Well, Greg Littlejohn has one thing instantly going in his favour, he shares a name with a Robin Hood character. I haven't so far been pushed to vote for him. Still, I'm going to speed-review a flyer I got from him. www.greglittlejohn.ca is his website address.
Action on crime
"implementing foot and bike patrols"
Well, yeah ok. Put more cops on the street. Sure.
"Supporting the new police cadet program"
As opposed to opposing it? okay..
"Freeing up police officers to deal with crime"
yes, this is a good point. Less paperwork, more policework.
"Supporting programs that keep young people away from crime and out of trouble"
like boot camps? locking them up in jail? What else would work?
"Shifting 20-25 officers to the street gang unit"
Is the street gang unit really understaffed? Do the gangs really need more babysitters? Wouldn't it be better to just put them in jail for any little infraction of the law until they're gone?
"Supporting community policing"
yeah.. ok I guess.
Ensuring transparency
"Reviewing our sewer and water treatment system contract with Veolia to ensure there is adequate disclosure of the costs to taxpayers"
While I agree with the notion that we should NOT be signing anything that is not released to the public first, and not be dealing with companies that refuse to make their tenders public, and in fact refusing to deal with such companies in the first place, Sam Katz dropped the ball on this one, acting as if the city is a business and he's the boss, rather than letting the real boss know what the deal is. As apparently it has nothing to do with the water utility per se, and it would be illegal to, but purely the sewage system. I don't know if Littlejohn was caught up in this disinformation or if he's an active participant, but all the same, if Sam Katz had a more open city hall, he wouldn't be burned by things like this. So, fair enough.
Enforcing by-laws
"Managing concerns about household waste"
"Dealing with derelict housing"
My problem isn't so much with derelict housing as much as it is with slumlords. Granted, enforcing bylaws with regards to derelict housing is important, I can see the city acting too aggressively to deprive an owner of their property just because they're not in a financial position where reparations would make sense. Granted "dealing with derelict housing" is such a vague statement, I don't even know where to start with that. As for managing concerns about household waste... what? Is this a big concern?
Action on infrastructure
"Repairing broken roads and lanes"
"Improving transit services"
"Expanding Handi-Transit to meet demand"
While I'm always in favour of improving transit services, what we need are more buses running more frequently. Don't tell me theres no demand cause there is. Transit is just understaffed and prioritizes other areas of the city over Mynarski/North Winnipeg.. Plus most bus drivers probably loathe driving the 16 or 38 buses thanks to gangs and drug addicts and vagrants. I dunno. Saying he will improve it doesn't really.. convince me that he can.
"Developing an affordable housing plan"
"Implementing a bed bug policy"
there are affordable housing plans. It's called Manitoba Housing. It's where all the bed bugs are probably coming from. We need less affordable housing and more unaffordable housing.
"Supporting community centres"
"Completing the North Winnipeg Parkway"
Meh.
"Maintaining our urban forest"
This is important to me. I don't want to lose our beautiful urban treescape thanks to ignorant politicians cutting back the tree people.
"Implementing a food security policy"
"Supporting businesses"
I have no idea what this means. Food security policy? Really? Is this a worry? As for supporting businesses, meh.
Now for the visionary stuff. Sharing a vision
"Restoring Winnipeg's pride in the North End"
most of winnipeg has never really had pride in the North End. If it wasn't natives today, it was immigrants of yesteryear and jews and polish and the irish or scottish or whatever the ethnicity of derision of the time was. Lets not kid ourselves that "Winnipeg" had pride in the North End. However, restoring North End pride, I think is a worthy goal.
"Relocating the CPR Yards"
This is stupid. There is no need. There is no point. There is no Money to do it. The CPR yards are a huge industrial area. Theres no way its going to move easily. Lets say you did. What then? Now CPR employees have to go out of town to work. Where is it going to be moved to? Now that area is going to be polluted. And how do you afford the clean up? Have you ever seen a gas station shut down? Imagine that for an area the size of the CPR. Nevermind the fact that I actually kindof like looking at the trains off the Arlington or Salter bridge. Gives the city a bit of character. No. This one has never really made sense to me. It's like someone who has played Sim City too often with the Shift+FUNDS cheat.
"building on the positive momentum for sustainable development"
wat? This is pure gobbledygook.
How come for the next why for the minus time experience shoe?
that's how it reads to me.
He's not a bad candidate I guess, but I don't really feel inspired by his flyer. Seems like pretty words with little substance. Oh well.
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