Thanos Thanos:
I voted No. I don't trust the IOC at all and I trust our own city council about the same. They have no respect for the taxpayers in this city. That $5 billion projected would have turned into $7 or $8 billion in the blink of an eye thanks to the inevitable graft and fuck-ups that would soon follow an IOC approval. More importantly the Flames, the real generator of consistent sporting revenue in this city, would have been left out almost entirely with just a few fix-ups to the Saddledome instead of the new arena that is needed. And, yeah, I trust the Flames a hell of a lot more than I do Naheed Nenshi.
This bid was unjustifiable, to drop those kinds of tax hikes on a town that's still reeling from the oil price collapse. We already have a ten-day yearly party in this city called the Stampede, and it doesn't cost $500 million per day the way the Olympics would have. I voted No and am damn proud of it, and I'm also bloody happy the voters finally saw through the gimmick that was being pulled on us by the downtown elite.
This was part of the problem-when Calgary's already suffering from high downtown vacancy rates, governments are already running big deficits, and governments are already tightening their belts, it becomes a lot harder to justify spending money on the Olympics, especially with huge cost overruns and the rampant corruption both among the athletes and the officials.
And while lots of people have fond memories of the 1988 Olympics, others remember the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau claimed that the Olympics couldn't lose money any more than a man could have a baby...and 30 years of debt led to Drapeau being pregnant in political cartoons enough times for a dozen Octomoms.
bootlegga bootlegga:
Had the higher level of governments properly supported the bid, it would have been a 'Yes' vote.
The blame falls squarely on Notley, and to a larger extent, Trudeau for this failure.
I don't know about that, especially since at least one prominent No opponent who otherwise despises
Notley warmly praised her for attaching strings to provincial funding. Frankly, I'd have done the same thing-and if I lived in Calgary I probably would have voted No to the bid.
Not to mention that the Yes side didn't do themselves any favours with their approach.
Take this commentary from Macleans:
$1:
But with the cynicism was a healthy dose of circumspection. Two weeks before the plebiscite, Calgarians almost universally celebrated a $245-million new central library, funded primarily through property taxes—the perfect rebuttal to the Games boosters now grumbling “this is why we can’t have nice things.” Beautiful, functional and lasting nice things, Calgary residents can say yes to. But there’s reason to not see equivalent merit in expensing $2.9 billion of public funds for a month-long event in the middle of next decade that would have left Calgary with some new affordable housing couple new sports venues and refurbished 1988 facilities, not all of which the region needed to re-Olympify.
...
Moran told one forum last week that 90,000 people moved to Calgary in the couple of years straddling the 1988 Games, and she suggested Canadian Airlines and Imperial Oil headquarters landed in Calgary amid the afterglow of the Olympic global spotlight. But her fervid spin wilts under scrutiny. From 1987 to 1990 the city’s population grew by half the amount Moran cited (people move in, people move out, perhaps); Canadian Airlines was formed in 1987 when an airline already based in Calgary swallowed up smaller rivals; Imperial Oil arrived 17 years after the Saddledome’s Battle of the Brians, and ages after it made any sense for a major oil firm’s head office to remain in Toronto. When corporations scout new office locations, they look past such hokum and base their picks on credible and compelling reasons. A city’s residents, when being courted with such gauzy ideals and promises, can simply shrug them off—or vote to spite them.
Not to mention the closed-door council meetings showing cost expansions that was kept out of the public eye:$1:
Advocacy group the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is praising a whistleblower who leaked municipal documents pertaining to Calgary's potential bid for the 2026 Winter Olympic Games.
...
The documents show there are additional costs above and beyond the $5.2 billion estimated by the Calgary bid exploration committee that council will have to consider if Calgary hosts the Games.
Long story short, this seems like a perfect storm of factors that all came together at the wrong time to convince Calgarians to vote No.
CKA Moderator 
CKA Uber 
