Trevor B said "problem with this city is that's become stagnant and these civic elections prove it. When a Mayoral candidate is throwing cold water on a tourist destination like a nice water park speaks volumes. There are no fresh ideas proposed in this election, they are all cookie cutter promises that they all repeat. Essentially you can vote for anyone and there will be no difference.
In this city what exactly is there that really makes people want to come here?? Nothing really, we have a few museums, some events at the Keystone Centre and really not much else. When a casino was all the rage, I proposed a better suggestion, a multi-purpose grandstand facility. A facility that can host a wide variety of outdoor events all year round. Everyone thought we get a casino here and it would be a large cash cow and a tourist trap. But it's more geared towards adults who like to gamble. Not really something that attracts families with kids.
But instead we would rather remain stuck in the mud. I'm sure there are many other people with good ideas, but change seems to be something many fear in this city. Everyone expects the city do all these projects, but we need to change things so more private organisations are more comfortable doing these projects here.
This election will be just another low turnout, status quo result and the city will continue to be stagnant. There is zero imagination here because if there is any, it gets shut down. We are just going stay a boring retirement city until things change. "
You've identified a lot of things. There were a couple of really interesting articles in the 49.9 section yesterday (we get Brandon Sun/Free Press hybrid paper on Saturdays).
Winnipeg, and frankly many other jurisdictions, is kinda suffering the same problem as us. Despite their plethora of choices this round, no one is really offering anything new. I mean, their front-runner is basically a syndicated rerun! The author very succinctly described upsetting the status quo as "high risk-low reward". She also very clearly talked about the historical differences in voting patterns and power between urban and suburban voters (suburban voters generally favour the status quo).
The other really interesting article they had was about infrastructure, which kinda ties into all this. I know I've banged the infrastructure drum a few times here already, but it was very well laid out about how we've basically had this status quo since the post-war period that has brought us to the point of where we can't even pay to maintain our current infrastructure, never mind build new stuff.
So now we're in this position where no one wants to upset the status quo, we're spending a whack of money to basically appease developers, we're clamouring for new infrastructure, whether that's roads, recreational or commercial, and facing an election that's promising more of the same old.
I have no solutions. It's just depressing as hell..