Ward 7 – Q1 2023 Council of Communities met at the North Mount Pleasant Arts Centre on March 3, 2023. This has been the brainchild of Councillor Terry Wong since elected into office. Every quarter, two board members of each community centre in Ward 7 are invited to a meeting hosted by Councillor Terry Wong and his staff with a message for the community. I was privileged to represent Hounsfield Heights-Briar Hill at this meeting.
I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to Councillor Wong for his efforts. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but you can’t fault him for his efforts like this particular initiative. The communities in Ward 7 may think they have a unique problem through a different manifestation but more often than not, the root causes are the same. So why not collaborate and unify our efforts to solve community problems? This will focus the efforts of the service providers and improve the understanding of concerns for our councillor thereby focusing the action plans and involvement of the people providing the service.
The Focus of This Meeting Was Threefold:
• Presentation on the City of Calgary budget and many of the initiatives that were backed by our councillor.
• 311 top service requests presented by Clarke Bellamy, Manager 311 Citizen Services. Love it or hate it – our experiences may be different, but Clarke covers many of the strengths and concerns that we all may have. He also covers how the system works and some of the things they are working on to help make it better. When we understand how it works, we may appreciate why someone can be frustrated and appreciated how 311 workers may have similar frustrations. We have to remember that the people that ultimately provide 311 services are part of the larger City of Calgary organization and not the call centre.
• An opportunity to meet some of the volunteers that work in other communities.
I don’t have any specifics to communicate at this point as the presentation was a mere three days ago, but there is so much raw public information that will need analysis. I promise there will be juicy morsels of information in the next issue of the Beacon.
A Simple Highlight with Regards to Public Service Requests by Ward, 2022 Data:
Ward 1 – 29,597
Ward 2 – 24,351
Ward 3 – 23,235
Ward 4 – 36,757
Ward 5 – 34,227
Ward 6 – 29,389
Ward 7 – 54,490
Ward 8 – 46,817
Ward 9 – 47,373
Ward 10 – 29,997
Ward 11 – 40,604
Ward 12 – 30,911
Ward 13 – 24,542
Ward 14 – 25,011
Hounsfield Heights-Briar Hill has the largest number of public service requests of any ward. However, we are quite different as Ward 7 encompasses downtown south of the railway tracks, includes two post-secondary institutions boarding close to residential, includes three LRT stations close to residential, and two large shopping centres. Looking at the data will certainly be interesting and the results should be quite revealing.
