Advance Vote locations

First thing I will do when I get elected?

First thing I will do when I get elected?

I will propose to move the Salary Review for Councillors to the last meeting in our term! That means anyone who votes for a salary raise has to get re-elected first before he/she can benefit from the raise.

Who dares to join me on this?

 Overworked or overpaid?

 

Richard Poon: running for open Ward 2 Councillor

Issue 3 - Transit and Transportation

Issue 3 - Transit and Transportation

The Transit and traffic is city wide issue, and some communities in Ward 2 suffered even worse.  The problem is the combined consequences of urban growth, unwise policies, planning flaws and lack of vision in development.

There are a few things city must provide some solution immediately:

1. It is ridiculous to share one bus route #420 by four communities. Each community should have their own bus route
2. Symons Valley Road is the main access for 4 new communities : Nolan Hill, Sage Hill, Evanston & Kincora, city should speed up the connection of Symons Valley Parkway to Shaganappi and 144 Ave., so drivers can have alternatives
3. Some traffic lights on Symons Valley Road is unnecessary
4. Crowchild to downtown, especially after 24 Ave. NW also need to work on

I am not a traffic control expert, but just wonder the following ideas would help, please comment:

• Investigate the use of flyover bridges to route traffic
• Study on alternative bus schemes. For example, “Residential Coach Services scheme” operate by developers under license to serve residents in those new communities only.  Another example, the Public Minibus in Hong Kong (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_light_bus ) can be an alternative to passengers
• Use GPS technology to report the locations of all buses on the road and passengers can use their smartphone to track where is bus and when it will arrive, especially in winter!

Issue 2 – Future Landfill planning

Issue 2 – Future Landfill planning

It seems I am the only candidate have concerns on the landfill lifespan in our city.  I found the following quote from a paper published by the Waste & recycling services of City

Quote”

The three City owned landfills have a combined capacity of approximately 28 years at the current rate of growth and waste production.

“Unquote

The paper was published on 2007 and that means we have a little bit over 20 years to deal with the issue.  Handling urban waste is a difficult and complicated problem for all cities in the world, and I don’t think a better solution for the problem will drop from the sky.

I will urge the council to start working on this issue when I get elected and I need voters with vision and insight to support me on this, otherwise it may be already too late when we found that all our landfills are going filled up in few years!

Issue 1- $52 Million

Issue 1- $52 Million

First, the $52 million is NOT a surplus! Don’t know why some people intentionally call it a “surplus”. It's actually the portion in our property tax provincial government collected for building new schools; but they honestly returned it to Calgary property taxpayers when they decided to build less.

My position on how to handle the $52 million dollars (totally should be $260 million)?  There’s one and only one way: return it back to all property taxpayers in full.

Reasons:

1.      Council tried different excuses to keep it since April 2013, long before the flood!

2.      If City can use the flood as an excuse to keep the money?  Why can’t provincial government to use same excuse to keep the money in the next 4 years?  Or they can just need to deduct the same amount from our portion when releasing money to all municipals to pay for the flood losses.

3.      This $52 million was never on annual budget, and they will take it for granted to spend an extra $52 million every year until FOREVER!