City residents need to make their votes count in election
By Letter to the Editor on October 15, 2021.
Editor:
In this municipal election voters have up to nine votes – one for your choice for Mayor, and eight for your choices for Council. With six candidates for mayor and 32 candidates for council, how can you make your votes really count?
By voting only for the candidates that you really want elected. In other words, don’t use all nine of your votes if only four or six people have earned your trust and confidence. And please do not vote for someone just because you recognize their name.
Which candidates will listen to your concerns and bring them forward? Which candidates will work in an ethically and transparent manner? Which candidates will actually represent you?
To help voters get to know the candidates this election, the Lethbridge Transparency Council asked candidates the same 10 questions and posted their interviews on our website http://www.transparencycouncil.ca. There you will also find the letters we have written to this paper asking questions of City Hall and seeking accountability from Council. We have expressed several concerns, including about the conduct of incumbent Ryan Parker.
There are many major issues affecting the citizens of Lethbridge that the next Council needs to deal with. Some that we have heard about repeatedly are:
* A plan, and proper process for approval of Social Housing
* Public transit costs
* Bike path construction
* Waste and recycling
* SAAG restaurant funding
* Performance arts centre
* The lack of transparency for needle distribution
* A third bridge
* Airport ownership
* Union contract approvals
Candidates who do not have platforms responding to most of the above do not understand the needs of you, the Lethbridge citizen.
We advocate for honesty, integrity, accountability and transparency in Lethbridge municipal government. We want these values in our next council.
When you vote this election, be informed and be selective. Make your votes count!
Jeffrey DeJong
Lethbridge Transparency Council
-1
It seems that the Transparency Council lacks some transparency of their own ideological leanings.
It appears they have not heard the concerns about protecting our water, transitioning away from fossil fuels, fostering environmental biodiversity, encouraging the arts that beautify our city, creating a caring community.
If being against everything is not to your taste, another informative survey can be found at sage-environment.org
Thanks for this Sophie.
In the context of the UCP officially becoming the political party from hell on all fronts, making this province not only a pariah in the rest of the country, but the butt of jokes such as “Alberduh Freedumb Fyters” I guess that anyone who still somehow lines up with these clowns is bound to be covert about it eh? And what better way to deke everyone out than forming an ad hoc faux “council” with yet another concept/word borrowed from the liberals i.e. “transparency” in the name?
Conservatives casually and cavalierly spurn reality on all fronts, with typical telltale certainty (it’s their giveaway btw, that unshakeable, cold arrogance, and also happens to be one of the main reasons that THEY are spurned.)
The spending of money, including the hallowed “taxpayer’s money” is always informed by “values” which obviously vary. When you’re fortunate enough to NOT be a conservative, you think more broadly like there’s more than one way to skin a cat, or you get what you pay for, or taxes are the price of civilization. But even the pandemic has not taught cons anything (another trait I’ve noticed; they’re generally resistant to new information) as billions were spent to keep people afloat, because human flourishing trumps everything else.
For example, the federal government used to invest in people by building affordable housing and there were no homeless people back then. Another reality is that addiction is not a character flaw, it’s a health problem often resulting from personal trauma like the horror of residential “schools.” Every time I see an exhausted group of homeless people straggling along the street or in the park I despair for them, and wonder how it’s not obvious that all the “business revitalization” initiatives in the world won’t accomplish as much as somehow providing homes for those people.
You forgot one. A capable police chief and service. This has been sorely lacking in our city for decades. You can’t discipline or investigate officers? What are you there for then? It’s become a case of the inmates running the asylum. They have lost the confidence of the public and fighting MLA Phillips appeal didn’t help.
Quote: “We have expressed several concerns, including about the conduct of incumbent Ryan Parker.” I’m sure you will hear a response to that comment from Ryan Parker made just a few days from the election!