The second response we’ll look at comes courtesy of Red Deer First’s David Helm, though the content of the response may be different to what you might expect.

The full text is as follows:

Since several individuals are regularly asking me a plethora of questions, many of which are very complicated and difficult to answer from outside of council looking in I have decided that all will receive the same response.

My Facebook page is ‘David Helm for Red Deer City Council’ and you are welcome to ask your questions individually (more than one at a time will be deleted) on this Facebook page. I will do my best to answer all in this manner so that my answers may be shared with all who choose to follow my page rather than spending countless hours to answer multiple involved questions for 1 potential voter who may or may not even vote. This also allows me to reach a lot more voters and to somewhat control what is done with my answers, eliminating the possibility of taking what I say in part and using it out of context.

I don’t have the luxury of a council paycheck and my campaign is entirely self funded, meanwhile I still need to earn a living. This may cause my replies to take longer than anticipated dependent on both work and the number of vandalized signs I need to repair. I intend to answer all so please bear with me.

 

Thank you,

David Helm

 

So here we are, no direct answers and a suggestion (albeit with some curious limitations) on how to get a response. Let’s break it down then.

Since several individuals are regularly asking me a plethora of questions, many of which are very complicated and difficult to answer from outside of council looking in I have decided that all will receive the same response.

I don’t think this statement is doing the voters any favours. Why make the assumption that you’re only able to answer complicated or difficult questions from a council seat? Isn’t part of convincing voters the ability to show that you can tackle these types of questions and provide solutions before you’re elected? To be fair, I did ask a lot of questions, some requiring more in depth answers than others. However, candidates are letting me know they’re giving them their attention and consideration in order to answer to the best of their abilities. A form response sent to Undisclosed Recipients (read, multiple people) doesn’t create the same type of impact. Three RDF candidates let me know they received my questions and are working on answers. This kind of brief heads up is something lots of people appreciate; it lets them know their questions or concerns aren’t falling on deaf ears.

My Facebook page is ‘David Helm for Red Deer City Council’ and you are welcome to ask your questions individually (more than one at a time will be deleted) on this Facebook page.

I have a Facebook account, as I’m sure lots of voters do. Not everyone does. What happens if someone emails Mr. Helm and is directed to a Facebook page they can’t access? If you Google the page in question it does take you there, but immediately prompts you to log in. Unless you have a Facebook account and are able to, the information posted there is virtually inaccessible. The limitation to a single source of information also flies in the face of the Transparency & Accountability of RDF’s platform where it indicates they’ll make better use of technology to communicate. Mr. Helm does have a Twitter account, albeit, with a single tweet that doesn’t make any reference to the election, and one can only assume people would be directed away from there anyway. So, we’re left with his Facebook page as the primary source for information for his campaign. A single source for information where many people won’t have open access to it is essentially what you do if you’ve decided to do the opposite. There’s even a prime example right on his Facebook page that outlines this problem:

“Hey Dave. Thom’s wife here. Good ole Thom doesn’t know how to use FB!! I had to go on this site for him. Good luck with the election.” (emphasis mine)

The second issue with this statement is that anyone who asks more than one question at once will have them deleted. There’s no indication given as to whether this means all the questions will be deleted, or reposted by Mr. Helm with just the first question answered. Limiting voters with legitimate concerns to a single question is essentially what our Prime Minister does with Canadian journalists; one question only, questions deemed off topic or not important are ignored.  Certainly, it’s a good way to control the information and message coming out, but it does little to reassure anyone that their questions will be heard at all. To be fair, candidates will obviously receive a lot of repeat questions and answering them once is easier than many times. However, it’s also not difficult to say that “a question has been answered before when asked by John Smith, please see that discussion for my response.” Further consideration should be given to this, especially if Mr. Helm is elected. No council member can expect to funnel citizen concerns and questions into single point access and limit them to the number of questions they can ask. If no attempt is made at that prior to the election, will this approach remain the same afterwards?

So far there’s a plethora of one question on the page, asking if his campaign is self-funded.

I will do my best to answer all in this manner so that my answers may be shared with all who choose to follow my page rather than spending countless hours to answer multiple involved questions for 1 potential voter who may or may not even vote.

As mentioned, Mr. Helm has only had to answer one question about his campaign, the content of which obviously did not take hours to answer. Given the lack of questions from the public on his Facebook page, I have a hard time seeing why Me. Helm doesn’t make an attempt to provide answers he receives elsewhere. One not need spend hours answering questions every day, but this is an election and people do expect information to be provided. Secondly, multiple questions and the answers to them are easily shared between voters, so the implied pointlessness of answering questions for a single person who may not even use the information is moot. Voters share information, share stories and share experiences with the people courting them who are on the ballot. Pointing people to one place to find information in a limited way essentially eliminates this and reduces the amount of information voters spread about any given candidate. 

This also allows me to reach a lot more voters and to somewhat control what is done with my answers, eliminating the possibility of taking what I say in part and using it out of context.

As shown above, this has not increased Mr. Helm’s reach into the voter base; it has demonstrably limited it. I suppose this may be a benefit in that one cannot take out of context what one is unable to read.

I don’t have the luxury of a council paycheck and my campaign is entirely self funded, meanwhile I still need to earn a living. This may cause my replies to take longer than anticipated dependent on both work and the number of vandalized signs I need to repair.

The appeal to voters for leniency due to Mr. Helm not receiving council pay, and is running a self-funded campaign while still needing to earn a living, will certainly appeal to some and not to others. However, the sentence is written in a way that makes it sound like running for council is a financial burden, and that voters should be mindful of that. To be completely fair, running for city council will strain anyone’s resources making a grassroots run at it. However, the inclusion of the ‘luxury of a council paycheck’ statement is strange considering that out of the 26 candidates listed so far, 19 also don’t have that luxury. I can’t think of why receipt of council pay would make anyone more likely to be able to answer questions from voters. The list of candidates also includes a majority who are also earning a living while running, and many have identified that they have self-funded campaigns. On top of that, many of them are engaging voters in person and online without limiting anyone as to where they can find information or how many questions they can ask. The same goes for the vandalized signs comment. While unfortunate that this is something candidates have to deal with, putting more focus on fixing signs than engaging voters won’t spread your message as much as actually speaking to and answering people’s questions.

I intend to answer all so please bear with me.

That is, of course, unless you contact Mr. Helm anywhere other than his Facebook page or ask him more than one question.

Given that I probably won’t receive an answer beyond this by email, and asking each individual question on his Facebook page would take a lot of time, are we able to glean any insight into Mr. Helm’s stance from what’s in the newspaper?

A May 8, 2013 Red Deer Express article identifies that Mr. Helm will help to represent the residents of the North side of Red Deer as he lives there. That’s probably a good thing since I think the South end of the city is paid a lot more attention. The same article identifies bylaw enforcement as a priority, advocating for greater enforcement of local bylaws than focusing on photo radar. I couldn’t find any information as to the total number of bylaw complaints or speeding tickets issued in the city, so I can’t speak to whether one is actually happening more than another. All I can offer is anecdotal evidence about only ever having seen four or five photo radar sites in Red Deer in four years working here.

The article quotes him as saying, “I love this City but I am saddened by the increase in litter, vandalism and thefts occurring since moving here. I attribute this to law enforcement and government collecting monies to support perceived entitlements rather than providing a clean safe environment to raise our families.”(emphasis mine)

This is a bit of a stretch. What entitlements does he think are being paid more attention than efforts to make sure the city is safe? Blanket statements like this are generally good for an attention getter, but usually fall apart under further scrutiny. I could just as easily attribute it to gangs or social factors without any basis. The responses I posted from candidate Bob Bevins made it clear that police and enforcement were important parts of the community. Mr. Helm’s statement here sounds as though police and local government care more about themselves than their community.

A June 5, 2013 Red Deer Advocate article quotes Mr. Helm as saying, “I think we have too far liberal of a government running the city right now and we need the conservative approach. Central Alberta people tend to be conservative.”

The best counterpoint I have to this is saying that Texas is Republican, and Texans always vote Republican. The only problem here is that it’s not true, especially in urban areas. A full third of Texan Representatives in the House of Representatives are Democrats. In the 2011 federal election, 25% of voters in the Red Deer riding didn’t vote Conservative. That’s a fairly large block of people who don’t tend to be Conservative. Provincially, those numbers become even larger. Regardless of your feelings towards to PCs, they’re far more Centrist than true conservative (especially when you consider the federal Tories backed the Wildrose as the true conservative option). If we take the Wildrose as the “true” conservative option that people in central Alberta ‘tend to be’, they received 34.24% of the vote, leaving 65.76% for the less conservative options. Locally, people often say that Red Deer city council is dominated by liberal individuals. This doesn’t lend to the assumption that people will automatically lean towards a conservative candidate because they live in central Alberta.

He also says, “I am passionate about this city. I am passionate about the fact that it needs a lot of repairs. Repairs are getting done in the wrong places.”

I’d like to only attribute the lack of specifics to journalistic omission, but I can’t help but think this was a catch-all statement so no specifics would have to be given. The above mentioned Express article identifies potholes as a major repair item for the city, but neither expands on if any areas are worse than others. The only solution is a veiled suggestion that the money spent on the city’s Identity Project would have been better spent buying asphalt. In all honesty, I agree with him here. Given a lot of the responses to that project, that money would have definitely been better spent elsewhere.

Along with several other candidates, Mr. Helm points to his business experience as a necessity on city council. While I think this is true in some regards, running a city is not the same as running a small business or a farm. Look at Rob Ford in Toronto; he asserted that running the biggest city in the country was the same as running his family business. It isn’t. True, Red Deer’s operating costs are magnificently smaller than Toronto’s, but there’s a difference between managing your own finances and managing the finances to support services for nearly 100,000 people. Typically, that involves more than ordering parts, maintaining equipment and paying farm hands. I recognize that that’s a generalization, but I think it holds true to the approach of any candidate who’s relying on the fact that they have business experience to make it seem like they’d have no problem running the city.