CLARK MAKES COMEBACK JUST IN TIME
Next four years won’t be easy for new mayor but fresh perspective will help
Three weeks ago no one would have predicted that Charlie Clark had a chance.
Many were making comparisons to Olivia Chow’s failed Toronto mayoral campaign. Clark’s change message wasn’t taking hold as voters were seeing Kelley Moore as the candidate of change. He was caught being labelled the left-wing candidate of the established status quo.
In the middle of October, the campaign changed tack. Instead of being the agent of change, Clark ran on his record of working with community groups, opposing tax breaks to commercial property owners, opposition to random carding or “police safety checks.” At the same time, Clark found the voice that he seemed to have repressed for the last four years. A more passionate and fired up Clark connected to voters who liked what they saw.
At the same time it was a bad two weeks to end the campaign for Kelley Moore, who seemed to peak too early and struggled when both Atchison and Clark turned their sights on her campaign. Instead of doing what had got her into the thick of the race, the campaign struggled to defend her claims of a future 10 per cent tax increase and claims of a looming financial crisis, then overstepped with an attack on Clark and Atchison. You could feel the momentum shift across the city.
Atchison ran the most disciplined of campaigns with the same message throughout: removal of Fourth Avenue bike lanes, rail lines and maintaining the status quo. He tried to portray Clark as risky and Moore as too inexperienced. As the final results showed, he didn’t have the traction he had hoped. The discipline that kept him in the race for most of it didn’t change as Clark caught fire in the last couple of weeks.
Now what? Clark and council have enormous challenges ahead. No one is predicting a quick turnaround in the provincial economy. While the recent OPEC deal provides hope for oil rebounding, there is still a glut of oil on the market. The last time that happened, it look a decade for the backlog to clear out.
We also face economic uncertainty as China takes a toll on our potash exports, hurting our other large exporter and employer. All of this contributes to Saskatoon’s rising unemployment rate, which hurts everything from land bank sales, property tax rates, our share of the PST revenue from the province and our sagging construction industry. We have seen the impact already with cash rebates being offered by both homebuilders and our own Land Bank. We have more land to sell than buyers who want it.
Councillors and the mayor, who said they heard again and again from residents that they wanted more recreational amenities like pools and leisure centres, are about to find themselves having to tell the people that there is no money for them after years of building overpasses and repairing roads.
In all likelihood there won’t be the money to make the next four years transformative years for Saskatoon; they will in all likelihood be back to basics ones as we try to figure out how to pay for what we already are instead of what we want to be. It is during pauses in growth that cities like Saskatoon can figure things out in order to get them right in the future.
Just because the next four years won’t be easy and they won’t be the same. With a record number of women on council, a new mayor and new councillors, expect a new path and a very different city by the time we do this all over again in 2020.