Bring Back The Porch
Bring Back The Porch, a podcast about simpler times when folks sat on their porch, and felt a sense of community. Everything was discussed on the porch from life, family, politics, and religion. Hosted by Bernie Leahy, this podcast aims to reignite those conversations, while giving people a chance to share their perspectives.
Bring Back The Porch
Jim Groom Oct 14
The civic election is less than a week away and Jim Groom joins Brian on the Porch as they discuss the campaign so far. If you are looking for information regarding the civic election the City of Medicine Hat has loads of it on their website. Here is the link
There's a lot of interest in the election this time around, and I can't help but think that that's because of the predecessor, the preceding two years that has been a little bit of turmoil, a little bit of conflict there, and that's drawing attention. I think that's probably part of the reason we have 39 candidates is because they tended to look at the the coverage of the city, which was more extensive than it's ever been. I would think. This episode of Bring Back the Porch, brought to you by Bernie Leahy, River Street Realty. Let's get you home. And joining me on the porch, this episode is our first return guest. I didn't scare you off the first time. I know it's early. Jim Groome, a retired political scientist from the medicine at college. Welcome. Thank you. Brian. Good to be here. We've been watching, over the last three weeks. Our election campaign. We've had, many, many, many candidates come through here. You've been watching. What have you seen from your perspective? Well, one of the concerns is somewhat like we talked about previously is the large number of candidates, you know, the 39 for council, it becomes really daunting for people to to do a really good assessment. And most people don't have a lot of time to sit there and say, well, exactly what is this candidate say and what the Did candidate. So I think they're probably making selective choices based on what the their initial feelings are. And, and maybe expanding that to confirm that sort of information searching up online obviously. So to to see what the candidate is saying in both social media and on their websites and things like that. I think it's, an interesting aspect is that there's a lot of interest in the election this time around, and I can't help but think that that's because of the predecessor, the preceding two years that has been a little bit of turmoil, a little bit of conflict there, and that's drawing attention. I think that's probably part of the reason we have 39 candidates is because, they tended to look at the, the coverage of the city, which was more extensive than it's ever been, I would think. And, think, well, I could do that, I could do a better job, etc. but also the fact that it's just all of a sudden, well, it's of interest to I didn't realize the city was doing this and this and this and all these different aspects. And the conflict sort of, heightened that awareness. I think I as I've been ruminating on, some of the conversations I've had here with, the candidates, I feel a little bit like Santa Claus. I'm making my list. Yeah, I'm checking it twice, trying to find out who's naughty or nice. Very true, very true. You know, and and with that many candidates, you know, there's often an assessment on, interviewing for personnel positions and things where anybody can sell themselves for an hour or half an hour in an interview. But on a five minutes, interview, it's even more difficult to kind of project what you're actually doing. So the fact that you're giving them a voice in a more in depth voices is really very critical to understanding the pros and cons of the individuals bringing forward. Having said that, our last council, when the election was done in 2021, it was a transformative change. There was only two councilors that remained brand new. Mayor and 66% of the vote for that mayor. The councilors, if you look at the quality of the councilors, they are just top notch individuals and you would think they would have leadership qualities and other. And yet it went off the rails. And, so there's really not much predicting what will happen even if the candidates come forward and say, you know, my main thrust is cooperation, and I'm going to be collaborative and we're going to work through everything together. When it comes down to the push comes to shove, we may just as likely end up with another dysfunctional looking council. But, you know, we hope not. And there's different issues, of course, that come forward. But at anything go off the rails. And if it went off the rails with that excellent group in the, in the current council, I think it could go off with anyone. So you wonder how, the impact of the dismissal of the city manager impacts the next city council because, you know, that is there one employee and now that that is vacant? Of course, when the last council came in, one of their first things was to get rid of the the CEO at that time and, and then create the wheel themselves. And I think there's a tendency to do that this time around to where the, the new council will at least feel like they have direct input, that they're in control. And it is a crucial decision. And of course, we'll have to see who applies and what the interest is. It will be interesting when that process begins, if there will be more interest or less interest, because, I think within those folks who are in municipal management would look at this and say, well, I won't, I won't go anywhere near Medicine Hat because of the the problems that they've had. We've had a tremendous turnover of both part time and full time, CEOs. And so there might be that reluctance for somebody to say, well, do I want to take a chance here? So it might be interesting to see what the candidate choice is, and it may be restricted because of that. On the other hand, you only need one quality candidate because it's the only one they hire. And I would anticipate that the council would be, reluctant to be too harsh on that person when they come in because of the track record that exists, that they may be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in certain respects. I think I'm wondering, too, if, the turmoil in that position over the last number of years has driven the price upward. You get a candidate, you know, say, well, I'm going to come, but I want more. Yeah, it may be, I think in many respects it depends if it's a it's a person on the rise or a person who's reached a certain plateau and now wants to continue it on just maybe a different location or something of that nature. It's, it's definitely the personalities are going to be huge. And I think that, you know, the CEO did not fit the personalities of the mayor and the council. And it was obviously that's where the conflict surfaced. So it will be important as to who the new one is if they are in a position to understand that, appreciate it. And it's pretty challenging at this level to be in charge of all those people and feel that you're being second guessed by a mayor or council. So there may be some reluctance for people to say, you know, I do. I really need that kind of oversight. When I come this far in my career, I'm looking for a more a newer person coming up might say, well, this is an opportunity for me. I can, you know, just simply cooperate more and, take their advice and realize that that's the situation we're in and. And get some experience. And get some experience from it. Pad their resume, whatever they need to do to go further or better. I think a new council will be really reluctant to go through a similar process of alienating the CEO and and having that conflict, they will do anything and everything they can to prevent that, I would hope. Have you seen any, outstanding campaign, methods from some of the candidates, You know, some of the messages. There's a consistency across the messages to, you know, collaboration, cooperation and all these sort of things. And you can't help but think, well, that's what they're going to say. I do find that some of the positions for lack of growth in the city makes make an excellent point. And we need, as we've discussed in the last, last time, moves here. We need, a figurehead to go forward and sell the city either nationally or internationally or at least provincially. And that that's going to be a crucial role. And I think some of the candidates have brought that forward that, you know, this is this is what we really need. One of the problems with the civic, government is that they get tied up in the minutia, the, the bylaws that go on to ad nauseum. And we need a pilot to do this and the process and the procedures. And I think you missed the big picture in some regards because, an absentee mayor who's selling to the country and to the province and to internationally, for that matter, sometimes gets criticized because they're not there to to guide the process through council. And I think we have to grow past that. We don't need a technocrat. We need a leader. And I think that's an important distinction to to make in, in whoever is selected as mayor. When you look at the ballot for mayor, I'm wondering, you always talk about splitting the vote. Do you see a potential for that happening here? That's that's a really good question because it it really is an important thing, strategic voting and all of those sort of considerations, the baggage that a couple of councilors, a council of mayor, mayor candidates have, is from the previous, you know, Mayor Grogan and Clark obviously have that baggage that they're carrying. They tend I think it's fair to say that that puts them in a bit of a similar bailiwick. And if you're. Dissatisfied with how that council and mayor act last time, you may simply say anybody. But, you know, we've heard those campaigns, anybody but so and so and it can be very effective. On the other hand, we've seen good support for both Mayor Grogan in the mayor, by their loyal supporters and so will that help them in that regard? The typical strategic vote, in this case, of course, I think would be pretty evident that, you know, anybody but the mayor, current mayor, you know, Clark and I don't see that very strongly. And I think her supporters tend to be, with her one way or the other. It doesn't doesn't seem that they've they've said that this is proof the firing of the CEO, the entire council, except with exception of one, got together and said, yep, this is she's got to go. And people have interpreted that as a victory for them. For the current mayor. And the key to any election is getting your supporters out to vote. Absolutely. And that in itself is probably a skill that your organization has to be aware of on October the 20th. That ground game is so important, you know, to have the people who are supporting you, but also ones that are saying, okay, time to go and vote everybody and let's drag them forward. It is, it is a challenge in some cases that's really the big problem is that there might be somebody with inspiration, but not an effective ground game. And so, you know, they don't drag my friend of and used to live in Montreal and he'd say, yeah, we'd load up the car with a bunch of cases of beer and we'd go around and and it was that blatant. And I hope we don't come back to those kind of days. And I don't think we wouldn't medicine that. But it is important that people do get the last election, 40% turnout, during a Covid election, was sort of impressive in a way that I mean, we've had everywhere from 49% to, 39% or something as far as. So we get a pretty good range in there. It's it's also knowing who votes, you know, there tend to be older folks tend to go and vote, and they have this idea that this is part of their responsibility in their role, younger folks managing, you know, a bunch of kids and license and all the things that go on at this time. It may make it more or difficult for them to, to actually get out. I'm not sure about you, but I have been encouraged by the number of younger candidates in this election and, the ones that have come through and sat where you're sitting, I've been impressed with their energy. Yeah. And that's that's something that we, If we could bottle, it would be great, right? You'd be able to sell it, for a fortune. The fact that young people are engaged in the politics of our community is excellent. It really is what it's all about. And I used to see this at the college course because they taught kids, not young, young adults that were basically, just new to it. And they were interested enough to take a political science course. So that suggested to me that they did have some interest in that regard. And I think, I think it does they they get very enthused. And a lot of the ground game from some of the most successful candidates, they may not be young themselves, but they hire a number of young folks who are just energy galore, and they go out and they sell that farm. And I think getting younger candidates is speaks well of, the community. Calgary and Edmonton have been allowed to have party politics for the first time. Well, maybe not the first time. Some of the history people are coming out now and saying, no, no, no, no, that's everything. Old is new again. They did this before and it sure kind of fell off the table. We have not had that in medicine that to my knowledge, just wondering, one of the questions I see you asked most frequently on social media is do we know who candidates are lined up with? The, mayoral candidates, or is there a block of, aldermanic? Aldermanic? There's an old term council candidates that, would like to get into control the agenda. I don't know. I don't know if I've seen that. I'm not sure I've seen it that blatantly. There are a few candidates who have have links and ties to the Conservative Party, and that's pretty. And they've been very upfront about that. It's not a concealed thing or anything of that nature. I don't see it as a movement for, say, in that direction. You know, interestingly enough, when the province put out bills 20 and said we're going to have political party, but only in Calgary and Edmonton, it was following, a survey they did provincially, surveys. It did with the Rural Municipalities Association and Urban municipalities locations in the province. And everybody said, we don't want political parties. It's it's disruptive. It's not beneficial. There's a whole bunch of issues as to why not to have them. And shortly after that, Bill 20 was passed and it was, well, we're going doing a little experiment here. And this seems to be typical of of the U.c.p government and that they they will do surveys and they'll do inquiries, find out that there's nobody is interested in it, but they are obliged to meet the requirements of their their membership, the basis, as they say, in the UCP, and they come up with it anyway. I don't see it as a as a particular benefit. And I think what they're seeing in Calgary and Edmonton is that there there's no strong support for parties just for the sake of being parties. The concept was that they used to be was trying to put the, the thumb on the scale in order to get political parties within the to, to, jurisdictions that would support their agenda because they were frustrated with the progressives that were in charge of the two, the mayors in particular in the councils in both Edmonton and Calgary, because they they seemed to run contrary. So the province would say this is our approach. And those cities would say, well, not so much. You know, we go back to Covid wearing the masks in Edmonton when the province had said, no, no, no masks anymore. I think things a little bit like that. So they saw that as an affront. And the province is is meddling in all kinds of things now. Bike paths, for crying out loud there, even, you know, I mean, getting to the point where you know that that that's how Inuit, the minutia that they're dealing with is that that fine. They've taken away the powers of municipalities at any time they can rescind any of the legislation that's passed by by a city, despite the fact that they're elected. They can close up councils. You know, there's enormous power that the province has decided to take over. But I don't see anybody, addressing that in the campaign because it's beyond their purview. For one thing, they can't do anything about it. And those people who support the UCP do not want to approach that aspect. I don't think, other than to say, well, I have an ally in in me dealing with the province, but they wouldn't really be of much benefit to them otherwise, because what you vote for municipally does not seem to reflect provincially or federally in many respects. And it's, and it's interesting the dilemma there because, you know, Alberta is a very conservative, province. But our elections are a little, little unique that way. You know, if you look at Calgary and Edmonton, as they say, they voted NDP in Edmonton, but fairly conservatively in Calgary, and yet they select, progressive mayors in the last little while. So, yeah, it's difficult to see if, if there's people out there actually trying to link to that. One of the, questions that I've been asking, the public school board and, separate school board candidates that have come through here is, the difficulty of being in a position of being a trustee when the province sets your budget and the province, pretty much, sets the tune that you have to march to there. You really don't seem to have a lot of control over the things that you thought you might have control over. Yeah. When Jason Kenney came in, he changed the regulations and the rules of the game quite, quite substantially of course. And Daniel Smith has expanded even even further from that. The the difficulty is that these councils are considered by local folks as having some power or some control, etc. and it's clear with the current strike, whether by the teachers, that, the province is basically said, we now have a division between provincial decisions that are made on on the contracts and things and the local decisions that are made by the local boards and it leaves them very little to decide on. And, so I'm sure it's frustrating for the board members, they can impact, locally to a very minor extent, but it's really the province is going to come in and, and micromanage, as they've done since, since 2019 when they were first elected. Really one of the key issues in the campaign locally has been growth, the stagnant growth in medicine. That and the thought that we need more growth to expand the tax base so that we have the money to do project A, B or C, or just keep our taxes down. I did see a story on the weekend where they surveyed some of the electors in Calgary and Edmonton, and it's the exact opposite. They're saying, whoa, pull back. The reins were grown too fast. Yeah, it's ironic, isn't it? You know, and, it's it's exactly the case where some of the and of course, we've seen this over the years where the cities get bigger and the and the rural areas get smaller, and number Madison has been a city for ever, but it really doesn't have that sphere of influence that is needed to, to, draw enough people. You know, we get south. So, western Saskatchewan folks coming to shop at Costco or whatever, right? We get some folks from the local communities around, but there's really no spinoff here that is saying Come to Medicine Hat, because we offer all these advantages that would be beneficial to you. The cities that you're right, Edmonton, Calgary are saying, you know, we're overwhelmed. And once again, the teachers strike is an example of this, where their classrooms are just exponentially going off the Richter scale. And the complexity of their students is such that you can't just say, well, 40 students is 40 students is 40 students. It's much more difficult. English second language, behavioral skill, behavioral problems. You know, the list kind of goes on. And that's exactly right. But how do you control that? Now, the province has talked about, putting controls in on who they would accept as, as, immigrants to our province. And that's, that's a slippery slope. And it's very difficult to do that. You can incentivize people to come to a community, but you can't really ordered them to come to a community. It's it's the same with the province. You can't order people to not come to Alberta any longer. So it is a bit of a dilemma. But a medicine hat needs a salesperson to be here and go out and make the pitch that medicine hat has a lot to offer. And, you know, there's a lot of folks. A few years ago, one of the big issues was that retirees would get out of the big cities in order to make that money off their housing and come to a small place, live like kings in those small places based on their pensions and the money they have from their real estate. And we need to continue to do that. I mean, I think we talked about this last time, Brian, but 20% of the population has had our seniors and we've attracted a lot. And I was talking to a gentleman the other day from Edmonton who's thinking of moving to Madison, and he says he likes the pace, he likes the community, etc.. But do we sell that to to folks? Do we really go out and make that where we should be putting up posters in, in Calgary and Edmonton? You know, Middleton had this way sort of thing. But housing here. Yeah. And a comparison analysis of the housing market would be just demonstrate that complete somewhat like what Calgary has done to people in Vancouver and Toronto where they said, if you want a beautiful house in a nice location where you can see the mountains and it's, you know, two thirds of the price that you're paying, and Toronto and Vancouver come to Calgary and they have, ironically, you know, the province has also had a campaign of, you know, Alberta is open for business and, these other, other aspects that they, they won. And then they said, well, you know, now we've got too many and they blame Ottawa for allowing too many immigrants. And so now they want to put some blockages on that. And it has to be selective. You need people to come who have the right skill sets for sure. But you have to be cautious that it's not the reflection of the community, that you have to be a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant in order to get here. You have to be much more broad based than that. Of course. When we move into the, ballot box and we get 39 candidates on that long ballot, all in alphabetical order, does that impact the people who are at the bottom of the list alphabetically? Well, you would hope that, that a real conscientious voter was, would go in and, and, have a preconceived idea of who is good. I might I mean, I've gone in occasionally to vote and made a last minute decision, based on kind of a drive to, you know, let's get full eight candidates and, identified in some of my last ones weren't the best picks of the other six, you might say, but I would hope that people would generally be reluctant to to do that aspect and have it on a basis of, well, I, I'm only going to go through the list so far and as we discussed last time too, as you mentioned, you know, you don't have to pick all each candidates. You don't have to pick somebody from there. You can be very selective and just go with what your gut feels as to the those aspects. Name recognition. We talked a little bit about last time as well. It is so crucial when you're going through there and you're, you know, you've got a lineup of people waiting to cast their ballots behind you, and you're going through 39 names and six names and then another 14 and ten for the school boards and things. And it's like, wow. Who am I going to? So you would hope that a real conscientious, voter would, would have thought about that, that and, and have kind of clear concepts of, and not just, like I said, at the bottom of the, the group and because of alphabetical listings, I'm not sure if there would be a more fair way. Randomize the ballot. Yeah. Or. Yeah, or or draw a lot sort of aspect and simply say, well, you do want to have debates. It's like, well, we, we drew and the person came first is on the top of the list. The trouble, of course, when you have 39 is if you're trying to find your candidate and you're going through and it's not alphabetical, so you're going to really delay the process. It was at that point, I would think, right. Yeah. I've also seen some, discussion on social media about voting. If I vote for candidate A and then I vote for candidate D is that hurting candidate A or vice versa? I don't know if there's an answer to that one. Yeah. I'm not sure why that would be. Part of the, the, the process or the thought process really. What's more concerning to me as the spoiled ballot, the person who comes unaware that they're, they're specific eight has a maximum for council and they start checking off more than that because the the people who are counting the ballots now have to say, well, how do we score this? Because you can't vote for 39 candidates and you can't. You can vote for 3 or 4 on up to eight, but you can't you can't, extend that. So that would that would be, a challenge, in my view, trying to figure out the spoiled ballots. I haven't seen any recent stats on the number of spoiled ballots on most election, but most elections, it's like 0.1% of ballots. It doesn't make the difference one way or the other. And, when we look at the difference between candidate eight and candidate nine, there is a fairly significant difference. You know, I've had some discussions with folks and, you know, I could lose by being candidate number nine and of eight councilors by 100 votes. And sure, that's that's true. And most of the ones in the 2021 election like they were, they were elected on 7% of the vote or 6% of the vote. It wasn't high numbers, but between the eight and ninth, there seemed to be a significant amount, relatively speaking, to the overall number of votes. So it's it doesn't seem to have impact of that way. That I can see from the numbers. Anyway. One of the other issues is the electors list. Apparently, August the 15th was a provincial deadline to register through Elections Alberta. I did not know that. Yeah. So I went on to the city website, which has a lot of information. Very helpful. And you can find out if you are on the voters list. And guess who's not on the voters list? And nobody's more informed than you are. So I mean, it's just shows there's there's been a lack of something. Of course, in Bill 20, they changed the voting system as well. And this is reflective of some American changes that were done in the Deep South. And some folks have suggested is to disenfranchize those who don't have access to all the information. Aren't your typical voter. They're they're perhaps homeless or the, the, don't have the wherewithal for computerized so they can go and can't go on the website, all these sort of things. And it's no longer simple enough to have somebody vote for you. You have to have a whole process that goes in place. And, they've changed the financial aspects for the bill, etc.. I would venture to say that people just don't have time to, to look at all that stuff. And, I can't say that I saw anything about the deadline of the 15th either. It's it's, not not something I was anticipating. I voted here for 25 years, and I expected that it wouldn't be an issue. And, I'll be surprised when I have to when I go in. And I would probably say to me as well as, well, you didn't get on the list, but. Here's the good news, Jim. You can do it online before you go to either the advanced poll or on October the 20th. That will minimize long lines of people trying to get registered. Yes. And and let's hope everybody, picks up on that because, it's one thing to have low turnout. It's another thing to have low turnout because of voter frustration. There's nothing worse. And I've never had to, this happened, but I have lined up to vote and thought, this is this is not a great process. It's taking way too long, etc.. But I've never walked away from it, and I guess it's because of my positions or beliefs or whatever. But it can be frustrating for folks. And if we start seeing a 30% turnout, then you have to kind of think there's a, there's a flaw in the system. Was it a design flaw? Was it was it an oversight? Was somebody trying to put the thumb on the scale in some way, shape or form? You know, what are we actually looking at? And and can it be changed? Can it be reformed to. So that reflects no. People are are able to vote and we've facilitated the hand counting. You know, I was reading the, the act the other day. So one of the problems is that a candidate who has 0.5% difference between as a runner up can appeal and they are given 72 hours maximum to appeal. But in the community here. So two hours, about three days. So here we've been saying the vote is on on the 20th, but we won't have the results till the Friday which is more than 72 hours. So the there the act says you can appeal but you won't know the results in order to appeal on your basis of your appeal until your time frame is already passed. So is how is that going to work in practical aspects? And of course, when you do a hand count, it's it's bound to slow things up. It's costing us 500,000 wor Edmonton's 5 million. They're estimating Red deer is a million and a half. And it was all a political decision to do that. And it's unfortunate. I did note on the city election page that they do said that they will try to post some preliminary results on election night, so we'll maybe have some kind of an idea, I don't know. One of the other concerns some people have is without an electors list. How do you know that? Brian voted here and then went over here to vote and all like these, say, in Chicago, vote early voting often, right. But apparently they have that live list. So when I go to vote and I'm stroked off the list electronically, I can't go to another board. Another one. Yeah. Interesting. I do stress that there is a wealth of information on the city web page, and I think Lynnette is going to put a link up on the screen so the people can find that and they can get informed about where to vote, when to vote, not necessarily how to vote no, but they can answer a lot of their questions. Anything else you wanted to fill in? Before we. Know it's it's going to be interesting. It's always interesting. You know, I, I have made side bets on occasion and I, I've always lost so I don't I don't do that anymore. I but no, it should be an interesting election and, yeah, the, the mayor races is going to be keen one for sure. And, it'd be nice if we had candidates that just like, boom, that's that's the folks. But it's a challenge because we there's a great group of people in here. When you look and hear what they have to say in their position, there's nobody that isn't prepared. There's nobody that's come in kind of, Well, I'm just here because it was my day off or. Well, you know. Yeah, it was really. It was great. Yeah. Just see what they had to say. And what encouraged me and, is seeing many of the candidates come through here and asking them about the experience. And more than once, they said they were encouraged by the quality of the other candidates. They're not necessarily running against those people. And they all thought, you know, if we get elected in this person's here, we are going to work together. So looking past October the 20th, I do feel hope. Good. Good night. Yeah. Well, I hope so too, because it's been a tough two years, at least over the last, couple of years. And maybe, after the vote is, is all done, we can come back and have another chance to do. Right? Yeah. We can handicap and see what our competitors. Well, we should prepare a list now and then see if we're right, I guess, but not. Time will tell. Yes. Jim groom, thank you for the visit, as always. Thanks, Brian. Nice to be here.