Council’s childish antics call for a cleansing at the ballot box

Peripheral spats that used to be private are now played out in full view of the public

We’ve got five months — my brain hurts a lot, five months, that’s all we’ve got.

Apologies to the late, great David Bowie for repurposing his Five Years ditty, but we Calgarians need a singsong to drag us through to Oct. 16.

Thankfully, or at least hopefully, it won’t be the Earth that’s dying, but instead, that date marks the reset for a much-needed cleansing via the ballot box.

Now such commentary isn’t because the councillors now serving this city are daft, lazy or corrupt. Far from it: as individuals, they seem decent, industrious, intelligent and caring people and, though they have differing views on how our city should evolve, all are passionate about the outcome. Hey, in the end, they actually do live here.

So why has this current council devolved and dissolved into a veritable playground seemingly populated by insecure, bickering, small-minded adolescents?

The latest in a growing list of small-scale, pathetic rows involves the actions of one councillor caught on camera appearing to twist an imaginary knife into the back of another as she was speaking. He says it was something else that caused this backstabbing mimicry, while yet another colleague called on the integrity commissioner to investigate.

This sad nursery-school style “who did what to whom” silliness was taking place around the same time frame these people were considering a $4.6-billion proposal for a new CTrain line in the city. Does such behaviour engender faith among Calgarians that such a huge future spending and borrowing blitz is adequately debated?

Sadly, this is just the latest in a long line of public spats about, for the most part, peripheral matters: ones that otherwise would never come to the attention of a single ratepayer.

Last year, the city’s top administrator, Jeff Fielding, warned council that petty infighting and political point scoring could quickly erode citizens’ trust in local government. Oops, maybe they were too busy checking their Twitter feeds to pay attention, Jeff.

Even before that, the city auditor was urged to place clear limits on council regarding the consumption of booze during work hours, after one councillor linked commonplace office drinking with the treatment of women.

That episode led to an integrity commissioner being hired to independently report on members’ alleged misdeeds. The 14 councillors, along with the mayor, had to attend special classes to try and learn how to get along with each other.

Obviously, in hindsight, that was a waste of a day.

OK, so why do smart, hard working and seemingly decent people end up feuding like starlets bumping into each other while wearing the same dress on Oscar night?

Look no further than the man at the head of our civic table, that once, though unlikely future, “Mayor of the World,” Naheed Nenshi.

Once, there was a simpler time, when mayors such as Dave Bronconnier, Al Duerr and Ralph Klein would meet privately with aldermen, as they were then called, to pop any nasty bubbles before they burst in public. A quiet, one-on-one chat behind closed doors, making sure irritating differences were smoothed over before the riff raff took front row seats, often meant city business could proceed in a relatively civil manner.

That’s not our current mayor’s style. He’d rather send one of his staff to a councillor’s office than pop in himself for a chinwag. Maybe doing so would appear demeaning, yet such an approach can work. Otherwise, the boil builds and bursts in public view.

True, this current let-it-rip process results in raw democracy. Hey, we can watch those we’ve elected twist imaginary knives in front of our very own eyes. But it really isn’t the best way of conducting business.

Naheed, we know you’re the smartest guy in the room. So can we try a little empathy with the lesser folk? If you get a third term, you might even find it soothing.