People don’t hear enough from Saskatoon city council candidates and school board candidates to make informed votes. As a result, the incumbents, who are better known by the public, are more likely to win.
For each ward, the Saskatoon city clerk’s office should organize an evening of presentations from candidates for city council and the public school board, an evening where these candidates answer questions from the public and journalists, and an evening of debates between these candidates.
For the separate school board, there are no wards. Therefore, similar city-wide events should be organized for candidates for the separate school board.
These public events could be held in school gymnasiums. These events should be available online for people to watch at their convenience. Television and radio stations should be able to broadcast all or part of these events.
The City of Saskatoon has a webpage for each candidate on its website, but each candidate is only allowed to submit up to 150 words for her webpage. This isn’t enough for candidates to describe their positions, position justifications, experience, education, etc. The city’s word limit should be extended to at least 1,000 words.
These improvements will allow the public to learn more about the candidates and cast more informed votes. Also, these improvements will allow candidates to be less dependent on campaign donations for getting their messages out and then less beholden to donors who put their personal interests over the people’s interests.
Ashu Solo, Saskatoon
Mayoral hopefuls debate new arena
On Sept. 24, the mayoral candidates debated various topics. According to one account, when the discussion focused on the proposed Downtown Event and Entertainment District, three candidates (Don Atchison, Gord Wyant and Carey Tarasoff) spoke against this proposal.
They said the city needs to first deal with other priorities and prudent fiscal management ahead of a new arena and event district.
The fourth candidate, Cynthia Block, however, reportedly said the “DEED is a must if entertainment in Saskatoon is to be efficient and affordable in the future.” Her position on this demonstrates naiveté on the entire proposal, especially the financial consequences and impact of higher costs upon everyone if ever DEED proceeds.
Attendees of events will need to pay substantially higher ticket prices to help cover the project cost.
For any shortfalls in revenue, the city officials previously said that they would “borrow to cover its portion of the project, then repay the money using revenue brought in over the coming decades by the other funding tools.”
Property tax increases for this proposal are not to be applied, according to city officials, but this is not guaranteed. So much for Block’s affordability.
I’m not sure what Block means by efficiency because there are endless number of variables to consider such as transportation issues and costs, parking issues and costs, hotel surcharges, higher taxes imposed on surrounding businesses etc, etc.
Citizens of Saskatoon deserve prudent management of our priority needs including water/sewer and roadway infrastructure as well as snow removal … not a new arena.
Ron Niekamp, Saskatoon
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