‘Everyone feels like everything is chaotic. Everything that comes to council is chaotic. Every decision we’ve made,’ says Coun. Sonya Sharp
She mentions the C-word.
Sitting at a picnic table outside Cadence Coffee on the main street in Bowness.
Sonya Sharp, the city councillor for the area uses a word you don’t like to hear.
Chaos.
Not chaos on this Bowness street where the sun is shining, the people are friendly and the coffee is good.
No, chaos as in city hall chaos.
“Everyone feels like everything is chaotic. Everything that comes to council is chaotic. Every decision we’ve made,” says Sharp.
“Then you throw in a pipe failure, the biggest pipe in the city.
“Calgary is chaos.”
That is, the City of Calgary, city hall’s Big Blue Playpen.
“You want to talk about a loss of trust and confidence in council. It’s chaotic. You talk about the lowest rating ever for mayor and council,” says Sharp.
“What are we actually doing that Calgarians want us to do?”
Actually, council does a lot of things Calgarians DON’T want them to do. The councillor agrees.
At a recent town hall Sharp says “everybody’s temperature is up here,” her hand motioning high in the air.
“You can’t cool them down.”
What is this chaos?
“Everything at the forefront of every headline.
“Calgarians are saying: Now what? What’s next?”
What nonsense is next?
We’re talking about Mayor Jyoti Gondek and a city council where their popularity couldn’t possibly go any lower.
Could it go any lower? That would be a story.
“People ask: How much more can we deal with? I think everyone is mentally exhausted. Chaos brings on mental exhaustion,” says Sharp.
“And when it came to water it took nine days to put all hands on deck.”
Sharp, the councillor is willing to speak out. She represents Bowness, where the pipe fiasco hit hard.
“I don’t want to sit here and be an armchair quarterback but I’m in the right place to be able to shed some light on what’s happened considering I’ve been at Ground Zero since June 5.”
June 5 when the most important water pipe in Calgary ruptured.
Sharp feels Gondek should have “parked the drama, asked for help and got things fixed.”
At the time, the councillor received a message from a top city hall paper shuffler saying the situation was bad.
She got a call from Premier Danielle Smith the day after the pipe busted asking how things were going and if any help was needed.
Day after day after day the city did not declare a state of local emergency despite getting questions on why they wouldn’t.
“There were members of council, including myself, who raised concerns. It should have been all hands on deck from Day One,” says Sharp.
Finally, on June 15 the state of local emergency was declared.
Sharp talks about developers earlier this year telling the city about the leaky water system and how there was a problem.
What was done? Apparently things were fine.
“Then we have the mother of all water pipes explode.”
There will be those who stop right here and insist Sharp not criticize. Now is not the time. Toe the party line.
“Leadership starts at the top. That’s why I’m criticizing. We could have done better, timelines might have been shorter. What I’m trying to say is there is accountability on elected officials. This is 100 per cent about accountability.”
City hall brass have their fingerprints all over it.
Sharp heads up the council committee on infrastructure.
“It is important this investigation is impartial and unbiased,” she says.
The elected council must decide who is on the panel, what they will investigate, how much access they will have to information.
“They should have access to everything,” says Sharp.
“Nothing should be swept under the rug.”
Sweeping under the rug is a well-known city hall specialty and these days most Calgarians think the city is on the wrong track so the bigwigs down at city hall better play this one very carefully.
City hall is not trusted.
“We need to become a more citizen-friendly city,” says the councillor.
“We need to listen and not lecture.”
In the end, there is a thank you with a twist.
“Thank you to all of the Calgarians for stepping up — despite the chaos from city hall.”