Learning curve begins as largely rookie Calgary council sworn in
CBC
Calgary is officially welcoming a new city council on Wednesday, with a swearing-in ceremony marking the beginning of a fresh term at city hall.
Jeromy Farkas’s swearing-in as Calgary’s 38th mayor comes a day after an Elections Calgary recount confirmed the former Ward 11 councillor won a close election race. The recount showed Farkas received 91,112 votes, just 616 more than Sonya Sharp.
He'll chair the largest class of rookie city councillors that Calgary has elected in more than a century.
The 10 new faces are Kim Tyers (Ward 1), Andrew Yule (Ward 3), DJ Kelly (Ward 4), John Pantazopoulos (Ward 6), Myke Atkinson (Ward 7), Nathaniel Schmidt (Ward 8), Harrison Clark (Ward 9), Rob Ward (Ward 11), Mike Jamieson (Ward 12) and Landon Johnston (Ward 14).
The group includes four incumbents returning for another term, including longtime Ward 10 councillor Andre Chabot, as well as Jennifer Wyness (Ward 2), Raj Dhaliwal (Ward 5) and Dan McLean (Ward 13), who are all returning for a second term.
Evan Spencer was in the shoes of Calgary’s rookie councillors four years ago, when he was voted in as Ward 12 councillor.
Spencer said the new councillors will see their schedules fill up as they simultaneously try to build their office and get to know other council members they can work with.
“I look upon those early weeks with a lot of fondness,” said Spencer, who chose not to run for re-election this fall.
“There was no baggage. We hadn’t attacked each other yet. We all had ideas about the political perspectives that everyone brought to the table, but it was a fresh canvas.”
Calgary's new council is a good representation of broad political perspective from across the city, said Spencer, which he hopes will lead to nuanced decision-making.
The most immediate challenge a new council always faces is passing the city budget a month after the swearing-in.
Spencer argues nobody in their first term truly knows what they're voting on in budget discussions unless they're already armchair councillors reading city reports before running for office. And, he said, they can be too prone to want to change the budget before they fully understand it.
In the coming days, councillors will also be tasked with joining and chairing various commissions, committees and boards that help the city run. Spencer noted some like the police commission, standing policy committee, audit committee or even the Calgary Public Library Board can present heavy workloads.
Most of all, Spencer advised new councillors to put a lot of time into becoming a student of how the city operates, or risk becoming "a blunt object that can cause more harm than good."
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