Calgary councillors can’t get along
Posted Feb 1, 2018 7:12 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It’s taken only three months for Calgary’s new council to demonstrate how difficult it is for them to get along.
Jabs, personal insults and complaints are just some of the things people have noticed seem to be happening more often in council meetings and through the media.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi called Monday’s meeting one of the strangest he’d ever seen and believes members would all benefit from a conversation about how they want to work together going forward.
The meeting had complaints about pop consumption and a councillor saying “bureaucracy is where ideas go to die.”
Speaking after Wednesday’s meeting, in which one councillor wrongly accused another of shipping furniture out to be cleaned, Councillor Shane Keating voiced his concern with what he called, “lightning bolt comments.”
“If we’re going to get into the same scenario where councillors are going to throw out comments only to get the ire or to rise or to make a derogatory statement against other councillors, administration, or the public, we have to rethink as an individual how we’re going to proceed over the next little while,” he said.
He believes conversations need to be had in private, but others argue the debates should happen in public, regardless of the content.
