Thank you for taking the time to complete this questionnaire! We ask candidates to return their responses to info@commonsensecalgary.

com by Oct 16, 2013. Candidate Name: John Hilton-OBrien (John HOB) What ward or position you are running in/for: Councillor, Ward 1

Mobility:
1. Given that 77% of trips (Statistics Canada, Commuting

to Work 2013) are currently made by car in Calgary, do you believe it is City Halls job to [Please circle]:
a. Set targets to change peoples commuter behavior

around the city and encourage more transit, walking and biking? Or
b. To support the choice of Calgarians to use their

automobiles while also improving accessibility to other methods of transportation.

2. The recent Tom-Tom Index found that in Calgary,

congestion adds 27 minutes of additional travel time in a 30 minute commute. What are you going to do to help decrease this lost personal time for Calgarians? Sell our surface-level parking lots in downtown to people who will build parking structures. This will end the long searches for downtown parking that currently slow our commutes and increase smog. The proceeds can pay down the citys debt, and the revenue will be replaced by taxing the new parking structures.

Affordability:
1. According to the Fraser Institute, property taxes have

increased by 31% over the past 3 years. Do you agree with this figure? Yes.
2. If No, what do you believe this increase to be? 3. Over the next four years, what is your personal objective

in terms of tax increases? Specify a percentage amount. Inflation. That is, roughly 6% over four years. See http://www.calgary.ca/CA/fs/Documents/CorporateEconomics/Inflation-Review/Inflation-Review-201304.pdf?noredirect=1 for rate used.
4. What regulations and red tape will you eliminate to reduce

the regulatory burden on Calgarys residents and businesses? It currently takes 18 months to approve the building of an apartment block. In a city with a 1.2% vacancy rate, this is unconscionable we are creating homelessness. The fact that some of the same people talking about ending homelessness are delaying development approvals suggests that some campaigns about increased social services are merely political pornography exploiting the image of the poor in order to gain power over others. Similarly, approval of a secondary suite requires a personal appearance before council, together with exorbitant fees. Added to high requirements for the suites themselves, and we cannot expect people to

abide by the law that is why illegal suites vastly outnumber legal suites. Until this issue is fixed, any discussion of expanding secondary suites is meaningless. We must also end the apparent war against suburbs. We need houses, as well as apartments. We wont have them unless we make an adequate number of Greenfield lots available. Increasing the supply of homes will bring the cost down to manageable levels for everyone.
5. The 2013 $52 million surplus was directed for flood

reconstruction efforts. Many Calgarians have different views on how to use this. What do you believe is the best use for the 2014 $52 million surplus? b) Give money back to taxpayers When Councillors started arguing about what pet project to spend the money on, we passed into the realm of pork-barrel politics.

Safety:
1. Do you believe that the $470,000 spent on the blue ring

artwork called travelling light could have been better spent on improving light and security on public transit? Travelling Light is not just a blue ring: it also has antennae. In addition, it does not pose a security risk itself: it would be hard to steal. I am afraid that this may be the best I can say for it. Almost any use of the money could have been better. Frankly, Travelling Light may be evidence that our current public art policy is unworkable. If we are to pay for public art, we could at least use local artists. Artists in Alberta currently earn an average of about $20,000 per year. Spending half a

million dollars on a foreign artist when this is the case is positively criminal. Other measures which might help include centralizing the money for each public works project so that it is not all spent on site, and considering multiple pieces of art, rather than the single monstrosity (I use that word in its technical sense) at each site.

2. What specific measures would you introduce to improve

personal safety on public transit after dark? The first thing that we should do is start measuring response times to trouble calls on busses, so that we can work to improve them. We should certainly continue to improve lighting and sight lines at train stations. An improved physical security presence on the train line might help. We should certainly add in a texting function for reporting safety issues on trains and busses to allow a silent alert by people too intimidated to speak out or use the very public intercoms. The number of people who cause most of the safety concerns on transit that are due to mental health/alcoholism/drug issues is relatively small and consistent. We could use specialized teams that deal with these individuals as well as the mental health, rehab, homeless shelters which serve them.

3. What measures would you implement to make

Calgarians safer? A typical month in Ward 1 would be July. We had 475 police calls, of which 376 were social disturbances

mostly noise complaints. 66 were physical disturbances mostly graffiti. These are largely bylaw concerns, which do not require the presence of sworn officers. We could expand the presence of bylaw enforcement officers, and use specialized teams such as PACT to work with calls related to mental health and addiction issues. Regular officers could do targeted patrols of identified trouble locations. Where appropriate, these patrols could be done as beats by pedestrian or mounted officers. We also have a number of concerns about traffic safety. A wide variety of options are available. Rather than a one-size fits all approach, it would be best to allow community associations to experiment to find methods that work for their neighborhoods: what works in Bowness may not work in Rocky Ridge. We should permit the Federation of Calgary Communities to continue expanding the range of community-based safety programs in general. A number of options are available to reduce safety issues in communities and the City does not need to get in the way. Please sign up for the HUB system, which alerts residents to immediate local concerns, and allows them to help police with their observations. You can do so at the following link: https://hiplink.calgarypolice.ca/websignup/wsuedit.ht ml

Thank you for your response. Please note your answers will be posted online at our website, commonsensecalgary.com for public viewing. Happy campaigning!