Tag Archives | Podcast

The Cathedral Area Community Association hosted a mayoral forum last Thursday that was extremely well attended. And the association decided that they’d get to ask the first several questions of the night which I appreciated because sometimes questions from the floor can be more lecture than question and then the questions themselves can be pretty batshit insane.

Not to be outdone, the CACA asked their own crazy question: As graffiti is a problem in Regina, if elected, would you support a ban on the sale of spray paint to minors.

Okay, maybe it isn’t “crazy.” But it really came out of nowhere. This is an election issue? The laughter from the crowd indicates I wasn’t alone in thinking this.

Thing is, though, the candidates rose to the challenge and gave really sane, thoughtful answers, most of which were along the lines of, “No but… address the root cause,” or “No but… graffiti artists are creative people who need more outlets for their work” or “No but… how about more skate parks?”

So maybe it wasn’t such a ridiculous question after all. It revealed some interesting stuff about the people who want to be mayor.

Anyway, here is the complete audio of that exchange.

Download candidates’ responses to a question about a ban on sale of spray paint to minors. (6.3MB mp3)

Should mention, that I’m actually on the board of the CACA but have recused myself from all participation in putting on their candidate forums. Didn’t see the organizing emails. And I even begged off putting chairs away. Which I suppose makes me kind of a shitheel.

Follow all of our online election coverage — including interviews, analysis and podcasts — on our Regina City Election 2012 page. And you can read about everyone running in this election on our Candidate Profiles page.

After the mayoral forum hosted by the Heritage Community Association on October 10, I once again did some quick interviews to get a sense of how people think the candidates are doing.

(The clip starts near the end of my first interview because, like an idiot, I didn’t press the record button right off.)

Download audience reactions to the Heritage Community Association mayoral forum. (3.8MB mp3)

Follow all of our online election coverage — including interviews, analysis and podcasts — on our Regina City Election 2012 page. And you can read about everyone running in this election on our Candidate Profiles page.

On October 2, candidates for Ward 2 and for mayor gathered at the Lakeview Elementary School for a pair of forums put on by the Lakeview Community Association. I recorded both but the audio kind of stinks and it takes a bit of Audacity magic to make them listenable. So I’m only going to post two excerpts from the mayoral forum that I’ve managed to fix up.

First, here’s how the candidates answered a question about the housing crisis and how they’d cope with it.

Download candidates’ responses to a question about housing at the Lakeview Community Association mayoral forum (72.MB mp3)Speaker order is Okochi, Novak, Fougere, Elliott, Donnelly, Brown, Brass and Wiebe.

I like this bit because it’s the only point in this forum where the candidates get a little feisty. These mayoral forums are pretty well-mannered affairs and the Lakeview one was no exception.

And, incidentally, Tim Siekawitch’s response is missing because he misheard the question and so his answer was pretty off topic.

Second, I wanted to post this response from Jim Elliott to the question of how to deal with the pension crisis. Typically, I haven’t been singling out stuff specific candidates have said because I frankly don’t want another accusation of unfairness right now. But here, Elliott suggests a way to use pension money to support local projects and I thought it was pretty smart. An elegant and novel idea in an election where there haven’t been a lot of surprising ones. I don’t know if Elliott’s suggestion is at all feasible or even legal (and a friend of mine who knows this pension stuff better than I do says it’d be supremely difficult to implement), but hey, I thought I’d throw it out there.

Download Jim Elliott speaking about the city pension fund and housing. (340kb mp3)

Follow all of our online election coverage — including interviews, analysis and podcasts — on our Regina City Election 2012 page. And you can read about everyone running in this election on our Candidate Profiles page.

Last Wednesday, October 3, there was mayoral forum at the University of Regina that was co-hosted by the Students’ Union and the UofR Debate Society. All nine mayoral candidates were there taking questions in what has been their most professional venue so far in this campaign.

After the forum was over, there was a reception with the candidates and I interviewed some of the people there to get their impressions of how the event went.

Download audience reactions to the UofR Students’ Union mayoral candidates’ forum. (8.8MB mp3)

Sorry it took so long to get this up. It was a bit of an editing challenge. I also have the complete audio for this forum. Is anyone interested in hearing that? Because I can make the file available if you are.

Tonight was the final meeting for this council. Not returning after the October 24 election are Fred Clipsham, Louis Browne and Jocelyn Hutchinson. And of course, Mayor Fiacco has also chosen not to run again.

The meeting closed out with a touching address from each councillor. They thanked their families, their colleagues on council, the city administration, the people of Regina. It was all very positive and not a single negative word was spoken.

Well, except for one.

In closing out the speeches, Mayor Fiacco had a few words for Regina’s media. Here’s what he had to say….

Mayor Fiacco On The Media by Paul Dechene

Um… ouch. I guess I suck?

Geez, what would he say if he knew about all the things I haven’t put in print.

Later, in the press scrum after the meeting, I got a chance to ask our outgoing mayor a question. Here’s how that went….

What Pat Fiacco will miss about being mayor by Paul Dechene

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Another candidates forum this evening, this one put on by the Lakeview Community Association.

The event kicked off with a forum between the Ward Two candidates and that was followed up by one involving all nine of the mayoral candidates. With so many people needing a chance to speak, things were very rushed. Opening statements were only three minutes and responses to questions were supposed to be even shorter. I can’t help but feel that with such a crowded field the whole forum format is starting to break down.

Again, I’m going to avoid commenting on the forum (mainly because it’s late and I want to go to bed). But I did manage to do more post-show interviews so you can hear what other people thought.

Unfortunately, it was a cold night and everyone was hightailing it home so I only managed to get three interviews in before I found myself all alone.* In the cold. Outside Lakeview Community School. With nothing but a dumb bike for transportation.

Download audience reactions from the Lakeview Community Association candidates’ forum. (2.5MB mp3)

FOOTNOTE
* Actually, that’s a lie. There were a few other stragglers hanging around. One of whom turned out to be Adam, who I interviewed after the Make Your Voice Heard forum. But I totally didn’t recognize him because I’m dumb like that. And it was dark.

Last night at the Regina Christian School, eight of the nine candidates for mayor got a chance to talk about the issues facing the city — only Councillor Michael Fougere was absent. (He sent his regrets, saying he had a prior commitment.)

Now, I could tell you how I think it went and which candidates I think performed the best, but instead, for the time being, I’ll hand that job over some of the other people who attended the forum. Eight other people, to be specific.

Special surprise guests in this audio collage, Martin Gourlie a former visitor to Ultrasonic Alarm Call and an author over at Regina Urban Ecology (Regina’s best urban-planning and city-living blog); plus, frequent Dog Blog commenter and former Barking Dogs subject, The Mysterious Ron!.… who is no longer mysterious… at least to me, because I got to meet him in person finally. Ron’s great. And in real life he speaks in full sentences!

Download audience reactions from the Make Your Voice Heard all-candidates debate. (9.2MB mp3)

Many thanks to everyone who agreed to be interviewed. And to read all of prairie dog’s election coverage, click on the green election dot above. Or here, that’ll work too.

Back on September 15, I went to the Farmer’s Market on the City Square Plaza and asked a bunch of people what they thought about the city election.

I just got around to editing everything together to share here.

I asked who people were thinking about voting for for mayor (not many would say), what they think are the most important issues and what they think of the current council.

Download interviews from the September 15 Farmers’ Market. (5.3MB mp3)

The music you can kind of hear in the background between interviews is played by buskers, Kiernan Anderson and Benjamin Knorr, who were, I think, the third interview clip in there.

In my coverage of last week’s mayoral debate on the stadium issue, I wrote of the candidates, “In short: there’s one candidate who’s a Yes on the current plan — councillor Michael Fougere — and arrayed against him are seven shades of No.”

And as for Meka Okochi, I wrote, “He believes that, with Regina booming, now is the best time to build a stadium. But, he doesn’t like the current plan because it involves too little private investment.”

And all that is pretty much what has been reported in all the other local press since then.

Well, apparently, Meka Okochi objects to being lumped into the “No” side of the stadium question. I know this because he sent a letter to all the local media clarifying his position.

After the jump, that e-mail (un-edited)…

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