The War on Mayor -- Facts are Where It's At

The post that I had been working for for 3 hours spontaneously deleted all of the content when I hit "publish post,"  so I have to summarize everything that I wrote about the mayoral forum.  You have NO idea how much that annoys me.  The content was there and it didn't even save as a draft.  Anywhere.  And I'm very tired.  


Because we have to choose between these two, because two of them didn't even show up (Brad Gross and Rav Gill), I would have to choose Katz for this one.


What I had written was that the mayoral forum this morning at RRC Princess St. Campus with Sam Katz and Judy Wasylycia-Leis was educational, entertaining, and a rapid fire game of double dutch where they skipped around the issues.  I think that Katz had the stronger arguments when they did make arguments because his counter-arguments were more factually based.  W-L's tactic of hurling assumptions back at Katz as insults was ineffective.  I think that Katz is the better political chess player, as he played defense and offense throughout the debate, continually putting W-L in check after her every argument.  He defended his points, but played offense where necessary.  W-L was playing a game of strictly offense, rarely defending her own issues without basing them first on an attack on Katz.   I got out of the forum that W-L is relying on voters to see her as the "every woman," the "anti-businessman" who will personally tear down Katz and "corruption" in order to establish some kind of humility in City Hall.  W-L is the moral protector and Katz is the snake-oil salesman.   But what it comes down to is business and who can run a business most effectively, and I feel like W-L has no real platform, and if she has one, it's been created from a mish-mash of facts that weren't communicated well and anti-Katz propaganda.


The crime portion of the debate was ok, but I have never heard the words "community centre" so many times in my life.  W-L kept throwing "we have to deal with the root cause of crime" around loosely, then backed it up by saying that the $2.7 million she has pledged toward community centres, if she is successful, would somehow solve the root cause, without ever telling us exactly how.   Funding community centres may help prevent crime to some degree, but they won't magically eliminate the root cause.  They're not enough in and of themselves.  While Katz threw around the term "root cause" loosely as well, I felt that he has the more effective strategy by pledging funding toward community centres in conjunction with adding more police.  I think that the enforcement and initiative tactic will be much more effective than just the initiative when it comes to dealing with crime in the city.  I didn't feel that W-L sold herself on the issue of crime as well as Katz did.


When asked about the new police helicopter, W-L gave a very washy answer, basically saying that the decision of the helicopter was made in haste but she wouldn't cancel it if elected, she would do an "annual cost-analysis" to see if it was effective or not.  Katz straight out gave some facts: one helicopter in the air is the equivalent of 12 squad cars on the ground.   It was a succinct, factual answer --  this is why it's here and this is what we're going to do with it.  At least he gave an answer.


Then there was the increase in property tax issue, which annoys me that W-L wants to end the freeze to raise revenue.  I can semi- understand why Katz is slow to respond to the question of whether he is going to increase property taxes himself, because there are many better ways to increase revenue than resorting to increasing property taxes.  There is a lot of money in City Hall that can be diverted, so it's almost irresponsible for W-L to announce that she will, in fact, increase property taxes before being elected and pushing it through the levels for approval.   I would hope that Katz is looking into a more effective strategy than that.  Plus the two per cent raise for the next four years she's proposing is nowhere near enough to fix the infrastructure problem, in all honesty.  


 Both Katz and W-L were extremely vague on waste management issues and transit issues.   They talked about what they wanted to see, but didn't really leave me with the impression that they were going to implement anything.  Actually, I felt that W-L gave vague answers for almost everything while Katz at least tried to explain the issues within his time constraints.   I also think that the "where were you 6 years ago, Sam" argument is tired and illogical, because some of these issues are extremely hard and lengthy to push through.  LRT is not going to just magically pop-up in a city with a crumbling infrastructure and a strange density set-up.  These are all issues that, if elected, W-L won't push through very fast, either.  


While I believe W-L to be a strong woman, I feel that Katz has the business acumen to do what's right for Winnipeg and to make the smarter decisions based on facts and experience.