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Originally Posted by Danny D Oh
This is an absurd POV. I get your bias but come on. The city runs a fire department, a police department, recreation, water treatment, utilities and so on.
Do we need a mayor who is an expert in everything the city must execute or someone who is a leader that can filter information from all these limbs of government and empower leadership in all departments to build a city?
We are in a pile of shit because we’ve only elected self-interested politicians or ones who have quite narrow political interests who can’t actually lead. I’d include Murray in that group on the whole because he did nothing to address the (continually growing) revenue issue the COW continues to have which prevents it from providing proper services and being able to execute any kind of vision for building a better city.
And I’m not saying Loney would be any better but he’s the best of the lot we have declared today in terms of demonstrated leadership.
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I disagree. The Mayor doesn't manage the fire department, police department, parks department, public works, etc. Those are bureaucratic organizations......but we literally ask the Mayor to vote on how wide the sideyard setback can be on a duplex.
A key reason we have revenue shortages is because we have lacked understanding of core city-building values.
I want a strong urbanist mayor with every decision he makes filtered through the lens of good urbanist principles. That's where his impact is felt. I want vision, not a good manager. If being a good manager is his selling point, I'm not interested. The Mayor isn't a manager. it's not his job to make sure Public Works builds bike lanes that were in a construction contract.
You might be right. He might be the best we have but he's going to have to prove it. He has no experience and no background in city building, so we have nothing to use as a reference for what he believes a city should be. His idea of good city building could be filling potholes. Nobody knows what he believes other than whatever social enterprise is.
Let's all remember that Bowman ran on a vision of strong urbanism. He said all the right things, but because it wasn't really his core beliefs, as Mayor that fell to the side. I worry about any candidate without urbanist experience or history for that reason....once you become Mayor there is a lot of pressure to fill potholes, approve new suburbs and build bigger roads.