Dear Neighbour,

This October begins my fifteenth year of service as your Ward 9 City Councillor. I honestly can’t believe how long I’ve been doing this, and while I have never made commitments to serve for a set number of terms, I also share our collective aversion to the idea of the career politician. Yet, here I am, at the tail end of four terms.

I feel immensely proud of my role helping shift Calgary into a more vibrant, inclusive, and urban Western Canadian city, while driving an unprecedented level of public and private investments into our East Calgary communities. But regardless of how I feel, the job of politics is becoming increasingly divisive and difficult and my approval rating (along with the rest of my colleagues on Council) is sitting at an all-time low. Is it a sign of the times? Have I passed my best before date? Am I out of touch with East Calgary’s hopes and dreams? I’m writing this because I want to initiate a discussion about two interrelated questions that sit at the heart of whether my service to Ward 9 is getting too long in the tooth.

Simply (and maybe tritely) they are: What do we want? and, why are we so mad?

What do we want?

I LOVE East Calgary. We are the working neighbourhoods and landscapes that built the city of Calgary that we know today, and due to our diversity of people and places, we are at the forefront of building the Calgary that we are becoming. I have spent my career driving investment into our historically underserved communities - investments in parks, recreation, and arts and culture, transit and active transportation, goods movement, infrastructure upgrades, industrial and new economy jobs, and market and non-market housing.

But every construction project is disruptive and brings change, and change inevitably provokes localized opposition. I have relied on the principled and strategic Great Neighbourhoods and Rise Together visions to guide the positions I take, despite the fact that every project I champion invariably grows the number of constituents in opposition to my leadership.

So, with that in mind, it feels like a critical time to ask you, what do we want?

Why are we so mad?

For my entire time in office, Ward 9 has almost always tracked below the rest of the city in Calgary’s annual citizen’s satisfaction survey – suggesting we are far less satisfied with our communities and our general lot in life. Post-Covid, things have only gotten darker. Last year’s survey saw Ward 9 tracking ten points below the city average in almost every category. It is really hard for me to reconcile that our communities, which I view as the most vibrant, impactful, and livable in the city, are filled with a lot of people who do not feel pride in or satisfaction from living in East Calgary.

My read of the data is that we’ve got a larger than average number of folks who hate the changes that are happening in our communities living amongst a larger than average number of people who are genuinely unsatisfied with how long it’s taking to make these changes. But we’ve got to figure this out.

And to that end, I want to hear from you. I’m sending Ward 9 Constituent Liaison, Ariana Kippers, into community and onto the doorsteps of East Calgary to hear directly from you. We also invite residents to fill out our online feedback form (below) and share more about what you want to see happening in Ward 9.

While our political ideologies and perspectives on city-shaping may not always align, I want to assure you that Team Ward 9 is committed supporting our constituents, regardless of differing viewpoints. We are here to listen, to engage, and to collaborate on solutions that reflect the diverse needs of East Calgary.

Together, we can continue building a stronger, more inclusive future for everyone.

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