Green Line, infrastructure spending dominate Ward 3 candidates forum

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With no incumbent running in Ward 3, candidates seeking the job spent much of their time at Sunday night’s election forum criticizing infrastructure spending and city council transparency rather than one another.

All of the ward’s council and school board candidates attended the forum as did mayoral candidates, with the exception of Andre Chabot.

Each council candidate started the forum speaking about a lack of infrastructure for the growing ward, including recreation centre upgrades, a new high school in the Northern Hills community and the current vision for the anticipated Green Line LRT.

Jyoti Gondek said a new high school in the Northern Hills area was needed since students are now bused to three surrounding communities.

“What’s the impact on their health when they’re waking up an hour earlier than they should be?” she said. “We need to look at the unintended consequences.”

Jun Lin said infrastructure in the ward, including buildings such as the Vivo recreational centre where Sunday’s debate was held, have been ignored by council.

“The simply cannot handle the big population we have right now — the same size as Red Deer,” he said. “I want to see the fiscal conservative in city hall … while also ensuring Ward 3 gets its fair share.”

All of the candidates also had something to say about the Green Line LRT phase one plan being built from 16^th to 126^th Avenues and initially leaving out the city’s currently unreached northern and southern communities.

Lin said the Ward 3 communities should be the project’s first phase. The northernmost point of the ward, he said, has higher transit ridership and a shorter track distance to downtown than the southern route.

He also wants to ensure transportation is “more meaningful to all Calgarians,” stating he will fight not only for the northern portion of the LRT route, but for the southern section as well.

Transparency was another hot topic with the candidates stating ways they would create better communication between city hall and the citizens of Calgary.

Ian McAnerin said there are legitimate reasons for a council to be in-camera, such as contractual negotiations and talks about city employers. But, to him, the time spent in-camera and the lengthy discussions were unsettling.

“They’re getting really comfortable with not being transparent,” said McAnerin about current city councillors. “They’re getting really comfortable with just having secret meetings. And that’s a real problem.”

Connie Hamilton agreed, stating the councillors do not spend enough time in council chambers and discussions such as the yearly budget should be done openly so citizens have an opportunity to voice their opinions.

In addition, Gondek expressed her dismay about information she had heard about city policies and bylaws that restrict what can be disclosed to the public. She said if what she hears is true “we need to get in there and change those bylaws and policies” adding the rules clearly aren’t working.

“The more council goes behind closed doors, the more suspicious we get,” said Gondek. “The more nervous we get about how our money is being spent and that’s got to stop.”

Stephanie Hagenaars is a reporter for the Calgary Journal, produced by the journalism students at Mount Royal University. The Calgary Herald, Calgary Sun and Calgary Journal are working together this election to provide readers with the city’s most comprehensive coverage of the civic campaign.