Journal blog defends Valérie Plante
The Journal has a blog, and on Friday it’s defending Valérie Plante making, essentially, the point that a lot of the criticism of the current administration is coming from suburbanites, or those of a suburban frame of mind.
walkerp 12:29 on 2020-09-04 Permalink
Enfin!
The problem is that all these ideologues making their extremist arguments leaves no room for nuanced critique of the Plante administration. There are issues but we can not address them when it becomes OMG I have to walk three blocks to my home on a beautiful September day because bike fascism!!!
I honestly suspect that aside from the usual extremists using social media to amplify their ideology, there are bots and fake accounts also adding to it. Small scale here, but that’s how they work, sowing their dissent in every media angle and crack where they identify these kinds of conflicts going on.
Can we please get some real data and can “journalists” please base their analyses and opinions on that, rather than some cranky asshole in St-Anne de Bellevue and the six trolls who liked his tweet?!
Ian 12:42 on 2020-09-04 Permalink
Let’s not forget that this pocket of the internet is its own little echo chamber, walkerp, despite that you think that people who disagree with you are assholes…
I know it might blow your nuanced mind but not everyone in the Plateau think Plante is doing a great job – for a variety of reasons.
walkerp 15:20 on 2020-09-04 Permalink
I’ll repeat it for you Ian, because in your haste, you either skipped over or did not absorb the first line I wrote:
“The problem is that all these ideologues making their extremist arguments leaves no room for nuanced critique of the Plante administration.”
dwgs 22:33 on 2020-09-04 Permalink
I would say that since Ian made a reference to “your nuanced mind” that he actually did absorb your first line.
It’s more than just Gazoo editorialists and car crazed ideologues who are thinking that the current administration should consider a bit of a tweak in their approach.
walkerp 09:06 on 2020-09-05 Permalink
Just to be clear, I have my disappointments with this administration and have acted on many of them, particularly the softball field strongarm maneuver by Ferrandez. However, this simplistic scapegoating is extremely dangerous, especially coming from supposed progressives. There is a real risk that we get some fake centrist government that appeases the car addicts and gets back in hand with the corrupt construction industry (which is clearly still there, but somewhat weakened).
I have yet to hear a real, nuanced critique with an actual understanding of how the city’s political structures work.
Here are the bullshit arguments we are getting. It’s not that the concerns aren’t real, but why is Plante always the target (partly because that is the leader’s role, but more because she is a woman and perceived as “green”):
-downtown is dying (um, covid plus been going on forever)
-construction everywhere (always been this way, plus her administration had the courage to take on necessary infrastructure projects that Coderre punted on for short-term gain)
-traffic wah all because of crazy bikers (always been this way, and people who actually live here vastly prefer having bike and pedestrian safe neighbourhoods)
There does seem to be a real problem with consulting and communication (although I have never had an issue with it in our borough). How much of that is Plante’s fault and how much of it is the borough councillors? Again, nuance and detail.
And finally to address your point about the electric charging station, Ian. It’s an error, but what is the real impact? And how is this Plante’s fault. Is she supposed to go back and fix centuries of bad infrastructure and organization in 3 years? This is a city that routinely has construction jobs that dig into a gas line because they did not have or look at the plans of the gas lines. Have you ever managed a large project as a bureaucrat? It is possible that somebody overlooked that electric station in the planning phase. Or is it more likely that the did see it and either the analysis suggested it is much more cost effective to remove it later or that the company that was responsible for removing it has a long list of other jobs to do and so it will get done later? Or maybe even that they were supposed to and screwed up and emails are going back and forth right now? If you have ever managed a project at any scale, you know that things go wrong at every level and the larger the scale the more that happens. I am not excusing these errors. They are bad and particularily bad in the east coast and perhaps worst in Canada in Montreal. There is a culture here of shitty, lazy corrupt work, especially in the construction industry. It’s terrible and needs to be fixed. And PM shares some of that responsibility. But to place the blame for that kind of error entirely on their shoulders is simplistic and ignores the complexity and rigidity of the existing structures and culture in place.
Did you call the city and ask them about it? You might be surprised, that 311 line often has actual answers. Our streets were not getting properly swept last summer and I phoned them and the person told me that they had a shortage of the large cleaning trucks because repairs were behind and had first not cleaned our street and then sent us a smaller one that couldn’t do the job properly. I called a few times throughout the summer and this year we have a big one again. Likewise for blocked drains. Much more satisfying than ranting and raving about it online, I can tell you that. Let us know how it goes.
Chris 14:55 on 2020-09-05 Permalink
I’ll vouch for the 311 part. I’ll often report potholes, clogged drains, broken streetlights, and the like, and amazingly they are almost always fixed within a month. Try it.
Dhomas 16:01 on 2020-09-05 Permalink
I use 311 all the time, to great effect. I live Anjou but right on its border; the other side of my street is MHM. So the garbage pickup wasn’t taking place for a while for the 2 houses on my street because of this. A call to 311 fixed it by the next pickup date. My house was also not considered eligible for vignette parking because that department considered my house to be in MHM. 311 fixed that, too. There is a cul-de-sac near my house blocked with concrete bollards on what would otherwise be a contiguous street. Some drivers were driving up on the sidewalk and halfway into my neighbour’s front yard to bypass the cul-de-sac. A call to 311 and a few weeks later there was a pole next to the sidewalk to prevent drivers from performing this dangerous maneuver. I could list many more examples.
Ian 18:38 on 2020-09-05 Permalink
I also call 311 often, usually just for info. I’m not sure why Walkerp would think a grouchy old man like me wouldn’t be calling the city all the time haha
mare 18:47 on 2020-09-05 Permalink
@Chris,I assume you refer to the Montreal 311 app, and not part? On iOS it’s just called Montreal, which is a bit far fetching, but I can confirm that reporting broken lights, garbage piles etc works very well. In my case never as long as a month, but several days (street light in park) to a week (a pile of branches that were cut by a city crew when a big branch fell down, but then left to rot on someone’s flower patch for two weeks). And you can complain anonymously, without getting a “serial complainer”-flag on your file.
(I assume the Android version works equally well.)