Council incumbent Ken Johnson looks to build on Safety strategy

My family and I came to Red Deer in 1996, I worked for Scotiabank in those days. Isabelle, Tamaran, Stephen and I were so excited to make this great City our home. Within a year Red Deer had literally stolen my heart. I began to volunteer, and soon I found myself at the Red Deer Chamber, STARS, the Rotary Club, Parkland Youth Homes (now Vantage), the United Way, the Westerner Exposition, and my local Church. We decided to call Red Deer our permanent home in 2003. We had made so many friends and the quality of life remains unmatched. I retired from Banking in 2013. I felt prepared with my professional training and my extensive volunteer service to ask Red Deer to be a voice on Council. What an honour to have been chosen and a far greater honour to serve.

I am proud of the work we have done as a Council. In a very busy term we revised the Snow and Ice policy, brought successive tax decreases and efficiencies to our Capital and Operating budgets, maintained our investment in core services, revised our Social policy, demonstrated environmental leadership, completed the Riverlands development plan and the north of 11A development plan. We also developed and implemented a Community Safety strategy and Policing plan that will transform the way community safety is delivered. We promoted and helped fund a successful bid for the Canada Winter Games. All this while a recession threatened our quality of life.

In addition to my collective work, I delivered on my promise to be accessible, to serve each and every citizen, on any issue, anywhere in our City. I became involved in innumerable issues from safety and social to environmental and economic. What a privilege.

Going forward I’m looking to build on the Safety Strategy . I see economic development in sports tourism, Riverlands and north of 11A. I look forward to resolving the complex social issues affecting our vulnerable and youth. I will continue to offer strong financial leadership. We are not getting our fair share of hospital and health care resources. I want to continue to work toward getting this resolved. I am a problem solver and can bring differing views to the solution.

This is a broad and rich and beautiful City. We have true wealth in diversity with many voices, many perspectives, many cultures, many dreams and many ambitions. I ask you to allow me to connect those many energies for I believe we have unlimited potential to be a City of choice. Let’s go forward together Red Deer. Please support me on October 16.

Supplied by Ken Johnston

Todayville

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

Opinion: Trump Making ‘Sex’ Great Again On Day One Of Presidency

Business / 4 hours ago

Trump’s Initial DOGE Executive Order Doesn’t Quite ‘Dismantle Government Bureaucracy’

International / 8 hours ago

California’s soaring electricity rates strain consumers, impact climate goals

Business

Facebook / Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg on the Joe Rogan Experience

Published on January 10, 2025

Duane Rolheiser

Earlier this week Mark Zuckerberg rocked the world of information with the news that Facebook, Instagram, and his other Meta properties would no longer use third party fact checking groups to censor information. As the week wraps up, Zuckerberg sits down for an extended conversation with Joe Rogan. For anyone interested in the world of information, this is a must see / listen.

From the Joe Rogan Experience

Mark Zuckerberg is the chief executive of Meta Platforms Inc., the company behind Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp, Meta Quest, Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, Orion augmented reality glasses, and other digital platforms, devices, and services.

Daily Caller

‘Embarrassingly Wrong’: Corporate Media’s Talking Heads Confess Their Biggest Blunders Of 2024

Published on December 31, 2024

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Owen Klinsky

From MSNBC host Rachel Maddow to businessman and television personality Mark Cuban, a slew of media leaders divulged what they got wrong this past year in a Semafor article published Monday.

Media missteps included NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein underestimating the impact of inflation on politics, Fox News anchor Dana Perino incorrectly predicting Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce would get engaged and CNBC financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin not putting “DOGE and the pairing of Elon [Musk] and Vivek [Ramaswamy]” on his 2024 Bingo card, according to the piece. Despite the variety of answers, one topic — Joe Biden’s lack of mental acuity — seemed to sit at the top of the list for many respondents.

“Like many others, I was completely, utterly, totally, embarrassingly wrong about [President Joe] Biden’s lack of mental competence,” progressive British-American broadcaster Mehdi Hasan told Semafor.

Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential election in July following a disastrous June debate performance in which he appeared to lose his train of thought several times and stated he “beat Medicare.” Prior to the decision to exit the race, the White House made various efforts to mask the effects of his age, with the president wearing sneakers rather than dress shoes and taking shorter steps up Air Force One.

The White House actively denied claims Biden’s mental health was declining, with White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre characterizing a video of the President wandering away from world leaders at the G7 Summit as a “cheap fake” and claiming it was orchestrated by Republicans. Much of the corporate media supported the White House’s effort, with panelists on MSNBC’s Morning Joe describing a June article from The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that detailed the president’s declining mental health as “outrageous,” and CNN’s Bakari Sellers suggesting in July, well after the debate, that there was no reason to believe Biden could not serve for another four years.

Other examples of the media downplaying concerns over Biden’s mental acuity include The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg rushing to the president’s defense after co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said Biden could have a “senior moment” on stage prior to the debate and MSNBC analyst Mike Barnicle describing members of the Democratic Party as cruel in July for trying to oust the president from the 2024 race.

More recently, former CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza apologized in a YouTube video posted in December for waiting too long to investigate concerns that Biden’s mental acuity was deteriorating, admitting that as a journalist he should have “pushed harder earlier for more information about Joe Biden’s mental and physical well-being.”

American talk show host Brian Lehrer made a similar apology in his response to Semafor: “Many callers to my show said Joe Biden was in no shape to run for re-election. I mostly dismissed it as ageism. Then I watched the debate.”