Trying To Label The New Mayor And Council
Blaming a labour endorsement for Lyn Hall as the reason things turned and Don Zurowski did not get elected Mayor is the age old battle of right versus left .
Let’s start here, the right supported Zurowski, when the final tallies come in you will find that he was heavily supported by some very large companies and individuals. There was allot of money pumped into Zurowski’s campaign as the figures will show.
We can expect to see union donations on Hall’s disclosure, just as we can expect to see business donations on Zurowski’s.
The Zurowski camp phoned several thousand people suggesting Don was the best choice, it was great idea but in the end it didn’t help. Matter of fact one of the callers took time to call me to say that in his calls , Zurowski was ahead by a margin of two to one. Hhmm…must have changed their minds at the polls.
Now CKPG would like to put a label on Hall as quickly as possible by suggesting in their news headline that it was ” A big win for CUPE Candidates”. Perhaps in the last election the headline should have read “Dan McLaren’s group” , or “Treasure Cove Casino” or for that matter “L&M engineering” candidates win big. You might want to temper that a bit given the fact that McWalters worked on Hall’s campaign in this election and Green’s in the last, so much for that union mentality.
Before folks start shaking their fists upset that unions have made contributions to campaigns, they might want to harken back to 2005.
Have we all forgotten about the “Let’s Go Prince George” group in 2005, run by Dan McLaren, which pumped money into the campaigns of 5 candidates? Let’s Go Prince George was considered a pro business group that was focused on the redevelopment of downtown. Shari Green was running for Council at that time and received $7,356.36 from Let’s Go Prince George, fully one third of her overall campaign expenditures. Brian Skakun received $7,356.36 from Let’s Go PG and Garth Frizzell received $7,356.50.
Hall’s Campaign manager was Michelle Marelli , not exactly one you would call union left wing, she was the campaign office manager for Pat Bell, Shirley Bond and John Rustad in the past.
If anything can be said it was the number of people who were on board in the Hall campaign who came from both sides of the fence, left and right, and that folks speaks volumes about why Hall got elected.
Instead of suggesting that through some nefarious means Hall was elected, or the unions in the city were responsible for the new members of council ,a bit of navel gazing is in order.
For example, let’s look at Frank Everitt, he is the President of the Steelworkers Local 1-424 he didn’t lead the vote even though he was listed on the Labour council’s list.
No, the Zurowski camp and those who failed to get elected to council need to sit down and look at what they did or didn’t do in the campaign.
Zurowski was leading the pack in the early going until the voters began to wonder what growing the population to 100,000 was all about. The voters knew that was a pie in the sky pitch, added to that the tee shirt issue, and his inability to connect with the average voter and the real reason unfolds.
Pat Bell sent out a list of ” Pat’s Picks” and low and behold a number of those supposed Union types were on it. He chose Zurowski over Hall, but his list for Council could easily be described, as CKPG would like to say , a slate for CUPE. Now Pat isn’t exactly known as a union type, he just picks them as he sees them, I might add, sometimes, not all that well Pat .
I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion
Comments
could the label be BOUGHT AND PAID FOR?
I defintely don’t believe that all of them are there for the betterment of the city as a whole but maybe more for the benefit of a few special interest groups…
I guess we will see…..
Watching Ron Davis on CKPG last night was painful, he’s such a wonderful man but sadly way off base with his union bashing. Its very clear that Lyns support came from a broad base of interest. Business, labour and a healthy chuck of the student/senior vote. The campaign team was as Ben said all over the map politically. Yes, CUPE and The Labour Council members came out to support him but as hard working volunteers because they honestly believed he was the right person, period! Not some sneaky lefty agenda that Ron and his group are portraying. I have to ask where were you, Ron Davis over the last 3 years as Green and Stolz instilled a broken culture, not only in City Hall but the entire community. Please wake up to the fact, that they were quite simply horrible politicians on so many levels.
Unions are there to make sure their members get a fair wage and at the city they have done probably a little too good a job, in the last 30 years. Fair enough, but in a job wage might get you there but it will not keep you.
I don’t know for sure but my guess is this was a fight more about conditions, which from what I hear suck. The wages at the city are good, it if were administration, I would be asking what went wrong. That would need, one admitting there was a problem, which they don’t think there is. Two, we better hire a consultant to see if there is a problem, for say $300,000 plus.
Then, Huston we have a problem! We need a $3million dollar program to fix the problem. Oh and a raise for management stress. Hummm…and you are worried about the unions. There is a bigger problem than the unions.
Management needs to stop thinking they are so smart and start fixing the moral problem because if you have a moral problem everyone wants a raise and the union gets REALLY strong. For those who don’t like Brian, he is strong because management is weak, not because the can’t shut him down that is easy. Fix the problem and listen to your employees. Who knew they want to fix the problem.
Stop fixing blame and start fixing the problem. Management for too long has played the employees against council and the citizens of PG. Believe it or not unless management distroyes it rather than fostering it,most people like to do a good job. Get on a great team and you love your job.
This is just my opinion. Good luck Lyn, council, the employees, Oh right and management. Time we stopped blaming everyone and realize management makes all the operational call and brings the ideas to council.
Well there can be a lot of arguments as to how Hall won or Zurowski lost. So here is a little twist. Zurowski did pretty good considering that he was out of the political scene for about 6 years. Either men are good men, who want to move the city forward. I think the past election was all about change, people were feed up and I think Hall is smart enough to pick up on this, cause four years can go by real fast as well. :)
I’m not sure why anyone needs to label them? Why not give them a chance to either impress us or disappoint us before we pigeon hole them?
That was six paragraphs of painful reading.
CKPG should stop and think before they start the label campaign, it really serves little. We are months away from one of the greatest events to ever hit Prince George the Canada Winter Games. So if the right , left or in-between are really concerned about Prince George and growth lets work together as a team and show the world who we really are and can be. Preparing for the best Canada winter games ever will be a great start to 2015 and the future of Prince George :)
How is this any different than labelling a council ‘business friendly’, which I have heard plenty of times in the past? Seems that people don’t seem to mind as much. Why are some so sensitive when it is suggested that this is a union/left friendly council?
You can’t deny that if CUPE could hand pick their Mayor and council, it wouldn’t look too much different from the group that’s in. How that will impact the City and its taxpayers remains to be seen.
Put the emotion aside. There will be plenty of time to judge this group over the next four years.
thanks for putting this info out there, ben. this kind of bickering and fingerpointing gets old on both sides real quick. this is the democracy we live in, we all had the opportunity to have a say, and these people were legally elected by the citizens of their community. no one was intimidated or forced to vote for any candidate. everyone in every part of town had access to voting facilities. let’s be thankful that good people were willing to take the chance and put their names out there. the people spoke, and the elected mayor and council was the answer.
i think about problems in ukraine, syria, ISIS beheading aid workers, crippling poverty throughout the developing world, lack of access to clean drinking water for over a billion people. then I look at what we get our panties in a knot about on this site and I can’t help but think, ‘first world problems’. let’s smile.
It will be interesting to see exactly how much the union contributed to the campaigns of the elected mayor and council. I know for a fact Zurowski wouldn’t accept more than 5k from any one contributor, didn’t want to be in anyone back pocket I guess. I wonder if Hall was the same? What percentage of contribution to a campaign would make it a conflict of interest in the council chambers when discussing issues regarding those contributors?
From the article: “Instead of suggesting that through some nefarious means Hall was elected, or the unions in the city were responsible for the new members of council ,a bit of navel gazing is in order.
For example, let’s look at Frank Everitt, he is the President of the Steelworkers Local 1-424 he didn’t lead the vote even though he was listed on the Labour council’s list.”
Everitt was getting in no matter what. I would’ve liked to see you use Merrick or McConachie in your example. Then the picture gets a little more grey.
Zurowski lost simply because to me he only had one pitch, Grow the City. Yay. OK, it can be done but it would have taken many more elections to do so and he finally admitted that, gees what was he thinking?!
Zurowski’s answers to questions were left blank or very little of, especially towards the Free Press and they didn’t even ask hard questions. Zurowski reminded me of Adrian Dix and his gloat towards winning by doing nice things but not taking his campaign more serious. You can be the nicest guy on the campaign trail, garner up big business to support and think you have a competitor beat by calling up people and saying “Ya I’m kicking so and so’s butt by a large margin, here’s my pitch on what I can do, I have the financial support of many, including Cupe, please vote for me on Saturday.” Should have just said that and ended the conversation. He never got my vote because to me Zurowski didn’t try hard enough to get anyone to vote.
Naturally the Unions will support the Candidate’s that they feel will be more **user** friendly. That’s only common sense. The reverse is true for the business interests. They support business friendly candidates.
The problems this time around for the business groups, is that they were so greedy, and self serving over the past years, only interested in their own selfish interests, that they alienated a lot of voters.
So at the end of the day, in order for them to have any real influence on Council they had to elect Zurowski, Stolz, Wilbur, and one newcomer who would be Scott. All they got was Scott.
So, their game plan went to hell in a hand basket. However all is not lost because the Council that was elected is a more all inclusive group, and will look after the interests of business along with everyone else.
So we could say that the business interests actually came out of this **OK** in spite of themselves.
Isnt it time for Cupe to get a raise? Maybe Lynn Hall will convince them to take a 10%
rollback. They actually could afford it.
Thanks for the clearity Ben.
Your manner of calling it how you see it and ability to be fair and balanced will win every time!
There were only two choices for Mayor, so you had to decide between what might be two less than completely desirable options, unless you opted out of voting completely.
On balance, I ended up voting Hall because Zurowski’s 100,000 plan seemed delusional,and he seemed very cuddled up to the Dan McLaren folks I already distrust completely.
I made up my mind after I read Neil Godbout’s editorial in the Citizen that gave me a clearer view of the two candidates and chose the lesser evil. My major concern is whether Lyn Hall can actually take command and run the thing or is he going to be subservient to the city’s nabobs – Beth James et al. I hope he can actually be a leader and get some of the upper hierarchy in the municipal civil service working for us for a change.
Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2014 @ 10:19 AM by missing Poppa
There were only two choices for Mayor, so you had to decide between what might be two less than completely desirable options, unless you opted out of voting completely.
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It’s most unfortunate, but nowadays it seems that we vote against someone more often then we vote for someone. I’m one of those who opted out of voting. After dealing with Hall during the school closures I couldn’t, in all good conscience, vote for the man. His refusal to answer any questions at the meetings I attended left me with no choice but to conclude that he was a man incapable of making a decision on his own; he struck me as being just the mouthpiece.
As for Zurowski, man, whenever I heard him speak I felt like I usually do after talking to a car salesman; I felt like I needed to wash my hands and wash them quickly.
It’s too bad Rogers was run out of town.
Poppa: “I made up my mind after I read Neil Godbout’s editorial in the Citizen that gave me a clearer view of the two candidates and chose the lesser evil.”
Godbout’s editorial was entitled “Rejecting Partisan Politics”, and then he went into a no-holds-barred left wing rant agaisnt the right wing. Ironic to say the least.
I agree with Ben …. enough with the “sore losers” labels CKPG (aka Jim Pattison)
I think voting Hall in was more of a statement from P.G. voters that we have had enough of the Sherri Green style of leadership (To tightly affiliated with big business) more than anything to do with Union donations.
T-shirt issue, what a joke. If it was an issue then why isn’t there a headline from the Supe of SD57? Having zero plans for the city of PG other than same-old same-old has appeared to work. Sorry, no time to comment further as I have to get back to work to pay for the next four years of tax increases.
I guess I run in the wrong circles. Most people I talk to are in favour of increasing the tax base. Would have improved big business, small business and union workers. I really feel disheartened that we live in a society that elects officials based on the fact they will be easier to negotiate their personal wages, not for the greater good of their entire community. Short term thinking I’d say. Shoot Zurowski for trying to grow the population. Geez! Lump him in the same category as Green witthout having a clue what a good CEO actually does. This is why our community doesn’t grow at the same rate as the rest of the country, these kinds of decisions are why we haven’t grown at all in 30 years. Disappointed that 250 news even wrote an article about the t shirts, all those girls were in favour of the shirts, were aware of the platform, had consent from their parents and weren’t even on school property. Should have had all the facts before you wrote that article. Thats the kind of reporting that can sway voters for no reason at all.
I think Meisner will eat his words when he finds out exactly how much Hall received from CUPE.
In social sciences they have tools to identify and measure the most significant factors from a set of factors and variables. Some of the possible variables in this election are about the voters (age, gender, income level), some variables are about the candidates (age, income, affiliation) and some are about the events and sponsors (business, union, ….). If we want to know what happened, then we need to ask a statistician to construct an experiment using the above variables and ask a set of population to answer some questions (i.e. to attach values to those variables) and to tell us which factor played a role in voting for their candidate. We have a university and a college in it full of social scientists and students and we need a brave soul to gather the data and do the project. //End of story.
I personally don’t waste my time on analyzing elections, more money can be made in market analysis, oil prices and there is huge historical data available online. BTW crude oil is now in 70-75$ range (that I forecasted). Move on from local elections and watch for the upcoming 27 Nov OPEC meeting that could affect the oil industry in Alberta and Canadian economy drastically.
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