HomeDiagramsDatabaseMapsForum About
     

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Regional Sections > Canada > Manitoba & Saskatchewan


Reply

 
Thread Tools Display Modes
     
     
  #81  
Old Posted May 30, 2022, 6:25 PM
thurmas's Avatar
thurmas thurmas is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Winnipeg, MB
Posts: 7,595
Knowing how winnipegers are this is an election for a pot hole filler campaign to win. Someone who campaigns on pothole filling and cleaning up bus shacks will likely win. With how unpopular transit is in this city I don't see an appetite for the average voters in suburbia clamoring for transit improvements right now. Obviously it should be improved and go to lrt but I see no voter push for it right now.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #82  
Old Posted May 30, 2022, 6:34 PM
Winnipegger Winnipegger is online now
Registered User
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Winnipeg
Posts: 712
Quote:
Originally Posted by thurmas View Post
Knowing how winnipegers are this is an election for a pot hole filler campaign to win. Someone who campaigns on pothole filling and cleaning up bus shacks will likely win. With how unpopular transit is in this city I don't see an appetite for the average voters in suburbia clamoring for transit improvements right now. Obviously it should be improved and go to lrt but I see no voter push for it right now.
Yep, this is the sad truth. Bowman got elected to do the same thing. 8 years of filling potholes, and wow, look how great Winnipeg has become. I'm sure another 4 to 8 years of just filling potholes will do a lot for commute mode shift, addressing homelessness, building a more sustainable city, etc.

We've focused on "just fixing the roads" for over a decade now, and the problem is hardly solved. And still Winnipeg faces record amounts of people leaving the city for other places in Canada, and politicians sit back scratching their heads asking themselves why. Perhaps there is more to making cities a good place to live and operate businesses than just smooth streets and low taxes. But our elected officials can barely put 2 and 2 together, so it would be a real stretch for them to be able to think any harder than they already are.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #83  
Old Posted May 30, 2022, 7:53 PM
thurmas's Avatar
thurmas thurmas is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Winnipeg, MB
Posts: 7,595
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winnipegger View Post
Yep, this is the sad truth. Bowman got elected to do the same thing. 8 years of filling potholes, and wow, look how great Winnipeg has become. I'm sure another 4 to 8 years of just filling potholes will do a lot for commute mode shift, addressing homelessness, building a more sustainable city, etc.

We've focused on "just fixing the roads" for over a decade now, and the problem is hardly solved. And still Winnipeg faces record amounts of people leaving the city for other places in Canada, and politicians sit back scratching their heads asking themselves why. Perhaps there is more to making cities a good place to live and operate businesses than just smooth streets and low taxes. But our elected officials can barely put 2 and 2 together, so it would be a real stretch for them to be able to think any harder than they already are.
Bowman didn't campaign as a pot hole filling mayor he campaigned on making this a city of 1 million people and attracting new business and opportunities and in that respect he failed quite badly as this city puts up so much red tape its not surprising so much growth occurs outside the perimeter when it comes to business development
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #84  
Old Posted May 30, 2022, 8:05 PM
blueandgoldguy blueandgoldguy is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2012
Posts: 2,755
Quote:
Originally Posted by thurmas View Post
Knowing how winnipegers are this is an election for a pot hole filler campaign to win. Someone who campaigns on pothole filling and cleaning up bus shacks will likely win. With how unpopular transit is in this city I don't see an appetite for the average voters in suburbia clamoring for transit improvements right now. Obviously it should be improved and go to lrt but I see no voter push for it right now.
If I was running for mayor I'd be like Oprah.

You get a pothole filled, and you get a pothole filled.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #85  
Old Posted May 30, 2022, 8:35 PM
blueandgoldguy blueandgoldguy is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2012
Posts: 2,755
It would be even more difficult in this environment to substantially increase municipal taxes by 4% per year given the rapid rise in housing costs and groceries this year.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #86  
Old Posted May 30, 2022, 10:41 PM
Danny D Oh Danny D Oh is online now
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Posts: 872
Quote:
Originally Posted by trueviking View Post
This is what frustrates me about all city politics. It is 100% city-building. They are required to be urban planners more than actual urban planners. but nobody has any training or even basic knowledge of it. We don't look for it when we evaluate candidates. Councilors or Mayor.

When they are elected they get a two day crash course in city building and that's it.

Everything about being mayor (and council) is city building. Unlike the other two levels of government who are dealing with bigger policies, civic politicians wade deep into the weeds. We ask our mayor to vote on the most basic things such as building variances and re-zoning. That is their fundamental job. How the city grows and develops fundamentally defines how we pay for everything. Their understanding of how cities work is critical.

That's why I am praying Murray runs. He is the only one with professional training. He lives an urban lifestyle and understands the intricacies of urbanism.
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.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #87  
Old Posted May 30, 2022, 10:44 PM
esquire's Avatar
esquire esquire is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 37,483
All of those functions like emergency services, sewers, roads, transit, etc. are important, but they are simply subcomponents of the main task: building the city. That is ultimately the mayor and council's job. Anyone focused on the nuts and bolts to the exclusion of a broader vision is simply not fit for the job.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #88  
Old Posted May 30, 2022, 11:41 PM
Danny D Oh Danny D Oh is online now
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Posts: 872
Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire View Post
All of those functions like emergency services, sewers, roads, transit, etc. are important, but they are simply subcomponents of the main task: building the city. That is ultimately the mayor and council's job. Anyone focused on the nuts and bolts to the exclusion of a broader vision is simply not fit for the job.
Fully agree on the vision.

Allowing mismanagement in the city departments completely scuttles any reasonable expectation of meeting any of those big picture goals. Nothing gets accomplished without understanding and focus on details of how the city operates. Oversight of the day-to-day operation of the city is as much of the job of mayor and council as providing the vision.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #89  
Old Posted May 31, 2022, 2:02 PM
borkborkbork's Avatar
borkborkbork borkborkbork is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2014
Posts: 1,297
Quote:
Originally Posted by Danny D Oh View Post
Fully agree on the vision.

Allowing mismanagement in the city departments completely scuttles any reasonable expectation of meeting any of those big picture goals. Nothing gets accomplished without understanding and focus on details of how the city operates. Oversight of the day-to-day operation of the city is as much of the job of mayor and council as providing the vision.
case in point: the bike lanes budgeted and approved by council but never built by public works. just making the decisions isn't enough. you have to manage to make sure the decisions are actually correctly implemented.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #90  
Old Posted May 31, 2022, 4:32 PM
trueviking's Avatar
trueviking trueviking is offline
surely you agree with me
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: winnipeg
Posts: 13,440
Quote:
Originally Posted by Danny D Oh View Post
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.
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.

Last edited by trueviking; Jun 2, 2022 at 3:20 AM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #91  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2022, 8:39 PM
buzzg buzzg is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Apr 2013
Posts: 7,799
Bowman is by far the biggest failure of a mayor in my lifetime. I would have preferred someone win who I completely disagreed with but stuck to their platforms and promises. I can honestly say Bowman’s time is the first where I feel like the city went backwards (even before COVID). Lots of great private development happened in spite of utter incompetence at city hall.

Bowman’s major platforms were opening Portage & Main, building entire RT network by 2030, and reducing red tape. As we all know, we’re actually probably further away from all those things than before he came in.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #92  
Old Posted Jun 5, 2022, 9:30 PM
OTA in Winnipeg's Avatar
OTA in Winnipeg OTA in Winnipeg is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Mar 2016
Location: Silver Heights
Posts: 1,614
To be fair he had ZERO support from Pallister. And you need that in this city to make things work. If the province isn't applying for federal infrastructure grants, not much happens. We'll need that to complete RT.
The other stuff, I don't know. It would have been nice if they enforced local bylaws to stop people from begging at every stop light. It's a national embarrassment and annoying as hell. Also, raise municipal taxes. It's time.
__________________
Fill downtown with people in all kinds of housing. Anyway possible.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #93  
Old Posted Jun 6, 2022, 12:56 AM
Rutlander Rutlander is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jan 2022
Location: Manitoba
Posts: 119
Quote:
Originally Posted by buzzg View Post
Bowman is by far the biggest failure of a mayor in my lifetime. I would have preferred someone win who I completely disagreed with but stuck to their platforms and promises. I can honestly say Bowman’s time is the first where I feel like the city went backwards (even before COVID). Lots of great private development happened in spite of utter incompetence at city hall.

Bowman’s major platforms were opening Portage & Main, building entire RT network by 2030, and reducing red tape. As we all know, we’re actually probably further away from all those things than before he came in.
If memory serves, Bowman was the only candidate in 2014 who was prepared to push through the rapid transit's second leg from Jubilee to the U of M. Every other candidate wanted to either stop rapid transit completely or put it off indefinitely while more studies were done or more debate could be rehashed without accomplishing anything. The second phase included rebuilding the Jubilee underpass which was falling apart after more than 60 years and a major drainage project for the area.
I think "biggest failure in my lifetime" could easily be applied to Bill Norrie, Susan Thompson, or Sam Katz.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #94  
Old Posted Jun 6, 2022, 8:02 AM
P&M40BELOW's Avatar
P&M40BELOW P&M40BELOW is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Winnipeg
Posts: 168
I agree with the urbanist vision. However, that vision will never be accomplished with the state of downtown not being fully addressed. The only question that needs to be asked is, what are you going to do to improve downtown? How candidates answer that one question will tell you everything that you need to know about their political and social leanings; and most of all their leadership style. My vote will be cast on that one question.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #95  
Old Posted Jun 6, 2022, 11:23 PM
Danny D Oh Danny D Oh is online now
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Posts: 872
Quote:
Originally Posted by OTA in Winnipeg View Post
To be fair he had ZERO support from Pallister. And you need that in this city to make things work. If the province isn't applying for federal infrastructure grants, not much happens. We'll need that to complete RT.
The other stuff, I don't know. It would have been nice if they enforced local bylaws to stop people from begging at every stop light. It's a national embarrassment and annoying as hell. Also, raise municipal taxes. It's time.
Yeah the effect of having a provincial government in organized and persistent failure in this province on all municipalities and levels of government (schools) can't be overstated.

The provincial government has to allow any taxation scheme for the lower levels of government and this one is both decreasing funding while passing legislation for those levels of government to raise revenue.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #96  
Old Posted Jun 8, 2022, 4:34 PM
trueviking's Avatar
trueviking trueviking is offline
surely you agree with me
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: winnipeg
Posts: 13,440
Murray entering the race shortly.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #97  
Old Posted Jun 8, 2022, 4:54 PM
esquire's Avatar
esquire esquire is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 37,483
Quote:
Originally Posted by trueviking View Post
Murray entering the race shortly.
Winnipeg's best mayor of my lifetime. It's hard to imagine who would be more suitable for the job than him even if I hoped there would by now be some new blood ready to carry the urbanist torch.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #98  
Old Posted Jun 8, 2022, 5:24 PM
trueviking's Avatar
trueviking trueviking is offline
surely you agree with me
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: winnipeg
Posts: 13,440
agreed 100%. Yesterdays man was ahead of his time so maybe now we are ready for him.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #99  
Old Posted Jun 8, 2022, 5:30 PM
Winnipegger Winnipegger is online now
Registered User
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Winnipeg
Posts: 712
Quote:
Originally Posted by trueviking View Post
Murray entering the race shortly.
Glad to hear it. I'm guessing this election will be a 3-way race between Murray, Gillingham, and Motkaluk.

Murray will take the progressives and people who want to see Winnipeg actually change, Gillingham will attract center-right blue-collar fiscal conservatives who just want potholes filled and nothing else (Bowman 2.0), and Motklauk will absorb the gullible yahoos who still believe empty buzzwords like "finding efficiencies", "trimming the fat", and "government should run like a business" which are really facades for tax cuts and service level reductions in a city already bottomed out.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #100  
Old Posted Jun 8, 2022, 5:44 PM
thurmas's Avatar
thurmas thurmas is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Winnipeg, MB
Posts: 7,595
Gillingham is not a pot hole filler he would just be a continuation of Bowman offering too little to tackle real problems only political correctness and ceremonies.
Reply With Quote
     
     
This discussion thread continues

Use the page links to the lower-right to go to the next page for additional posts
 
 
Reply

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Regional Sections > Canada > Manitoba & Saskatchewan
Forum Jump


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 7:47 PM.

     
SkyscraperPage.com - Archive - Privacy Statement - Top

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.