On the morning of June 6, an emergency alert greeted millions of people in the Calgary area on their phones and all broadcast stations. We were told water supply levels had hit a critical level and people were not to wash dishes, shower or even flush the toilet for fear of running out of water. A water main break in North Calgary was apparently so bad, that even outlying towns from the city were placed under emergency water restrictions.Questions were quickly asked of course.How is it that over 1.5 million people are dependent upon a single line for their water supply? What caused the break? How long would it be before people could use their water normally again? The city of Calgary didn’t have many details to offer. Ever one to try and expand upon her personal unpopularity, Mayor Jyoti Gondek held a press conference that offered few details on what happened but took the opportunity to try and blame the mess on Premier Danielle Smith. Gondek was slammed by citizens for her crass response and on the weekend, she even offered a rare apology for her terrible communications in a time of crisis. It really wasn’t a time when Calgarians wanted to hear the mayor trying to take cheap shots at the provincial government.So, who’s fault is the water crisis?Mayor Gondek isn’t personally responsible, but this mess lands fully in the lap of Calgary’s city hall. It isn’t Trudeau’s fault. It isn’t Smith’s fault. Responsibility lands with the city and Gondek, for better or worse is at the helm right now.The city of Calgary has had surpluses ranging over $200 million per year. The city has a contingency fund of over 4 billion dollars. How on earth is it that a city awash in so much money can’t fill potholes on the streets or maintain a reliable source of water? It’s because Calgary, like many other cities has allowed its politicians and administration to drift way out of their designated lanes. Cities are wasting time and resources on countless projects that aren’t within their jurisdiction while they ignore the obligations that land within municipal turf.Calgary has wasted time and money on everything from failed Olympic bids, to subsidizing ridiculous failed business startups, spending $4.8 million on a new slogan, to hideous public art installations to woke social engineering initiatives, to banning paper bags to an insane $87 billion climate change plan. None of these things should be in the domain of a municipal government. Municipal politicians are driven by personal vanity though and every one of them wants to lay claim to a legacy for their time in office. Bridges, roads and water pipes are boring. They want to cut the ribbons for exciting new expenditures, whether the city needs them or not.Calgary is far from alone with poor municipal governance. It’s happening in cities and towns across the province. This is what has inspired the Danielle Smith government to create legislation giving the provincial government more powers to intervene when a municipal government goes off the rails. The province always had those powers, but now they are more clarified.The overreach of municipal governments shouldn’t be brought into check through expanding the reach of another level of government, however.The only way to correct the bloated, inept civic governments is for citizens to get off their butts at election time and fire their mayors and councils. Part of what created apathy and cynicism among the electorate has been that when they fire one mayor or councillor who misrepresented themself on the way into office, they end up electing yet another person misrepresenting themself. With a political party system coming into place, it will be harder for faux-conservatives to slip by the electorate as they will have to get through a nomination.Nobody in Calgary campaigned on a massive climate change plan, paper bag bans, and spending millions on three-word city slogans. Yet that’s what the city got when the latest batch of councillors came in along with Mayor Gondek.The mandate for municipalities is pretty basic. They exist to provide road and water infrastructure, policing, transit, fire services, taking care of the trash and a small degree of municipal bylaws and zoning to ensure neighbours get along. So far, the city of Calgary is doing a terrible job on all of those priorities despite constant tax increases. The mayor and council are constantly distracted with personal vanity projects and virtue signalling while they ignore the basic needs of the city. Meanwhile, the civil service continues to bloat while delivering worse services every year.Sometimes solutions can be simple.Calgary and other municipalities have a chance to replace their mayors and councillors with common sense candidates in a little more than a year. The contenders just need to campaign on going back to the basics. Unlike their predecessors though, they have to mean it.Citizens have the power to reduce taxes, reduce government overreach and improve basic services. They need to exercise that power effectively though. With political parties holding candidates to account before they even reach a ballot, I am tentatively optimistic that municipalities in Alberta are about to experience mass change and for the better.
