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2014 Municipal Election: Brampton

TOareaFan said:
I think the polls are telling you she does not have anything "on" the Brampton voters. Her path to Mayor was fairly simple, I think she had been on council (city and region) for 10+ years before she took a run for office against then Mayor Robertson in what (if I recall correctly) was a fairly close vote.

During her term on council, she had gained the rep as a hard working consensus builder focused on low taxes, balanced budgets and building business within the city. During her first terms in office (and actually until about half way through this term) there was very little controversy surrounding her performance.
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The troubles began in her second term. Whistles were blowing about Fennell's arts gala and there was the fight between the Rose and Brampton Symphonies. But they weren't big deals at the time.

Her first term (2000-2003) was actually pretty good. Her second one (2003-2006) wasn't bad either. Brampton Transit finally became useful under her watch. She pushed for, and got, upper-tier funding to buy buses and rebuild streets for a BRT-lite system then known as Acceleride. She wasn't that focused on low taxes either, I found her to be more focused on better city services, like transit and parks & recreation. The park behind our house was maintained better (grass cut more often, fewer weeds) after she became mayor. I quite liked her as mayor early on.
 
Watched the Regional Councillor 2-6 debate on Rogers...
it just verified my thought that John Hutton is long, long past due date and it would a crime to return him to Council (he still has a 5,700. bill to pay from the City)...he should just retire to his gardens
suprisingly Palleschi the younger is a viable candidate...
Naraine (the angry candidate), Jopal and Jassal (both young and informed) are all head shoulders above Hutton...
 
Greg Banks said:
Watched the Regional Councillor 2-6 debate on Rogers...
it just verified my thought that John Hutton is long, long past due date and it would a crime to return him to Council (he still has a 5,700. bill to pay from the City)...he should just retire to his gardens
suprisingly Palleschi the younger is a viable candidate...
Naraine (the angry candidate), Jopal and Jassal (both young and informed) are all head shoulders above Hutton...
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I have the debate on pvr....but Jassal has impressed me on twitter with some of his thoughts...can't agree with everything he says but he is willing to engage and even the answers I get that I don't agree with seem well thought out...unlike, say, Ros Feldman
 
TOareaFan said:
I have the debate on pvr....but Jassal has impressed me on twitter with some of his thoughts...can't agree with everything he says but he is willing to engage and even the answers I get that I don't agree with seem well thought out...unlike, say, Ros Feldman
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I don't understand why they seem all hot to trot for a university in Brampton...Post secondary enrollment is dropping...Why not kill two birds with one stone make sure the new Health Centre coming is a teaching hospital with Sheridan Brampton and Georgian Orangeville heavy in Life Sciences....
 
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Greg Banks said:
I don't understand why they seem all hot to for a university in Brampton...Post secondary enrollment is dropping...Why not kill two birds with one stone make sure the new Health Centre coming is a teaching hospital with Sheridan Brampton and Georgian Oranganville heavy in Life Sciences....
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Universities add a lot to a city....both in variety and quality of life and to the economy. We should never get too hung up on short term stats....enrolment is down at Ontario Universities this year for the first time in a very long time....that said demographics suggest this decline will last until 2020 or so when it will start to climb again. Since we are heading into 2015 it is hard to see any of the new university campuses really taking off until very close to the coming increase. Of course short term decreases in enrolment can be offset by allowing/encouraging increases in foreign students at Ontario Universities.

All that said, I share your view that some sort of medical attachment/focus tied in with the new health campus makes a hell of a lot of sense. I even think that some focus on a teaching hospital for nurses and certification of foreign credentials. We are told there are a lot of trained doctors and medical technologists driving cabs and serving at convenience stores.....if that is so, then I would guess (given our growth through immigration) Brampton has a higher concentration of those people than most places.....a teaching hospital that also served to confirm/upgrade credentials would not only serve a need in the community, it could be a bit of a shining light of the "Canadian dream" and make use of a valuable and untapped resource.
 
tiffer24 said:
It's certainly delusional to expect taxpayers to swallow a $1156 a month phone bill...
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but it was not 1156 a month....it was (to quote Toronto Life) "but what about the monthly phone bills from your office, which are as high as $1,156 per month?"

If the bill was that every month I as a taxpayer would be very concerned. If, as it seems, it got that high once (likely the month where she spent 3 weeks in India on a trade mission) I would write it off as not having the right plan for that trip and would want to know...."what was the bill on a regular basis? Was the plan appropriate? Was the user using the plan appropriately?"

One of the big problems with the way this has been reported is that it is very difficult to determine what the normal spending patterns were and whether they were within budget and within acceptable uses....when the reporter leads normal rationale people like you to assume/accept/interpret that the highest figure for each category (in this case phone bills) was in fact the average monthly figure.

She may have spent inappropriately (I really don't know) but it is easy for me to see why she has a problem with the way it is reported.
 
tiffer24 said:
Susan Fennel does not have a problem with the way her spending has been reported. She has a problem with her spending. This has been confirmed by a number of sources. Brampton voters will judge her appropriately.
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well, the questioner in that Toronto Life questionnaire tweeted back to me confirming that the figure quoted (as an example) for the phone bill was a one time thing and that was the highest it ever was.....but in all the media reports on this (and not just the Toronto Life article) gives the impression that $1156 was the monthly cost of providing her a mobile phone service.......

...to be clear, I don't know how bad the spending issue was....but I think it is naive to suggest that the way it has been reported is not influencing public opinion in some fashion.
 
tiffer24 said:
Are you seriously suggesting some kind of Ontario-wide media conspiracy here?
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no....not at all.....I am suggesting a lot of lazy journalism and people (journos) reading "$1156 per month" and writing/quizzing on that without what used to happen.....question the facts.....who picked the cell plan? how often is the bill that high? what kind of circumstances lead to the bill being higher? are they regular or one off? what is the regular cost? are they within policy? are they avoidable?

the way this story is being reported (and no, not in a conspiracy it is impossible for me to answer those questions before I vote.
 
tiffer24 said:
Well, in Susan Fennell's own words, this is not about the grey areas of padded expense accounts, it is a battle simply between good and evil. "I believe I’ll win, because I believe that truth trumps evil, and what is being done to my name and my reputation is pure evil."

I take it you're on the side of good...
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I haven't decided who to vote for.....I think all 3 of the "top" candidates have issues.

My concern on this issue is that it is very hard to get to the bottom of it when the most of the media are, as I said, simply lazily picking up one source's numbers and running them unquestioned. The cell phone bill is just an example....I bet most (perhaps all?) of the people reading the media reports are now thinking (as you did in post #170 above) that the phone bill was $1156 per month. What I found out today, by simply asking the journo who did that Toronto Life piece, that that amount was the highest it ever was and it was once.
 
Just go to "Stop the Smears"...Fennell is on about 10 instances what about the other 166? That just about says it all for her other than when is she going to pay the 34K+ back to the City
Jeffrey was a pretty decent City Councillor for Ward 2, head, shoulders and torso better than Hutton (and when is he going to pay the 5.7K back to the City), better than Palleschi when he had the position, better than Annechinni and even the one back in '78 who's name escapes me (IIRC there were some supposed graft issues with him)...
Sanderson seems to me a return to the days of Archdeakin and to a lesser degree Whillans....The town that its politicians think is a village. Thing is Brampton should have moved long past that insular thought long ago.

Looking at it that way the only real choice to me is Jeffrey.....
 
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