For Calgarians, a municipal election is imminent, and Jeff Davison, a mayoral candidate, says he's running because "leadership matters.""We have a handful of people running who have proven they have no leadership capabilities over the last four years, and we have people who've proven over the last four years that they're also not leaders.""To me, what Calgary needs is somebody who can create a safe, affordable place of opportunity, and that's what we're after.".Davison says one of his priorities is, "we're rolling back the blanket rezoning because we have to deal with building for growth.""We have a growth mindset — we don't achieve growth of 70,000 people moving to Calgary every single year by building four units at a time."He says one of the biggest issues that the city faces is, "it's really an infrastructure bid for us. Calgary has not kept up with the basics.""We are running a very get back to basics campaign — 40% of our roads have fallen into disrepair."."When the water stops working in our city, we have some fundamental problems.""When we are seeing development happen in communities like Marda Loop, where they have torn up the roads three times to meet the amendments that council keeps coming up with for density, we have failed citizens, and we're failing the businesses there when we see them start to close because of the work the city is doing."Davison commented on the water pipe issues in the city — recalling the Bearspaw South Feeder Main break."Investing in pet projects first is not what we should be doing as a city when the water stops working."The concrete pipe burst back in June 2024, on 16 Avenue NW. . "I haven't heard one single member of council stand up and ask three simple questions, what's the fix permanently?""When will it be done?""How much will it cost? ""So we fully anticipate walking into an infrastructure deficit where this could happen again, because Council's been asleep at the wheel.""To me, we've got to manage growth, which means we have to keep building the roads and the pipes first before we start putting in the density.".He says running as an independent is important since, "To me, I believe in innovation, I believe in diversity of thought, and I believe that conversations solve problems." "If we just for a second take and remember that a day ago, Charlie Kirk was murdered because he wanted to have a different voice in the community.""To me, where you can't have conversations where we think everybody has to think the same, we failed."
