Approaching First Year Anniversary, Calgarians Give Mayor And Council Top Marks

Calgary, AB - Since claiming victory with 28% of the vote, and narrowly beating the closest opponent Bev Longstaff by 4,208 votes, the results of an Ipsos-Reid/CFCN poll show approval ratings for Mayor Dave Bronconnier are very high. Overall, 84% of Calgarians approve of Mayor Bronconnier's performance over the past year, with 26% saying they "strongly approve" and 58% saying they "somewhat approve". Another eight-in-ten (81%) report they approve of the current City Council's performance over the past year, with 13% saying they "strongly approve" and 68% saying they "somewhat approve".

The Mayor and Calgary's current City Council also score high on living up to Calgarians' expectations. Eight-in-ten (80%) report Mayor Dave Bronconnier has either met or exceeded their expectations while 76% say Calgary's current City Council has done the same.

Ratings show the Mayor and City Council have successfully navigated some challenging civic issues in the first year. Approval ratings are very high for "Overall Management of the City of Calgary" (87%), "the handling of the G8 Summit in Calgary" (88%) and for "making Calgary a better place to live" (84%). The Mayor and City Council do receive somewhat lower approval ratings for dealing with "road & traffic issues" (60%), "response to job action by the Calgary Police Services" (55%) and "the proposed sale & eventual retention of ENMAX by The City of Calgary" (52%). However, even on these contentious issues, the Mayor and City Council still receives majority approval ratings.

Nearly nine-in-ten (87%) believe the Mayor and City Council are on the "right track" with 20% saying "strongly right track" and 67% saying "somewhat right track". Only one-in-ten (11%) believe the Mayor and City Council are on the "wrong track".

Looking ahead, Roads & Transportation (78%) continues to be the most important issue Calgarians say City Council and the Mayor should direct their attention toward. In second place is Schools & Education (21%), followed by Health Care (16%), Accommodating Growth in the City (15%), the Environment and Pollution (9%), Taxes (9%), Poverty and Homelessness (9%), Housing Issues (8%) and Crime (8%).

These are the findings of an Ipsos-Reid poll conducted between September 19th and September 24th, 2002. The poll is based on a randomly selected sample of 400 adult Calgarians. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate to within 177 4.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire population in The City of Calgary been polled. The margin of error will be larger for other sub-groupings of the survey population. These data were statistically weighted to ensure the sample's age/sex composition reflects that of the actual Calgary population according to the 1996 Census data.

For more information on this news release, please contact:
Tim Olafson
Senior Vice-President
Ipsos-Reid
Calgary
(403) 237-0066
(403) 850-8297