City of Calgary, Another Half a Billion Flushed...

No water to rinse!

If incompetence were an Olympic Sport, Mayor Gondek, on behalf of Calgary City Council, would shamefully standing bold with multiples of Gold Medal Victories.

It’s actually astonishing how poorly they’ve done for Calgarians, where the quality of life continues to diminish while being more costly in property taxes…and over this Thanksgiving Weekend, we learn a little more about this.

Firstly and to almost No Calgarians Surprise…there was another Water Main Break, forcing closure of Bowness Road on Sunday October 13th…because bandaids simply aren’t enough to patch up crumbling infrastructure.

These poor efforts on focusing on infrastructure and through water usage fees, generate approximately $1 Billion Dollars, annually for the city.

Over this last summer, this lead to both indoor and outdoor water restrictions and even despite the additional maintenance over the Labor Day Weekend - again, robbing Calgarians of some backyard fun in the sun with sprinklers and pools - on the long weekend of summer…The City was seemingly satisfied with the early completion of maintenance and cranked up the pressure to get Calgary back to full showers and flushing the toilet every-time it was used.

Speaking of being flushed…in other depressing spending news in Calgary, an investment of a half a Billion Dollars, is needlessly swirling the bowl.

A couple years back, despite no successful mass green transport success stories, during blustery cold winter temperatures like Alberta sees…the City decided to launch a pilot project to purchase 14 Electric Buses, for about $1 Million a piece - to help Calgary not be as responsible for the Global Climate Emergency, Gondek laid out in her first day as mayor.

And despite the fact that not a single bus had been delivered nor tested for this “pilot” program, they city went ahead and ordered an additional 259 EV Buses, and equipment, to the tune of $489 Million Dollars.

Given the absolute and abysmal failure of the EV Buses in Edmonton, even if these had arrived, we knew serious problems would ensue.

Their 2020 program of an Electric Bus Fleet is seeing final nails being driven into the coffin of this program due to the fact that the company they’d purchased these buses from, went bankrupt…the Edmonton Warranty was cancelled, parts aren’t available and only a half to one third of these remain functional at any given time.

In addition to this…perhaps due to an expectation of actual Global Warming…the heating systems in these buses wasn’t able to keep passengers warmed on the blustery days, forcing retroactive Diesel Upgrades to be added at a huge expense.

All told…this was a terrible idea.

But thankfully Calgary didn’t invest in the same Electric Transport and went ahead with spending our Half a Billion on a company that…wait for it…

Is flat ass broke and about to go into receivership.

Despite the 2022 order of 14 buses from Vicinity Motor Corp, none of them ever arriving…and the order for another 259 - Vicinity was only able to manufacture 11 buses in the last quarter of 2023.

Our primary 14 will most likely never arrive to be piloted…and even if by some miracle they do, the company will be completely Tit’s Up, before we get the balance, leaving us in the Edmontonesque situation of a busted and irreparable fleet.

Take this and fold in these failures with the $1.5 Billion spent by Calgary City Council, on the Green Line boondoggle…where the original program was reduced by 80%, costs increased, turning $100k per metre of track ballooned to $600k…

The $5 Million in “Rebranding” Calgary to be less Calgaryesque, removing anything to do with the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth, to “Blue Sky City”…

The catastrophic renegotiated Arena Deal, thanks to Gondek…

And the $87 Billion Commitment to Climate Emergency…

And it’s clear to see that Calgary City Council is more in tune with Flushing down your hard earned taxes, while being too incompetent to provide the water to rinse.

---