St. Anne to be closed entirely – an idea that would have been an economic and esthetic disaster, as pedestrian street malls have been everywhere they have been tried on this continent. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is the impact on public safety of eliminating parking and street traffic.

St. Albert’s latest plan calls for St. Anne to be rerouted, making it harder for commuters to use, and for Perron to be narrowed to two lanes with wide sidewalks – which likely also means no street parking. This sounds like another version of the same idea.

Replacing street parking and the existing parking lot with a large – and expensive – multi-storey parkade just doesn’t seem like a step forward.

Council also seems determined to discourage street-level professional offices downtown, encouraging street-front retail stores instead. This is a great idea in theory, but a pipedream in reality.

If wishes were limousines, we’d all have rides to Whyte Avenue. Alas, Perron Street is never going to be Whyte Avenue, no matter how we wish it. It’s too short, and too near the fringe of the Capital Region. If nothing else, professional offices bring daytime traffic to the area’s retailers.

Finally, nothing can be discussed in this town without thinking about the vexing issue of taxes, the consuming topic in our community since the Servus Place plebiscite in October 2004. Tax rage has had a negative impact on more than one St. Albert political career.

It is true that a key reason taxes here are too high compared with those elsewhere in the region is the unfair municipal structure supported by a provincial government that favours rural taxpayers. But this does not change the reality that a significant portion of our citizens are extremely angry at local tax rates and determined to stop their increase.

This council, like the last two, could get whacked by this sentiment if it presses ahead with a high-priced downtown redevelopment citizens do not support.

Many of us who want a reasonable level of development do not want a local government dominated by the Taxpayers Association and its supporters. But this is what we will get if taxpayers generally conclude council doesn’t care about their tax concerns.

For all these reasons, downtown redevelopment needs a sober second look.

Contracting out won’t cure St. Albert’s garbage woes

by David Climenhaga on March 19, 2011 in Uncategorized with 3 Comments
Private garbage collection: a rich source of undelivered promises, but no relief to taxpayers. Below: St. Albert City Councillor Cam MacKay.


This column appeared in yesterday’s edition of the Saint City News.

There’s no shortage of skepticism in St. Albert about the city’s latest garbage collection scheme, especially since we’re still getting used to the last round of changes to the way we get rid of our refuse.

St. Albertans are shaking their heads wondering how an automated process apparently designed for California’s climate is going to work in a place where snow banks are still higher than a car in mid-March, and roads are barely the width of a country lane for half the year. Will we all have to stay home on garbage day?

But sure as morning follows night, legitimate unhappiness with the way council and the administration are approaching the garbage problem sparks a call for contracting out garbage collection to private companies.

This time the voice suggesting this change is that of Councillor Cam MacKay, the candidate backed most enthusiastically by ever-noisy St. Albert Taxpayers’ Association, a group with fewer than 50 members.

Well, here are two things you can count on if you think contracting out garbage collection is the answer to your unhappiness with how things work now:

  1. You won’t save any money from private garbage collection
  2. You won’t be any happier with private service

Really, do you think private companies are motivated by charity?

Advocates for contracting out inevitably rely on “fuzzy math” to justify their privatization pipedreams, which are based more on ideological faith in the private sector than actually doing the arithmetic. They consistently fail to back up their claims with valid numbers.

The evidence suggests contracting out only saves money in villages and towns smaller than 20,000. Experience shows economies of scale enjoyed by larger municipalities and the fact governments don’t have to build in corporate profit mean public services almost always cost less.

The whole idea that the private sector delivers more for less is based on the notion competition drives prices down. Alas, when you contract out municipal garbage collection in a community the size of St. Albert, all you’re doing is replacing a public monopoly with a private one.

Private companies have a bad history of bidding low to win the job, then raising prices when they get it. When this happens, savings are illusory.

One thing you can count on with contracting out, however, is that while you won’t save money, what you spend won’t remain in your own community in the form of decent salaries paid to your neighbours. Instead, it’ll end up feathering far-away corporate nests – often in another province or country.

Indeed, since private companies can’t duplicate the advantages of scale or technology enjoyed by municipalities, their only edge is that they can cut labour costs. Unfortunately, the social costs of unemployment and marginalizing working people stays at home and comes out of your taxes. But the human costs of privatization are never counted by groups like the taxpayers’ association – at least until it’s too late.

Illusory savings are part of why cities all over Canada and the U.S. that contracted out garbage collection are bringing it back into the public sector. According to the Toronto Star, a recently released auditor’s report shows savings from having Canadian Union of Public Employees members pick up the garbage in Ottawa’s urban core will amount to $4.8 million over four years.

The cost of garbage pickup in Toronto-area cities with privatized collection ranges from 20 to 133 per cent more than in Toronto itself, which has public collection.

But the main justification for going public again, according to the Star, is that once they get it ratepayers hate private garbage collection. The reason: service stinks.

That’s why Port Moody, B.C., for example, switched back to public garbage collection in 2008 after a failed 10-year privatization experiment. The city had to send public crews to follow the private trucks and clean up the mess they left on the streets!

Whatever’s wrong with garbage collection in St. Albert, contracting it out won’t fix it.

Note: This column aroused some controversy among certain readers in St. Albert. Click here to see your blogger accused of “a conflict of interest of epic proportions,” plus his response.

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

St. Albert environmentalist Elke Blodgett deserves her honour – plus our attention!

by David Climenhaga on January 8, 2011 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment
Elke Blodgett at Big Lake, with the power line visible behind her. (Saint City News photo.) Below: Elke in her garden. (Photo by Alan Henderson.)


This column appeared in today’s edition of the Saint City News.

I often see Elke Blodgett in the distance, trudging across Ray Gibbon Drive toward Big Lake. Winter or summer, rain or sunshine, it doesn’t seem to matter. There she is, a tiny determined dynamo.

Even in the distance, reduced to not much more than a dot on the landscape, there’s something very forceful about this small person. No passerby – even someone from Saskatchewan or B.C. – could fail to recognize that the figure on the horizon knows exactly where she is going.

Elke is, you see, not just a passionate advocate for our natural environment, she is herself a force of nature. Indeed, such is her forcefulness that it’s impossible for an old journalist, set in his ways after three decades in the trade, to refer to her by last name alone, as if she were merely a mayor, major general, deputy minister or corporate president.

No, Elke is Elke! In many ways, I have learned in the years since my family moved to St. Albert, she is among the best friends this community has. Since she came here from Europe via the U.S. in 1966, the seventy-something Elke has battled the city on pesticide use, the location of roads, the ugly mess in our old landfills, ill-considered plans to make inroads into our watershed and the location of bird-killing power lines.

Often, I am sorry to report, her wise counsel is ignored, and we are worse off for it. But Elke persists with determination, stinging wit and bushels of facts. Ask her a question about a local environmental issue, as I have from time to time, and you’re likely to get an email with more facts than you can manage, then another and another!

As a retired person, she’s got both time and energy to attend city council meetings, speak forcefully and, if necessary, be a thorn in a councillor’s side. Yes, Elke can be a gadfly, in the sense she is someone who persistently cajoles, criticizes, demands and offers solutions.

I know that some city councillors have dealt with this by trying to ignore her – which seems a bit like trying to ignore the rising tide. The smarter ones pay attention to what Elke says because they know that, very often, she speaks for many St. Albertans.

This is why I was so pleased to read in the Saint City News that the City of St. Albert plans to name the peninsula at the Riel Stormwater Pond in her honour. “Elke’s Peninsula,” the city’s news release stated, is one of the preferred locations in our community for wetland birds to nest. Mayor Nolan Crouse observed that “it is fitting for Elke to be recognized and I can think of no better way of doing so than to name this area within the constructed wetlands after her.”

But, you know what, this honour doesn’t really go far enough. We need to listen up and take some of Elke’s advice about how to treat the wetland area around Elke’s Peninsula with the respect it deserves.

Unfortunately, it’s too late to put Ray Gibbon Drive, which runs beside Elke’s Peninsula, where Elke thought it belonged. But it’s not too late to do something about that infernal bird-killing power line, which needs to be relocated, preferably underground.

Yes, there will be costs. But since the city, the province and Altalink, the electrical transmission company, all look bad because of the damage done by the line in its present location, there should be plenty of motivation to share the pain and, to borrow some words from the city’s news release on Elke’s Peninsula, prove our commitment “to environmental protection and sustainability.”

After all, as I’m sure Elke would agree, our planned new wetlands bird-watching platform with a direct view of the adjacent power line, where thousands of visitors can watch birds die when they hit the lines, isn’t exactly going to put St. Albert on the map for environmental friendliness!

This post also appears on rabble.ca.

St. Albert’s new city council faces a Top 10 list of political pickles

by David Climenhaga on November 1, 2010 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment
Mayor Nolan Crouse surveys the scene on election night as his wife Gwen Crouse looks on. Plenty of potential pickles await Crouse and councilors like Cam MacKay and Wes Brodhead in the next three years.


Happy Halloween! This column appeared in Friday’s edition of the Saint City News.

Plenty of potential political pickles await St. Albert’s new city council after it’s sworn in Nov. 1. It won’t be more than a few weeks before the first one – whether council should vote itself a raise for Jan. 1, 2011 – hits the proverbial fan with a splat!

Council’s salaries are reviewed every two years, and there was plenty of controversy back in 2008 when a 13-per-cent pay increase to $84,742 for the mayor and a 24-per-cent raise to $29,560 for councilors were approved by the recipients. At the time, some St. Albertans called on councillors to hold the line until the economy climbed out of the dumpster. In their wisdom, they didn’t.

Well, New Year’s 2011 is weeks away, the economy’s perking up and there are at least three members on council who campaigned specifically on saying no to needless spending. So there’s likely to be sharp disagreement when compensation is considered.

The outgoing council didn’t make things easier when it voted last summer to exclude the mayor and councillors from a review of city salaries. So council will be all on its own when it considers whether or not to approve a raise based on its traditional formula, the 60th percentile standard for mid-sized municipalities.

What our councilors say and do on this issue could neatly symbolize what happens over the next three years. Councillors can be certain, of course, that their supporters and foes will be watching them carefully.

Here’s the rest of my Top 10 list of potential disasters lying in wait for the new council:

2) Taxes and Services. Taxes are going to have to go up. Or services are going to have to go down. Either way, someone on council is going to get a pie in the face. If candidates supported by the St. Albert Taxpayers Association had an easy ride during the campaign, wait for what happens if they successfully advocate service cuts.

3) Garbage Collection. Will the next act in St. Albert’s refuse collection saga be collecting organic waste? Blue boxes and one-can collection were an angry background buzz to the 2010 campaign. If council moves to organic waste collection soon, the bees may swarm.

4) Civic Building. Count on it, city administrators won’t stop lobbying for a new civic building. If this idea comes up, or any major project that requires more civic debt, councillors will hear plenty.

5) New Developments. Will council consider a $100-million sports community, a development mixing commercial and residential, a new shopping centre that draws customers from the old one, another extension of Ray Gibbon Drive? No such development can happen without outrage, rampant NIMBYism and division on council.

6) Habitat for Humanity. You thought approval means the Habitat controversy is over? Don’t bet on it. What if the development is only half complete two years from now? Habitat haunts us still!

7) Infill Development. And what about the potential for profits and population density in infill developments? St. Albertans may support this idea in principle, but they won’t like it if their next-door neighbour decides to cram in two houses where one once stood. Every infill has the potential to be a miniature Habitat horror.

8) Condo Taxes. Considering a split mill rate for condominium owners is another hardy perennial that’s certain to upset someone. Condo residents think the current setup is unfair. If condo residents get a tax cut, though, taxes on single-family homes must rise. Anti-tax candidates should take care when they advocate policies that would raise most residents’ taxes.

9) DARP. Back in August, council approved a downtown area redevelopment plan that allowed developers to build towers up to 25 storeys. What if someone takes them up on it? Talk about going over to the DARP side!

10) Even More… A campaign for backyard chicken coops? A proposal for a full-time council? Another surprise in Riel Park? … Please, let’s leave these nightmares until after 2013!

Prediction: Love ’em or hate ’em, four incumbents will be re-elected Monday

by David Climenhaga on October 16, 2010 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment
Below: Candidates Wes Brodhead, Stan Haroun and Roger Lemieux.


This column appeared in yesterday’s edition of the Saint City News.

Here’s a prediction about Monday’s St. Albert municipal election: Love ’em or hate ’em, all four incumbent city councillors who are running will be re-elected.

There’s plenty of dissatisfaction in some sections of our community with the performance of our city council. Indeed, one noisy element of the electorate believes we should, in the words of some of their propaganda, “vote them all out!”

But this seems unlikely, even though St. Albert voters have done such things in the past, for four basic reasons:

  1. Most St. Albertans aren’t mad enough at their councillors
  2. Many residents aren’t comfortable with council’s most vocal challengers
  3. All but a few candidates have run uninspiring, uninformative campaigns
  4. Name recognition matters

So, first, while a majority of St. Albertans don’t want their municipal taxes not to rise too far or too fast, they are not totally disillusioned with the job council has done over the past three years to keep a lid on tax increases. They recognize the challenge facing councillors here balancing the community’s need for services and facilities with widespread concern about taxes.

Second, most voters are uncomfortable with the candidates too closely associated with the St. Albert Taxpayers Association, which has been justly criticized as knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. In other words, most St. Albertans know that the things that make this a great place to live cost money, and they want a council that is prepared to balance quality of life with cost of services, and even of sculptures. Despite all the statistics bandied about these past few weeks, and without any scientific polling to prove my case, it’s my sense most St. Albertans credit council with having achieved that balance.

Third, most candidates who don’t have seats on council have run uninformative, uninspired, low-energy campaigns. With a field of 13 candidates, including the four incumbents, you’d think it would be easy, at least to pick replacements for retiring Councillors Carol Watamaniuk and Lorie Garritty, if not to organize the clean sweep that some would like. It sure isn’t, though.

Fourth, name recognition counts for a lot in politics. At least we’ve had an opportunity to see our sitting councillors perform a little in the local press. If they haven’t been too awful, for many voters it may be a case of “the devil you know.”

Which leaves me – and I’ll bet most of you too – with two or three candidates we like, and a lot more we’re uncertain about.

My favourites? I think Wes Brodhead as a standout for having clear, understandable positions that make sense, and for blending concern about taxes and fiscal responsibility with recognition that St. Albertans want services and facilities, not just the lowest common denominator. I like Stan Haroun for his community volunteer work and his positive humanitarian values. And I like incumbent Roger Lemieux for his common sense on council and St. Albert roots.

I’m still making up my mind about the rest. Just like you, I need more information.

Most working people don’t have time to go to council forums. Plowing through candidates’ responses to various media and interest-group questionnaires makes our eyes glaze over. And some of us are just too darned old to guess what a candidate means when he advises “looking4funds4Eco-City.” Sorry, TweetsR2short4me.

Nope, people like us need to talk to people to find out if we can support them.

So, ask yourself: How many candidates have been to your door? How many have even left a leaflet in your mailbox to indicate they passed by? If your house is like my house, not many.

Even if you’ve taken the time to go-on line and read the positions published by the 11 candidates who have Websites, it’s pretty hard to make out where they really stand amid the platitudes and generalities.

And that’s why I think the four incumbents’ chances are pretty good come Monday.

National teapot tempest update: Habitat project approved in St. Albert on eve of municipal vote

by David Climenhaga on October 6, 2010 in Uncategorized with No comments
St. Albert street scene. Below: the controversial building site; Mayor Nolan Crouse.

It may or may not have been April Fool’s Day when Chris and Karleena Perry sat down to write their famous letter to the bi-weekly community paper in St. Albert, an Edmonton-region bedroom community, but when it appeared in the St. Albert Gazette last April 3 it was a shot heard ’round the world.

The Perrys’ over-the-top letter assailing plans to build a 58-unit Habitat for Humanity condo development in St. Albert was so astonishingly politically incorrect it literally made headlines all over the planet – and in the process gave a significant boost to the project the couple opposed.

A reduced 30-unit version of that project finally received approval from St. Albert City Council a week ago – less than three weeks before a municipal election. How the Oct. 18 vote turns out will tell a lot about what kind of community St. Albert really is.

Now, the Perrys’ comments have been recounted at length. But, hey, who can resist repeating them? “We moved to St. Albert because we can afford it and we deserve it,” the couple explained. “What we want is for St. Albert to remain as it is with very few low-income households. …”

Elsewhere, they remarked: “This development will be hard for the families moving in. Being low income will make it difficult for children to be accepted in local schools. Like it or not, the children of St. Albert are high-standard children and have no place for low-income classmates.”

Needless to say, this provoked a good deal of outrage elsewhere, and a certain amount of angst and embarrassment in St. Albert, where it was understood that while the Perrys lived in a very upscale part of a mostly upscale community, the development itself was slated for an older neighbourhood that could be fairly described as working class.

This is, after all, a community that’s been known to elect Liberal and even New Democrat MLAs, and the famous letter was met with a collective community-wide cringe, even among many who opposed the Habitat development.

It was certainly true that many neighbours who objected to the development were focused on the loss of a green space many had thought was a park, the potential for parking problems and not the quality of the residents expected in the development. Moreover, opposition to the Habitat project was hardly unanimous even in the immediate neighbourhood.

Whatever motivated the reaction to the development, everyone knew the resulting brouhaha would give St. Albert an international black eye. And so it did, with mocking criticism showing up in the media in Central Canada, the United States and even the Middle East.

As a result, Many St. Albertans predicted city council would push ahead with the project both to address the community’s need for affordable housing, a concern of many voters for all kinds of reasons, and in reaction to the tone of some opponents, best known among them now the Perrys.

With a province-wide municipal election looming, some ultra-conservative elements of the community sensed a political opportunity. Four of six councilors are seeking re-election in a field of 13 candidates, as is St. Albert Mayor Nolan Crouse, who is being challenged by a lightweight candidate who has glommed onto this issue. For city council, the smart thing might have been to stall approval of the development until after the election.

But Mr. Crouse’s gutsy style is never to avoid a fight that needs to be fought, and council pressed on despite the risks, with the issue finally coming to a vote at the Sept. 29 special meeting.

The mayor argues that council listened to the residents and reduced the size of the project to answer their concerns. He recognized that anger lingers in the immediate area, but told the Edmonton Journal that “the broader community is quite pleased that we are moving forward on affordable housing.”

So the results of the Oct. 18 municipal election – especially the outcome of the mayoralty vote – will tell other Canadians a lot about what kind of community this little city of 60,000 souls really is. Or, at the very least, what kind of community St. Albert will be seen to be.

David Climenhaga lives in St. Albert. This post also appears on rabble.ca.

Biermanski can’t stack up with Crouse’s solid record

by David Climenhaga on October 2, 2010 in Uncategorized with No comments

This column appeared in today’s edition of the Saint City News.

Contrasting remarks by Mayor Nolan Crouse and challenger Shelley Biermanski on the need for affordable housing in St. Albert clearly illustrate the real differences between these candidates.

While Mr. Crouse can point to a solid record on an issue that has serious long-term implications for our city, Ms. Biermanski has little to offer. From her campaign materials – “finding positive solutions together” – it’s hard to pin down what she would really do about this and other challenges.

It’s nitty-gritty actions like allowing basement suites, rezoning lots and approving projects that have moved us toward resolving this issue. Sometimes those decisions have aroused controversy and taken courage to advance, but no one can deny the mayor has been prepared to stand up for his ideas.

By contract, Ms. Biermanski’s remark that “my stand is to make everyone’s homes affordable and then work on affordable housing” is neither a strategy nor the beginning of one.

Ms. Biermanski seems like a fine person, but her response to this issue is just one example of her limitations as a community leader. St. Albertans have to ask themselves: Can Ms. Biermanski measure up to Mr. Crouse as a mayor we will be happy with a couple of months after the Oct. 18 civic election, let alone three years later?

The answer, unfortunately, is she can’t.

If she were elected, would she be strong enough to stand up to slick developers, seasoned veterans of city council or savvy city administrators? On the small amount of evidence we have from her campaign, it seems doubtful.

This is too bad because serious debate about the direction our city should take on many issues – funding city facilities, the future of downtown, public transit and affordable housing among them – is badly needed. But we need policy alternatives, and Ms. Biermanski offers frothy bromides.

There are three main problems with Ms. Biermanski’s lightweight candidacy, each of which contrasts with one of Mr. Crouse’s key strengths:

First, she has no record of performance. Indeed, she seems to have no record of community activity! Mr. Crouse, of course, has a clear record that is successful in the sense he clearly articulates policy options and builds support for them. This is little comfort to St. Albertans who disagree with him, of course, and they will likely support Ms. Biermanski as a protest.

Second, Ms. Biermanski does not appear fully committed to the job. She has talked about her other part-time jobs, and it seems she would treat being mayor of St. Albert as another part-time activity. By contrast, there is no doubt Mr. Crouse is committed to being St. Albert’s full-time mayor.

Third, as illustrated by her position on affordable housing and her statements to date, it’s pretty hard to see what Ms. Biermanski stands for beyond vague platitudes. Acted on, her opposition to infill development is a recipe for more urban sprawl. Mr. Crouse’s vision for the city is clear, and pretty brave, even if we all don’t agree with it. His plan to combine infill and new development to incrementally increase affordable housing makes sense.

Biermanski deserves our thanks for making a contest of the St. Albert mayoral election. In a healthy democracy, even popular and effective politicians shouldn’t be acclaimed to office. Until Ms. Biermanski stepped up to the plate, it looked as if no politician in St. Albert had the intestinal fortitude take on our energetic and persuasive – if occasionally controversial – mayor.

She may attract a protest vote by citizens unhappy with the level of taxation in St. Albert. But voters contemplating such a protest need to ask themselves if electing an ill-defined and inexperienced candidate would make things better, or much worse. Be careful what you wish for, lest you receive it!

Ms. Biermanski has told us too little, and what she has said is too vague, for us to be comfortable with her challenge.

Ms. Biermanski should run for city council and demonstrate the depth to be an effective member of the team before applying for the job of team leader!

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