Alderman Joe Ceci

October 1995 – October 2010

Joe Ceci was elected as Alderman of Ward 9 in the municipal election of October, 1995 and served in Ward 9 until his decision to retire in October 2010. Prior to election to public office, Joe spent 15 years as a social worker in Calgary, and part of that time as an employee of the City of Calgary’s Community and Neighbourhood Services Department.

Commitment

Joe has made no secret of the fact that his interest in entering municipal politics was instigated by his time as a social worker in the community, and his frustration with seeing people slip through the cracks of the social safety net. Joe felt that by becoming Alderman, he could advocate for legislative change that would make a difference to many of the people he served as a social worker.

A commitment to preventive social services and the maintenance of the social safety net in Calgary remained Joe Ceci’s greatest priorities over his 15 years as Alderman of Ward 9. His efforts to enact or change legislation at the Council level, and in his committee and community work at civic, provincial, federal and even international levels, reflect the fact that Joe never lost sight of the concerns that inspired him in the first place.

Nor did Joe lose sight of the people who elected him. He was known personally by many people of Ward 9, who found in him an approachable Alderman who wanted to hear their ideas and learn about the things which were of concern to them. Joe Ceci proved to be not only someone who would champion their issues, but someone who was innovative in bringing all concerned individuals, government, and social agencies together on issues of import to Ward 9 and the city as a whole. As a very hands-on Alderman, Joe knew how to translate good ideas into concrete action, to break down barriers and to instill pride in people and to persuade everyone that he or she had a contribution to make. Thanks to his sense of fun, Joe was able to elicit smiles and laughter on occasions where these were the last things anyone expected.

Over his years in office, Joe Ceci brought many notices of motion to Council, which were aimed at improving the social infrastructure of the city and addressing social issues which are all too frequently ignored. A few of Joe’s most progressive notices of motion failed to get the desired support, but distinguish Joe Ceci as a leader ahead of his time. These ideas will undoubtedly make their way to Council Chambers again, under future Councils, and find support. The many successful notices of motion put forward by Joe Ceci have contributed enormously to the construction of a solid framework for the socially just and environmentally sustainable city that Calgary is becoming.

Diversity

Joe Ceci has always been a champion of diversity, and has tried to redress situations where systems have enabled discrimination, and thwarted the progress and contributions of certain segments of society on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity or sex. Joe was a driving force behind the creation of Diversity Calgary late in the 1990s, subsequent to a meeting of the community and the City’s Department of Community and Neighbourhood Services. Diversity Calgary met monthly for a couple of years, and produced influential strategy documents on how civic activities should be conducted so that people of diverse backgrounds would enjoy equal access to opportunities in Calgary.

A UNESCO anti-discrimination initiative provided a reason to seek municipal funding which enabled the City to become a member of the Canadian Coalition of Municipalities Against Racism and Discrimination (CMARD). Joe Ceci was involved in the creation of The Canadian CMARD, and in 2008, he initiated a proposal to redraft city policies so that barriers to people of diverse backgrounds seeking work with the City of Calgary would be eliminated. Despite the fact that systemic barriers to hiring people of diverse backgrounds exist at City Hall, there has been a resistance to acknowledging as much, and the motion was not passed.

Joe’s commitment to diversity has been unquestionable, and enormously appreciated by new Canadians. Joe was one of the first Aldermen to support the creation of the Ethno-Cultural Council of Calgary, which became one of the first collective ethno-cultural voices in the community.

Joe was an early and stalwart supporter of ‘Fair Fares’ – a successful initiative to secure access to monthly transit passes for low income Calgarians who really needed them. These passes allow low income residents and those with disabilities to access transit, allowing many of them to get to jobs, and to participate more fully economically, socially and culturally in the life of the city. Joe has also been a long-time advocate for people with disabilities, and is a supporter of and perennial presenter at Calgary’s Disability Action Hall awards.

Housing

With the preponderance of subsidized housing in Ward 9, and a genuine need for affordable housing in the ward, Joe’s involvement with the Calgary Housing Company – the City’s primary provider of affordable housing – has always been very important to him in addressing the needs of his constituents. Many shelters for the homeless have been located in Ward 9, and Joe has been involved with the Foothills Mustard Seed, Mayland Heights Drop In Centre and The Brick Mustard Seed emergency shelters, as well as addiction recovery centres such as Recovery Acres in Tuxedo Park which is vying for approval as Joe is leaving office.

Because of prevailing tensions and a lack of communication between the homeless and anxious inner city residents, in 2006 Joe and his Community Liaison – Sharon Stevens – started working with the Calgary Drop-In and Rehabilitation Centre to create the Clean Team. ‘Joe’s Clean Team’ brought together volunteers from the community at large with volunteer residents from the Drop-In Centre to go out into the community together to pick up garbage a couple of times a month. Not only does the Clean Team address the problem of littering around downtown Calgary, but it provides members of the community with an opportunity to meet the homeless, interact with them, and learn a little about what they are up against. The homeless volunteers also feel part of something in the community, and build relationships with people outside the shelter system. Moreover, it’s actually fun! Joe’s Clean Team is an example of one more way that Joe Ceci has taken a serious social problem and enacted a concrete solution that is actually enjoyable in its execution, while building bridges in the community into the bargain.

Community Cleanups

In all of his 13 neighbourhoods, Joe has been involved in annual Spring or Fall Community Clean-Ups, and indeed seeing him with a garbage bag atop a pile of junk during a clean up is the abiding memory many of his constituents have of him. Joe has always believed that by working side by side with your neighbour toward a shared goal, a level of exchange is possible that builds empathy and understanding. Joe has worked closely with community associations and volunteers precisely because he knows this is the best way to learn about what is of concern to the people in his ward, and to act upon their concerns.

Provincial and Federal Appointments

For 15 years, Joe Ceci has been a board member, President, Vice-President and Treasurer of the Family and Community Support Services Association of Alberta (FCSSAA), the provincial leader in preventive social support services. Through this organization, Joe has been involved in many initiatives, including the Poverty Reduction Plan. His involvement has allowed him to learn of action being taken by other municipalities in the province, and to bring some of those powerful ideas to Calgary.

Since 2005, Joe has also been Calgary’s delegate to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM). Joe recently led an FCM initiative to call for a federal Anti-Poverty Act. This demand for income security for all Canadians is one more way that Joe Ceci is coming at an issue he cares about deeply from a different angle.

Many of the good ideas Joe has been involved with through the FCSSAA and the FCM are ideas he learned of elsewhere and successfully brought back and implemented in Calgary. Also as President of the FCSSAA he travelled to Fort McMurray to learn how and why the social agencies there have been so stretched in view of the economic boom in the tarsands and the myriad social problems the boom has brought with it.

Sustainability

Many of the good ideas Joe has been involved with through the FCSSAA and the FCM he brought back to Calgary and successfully implemented here. Through the FCM, he learned of Toronto’s 22 minute makeover, which is a civic campaign to get all Torontonians outside for 22 minutes on Earth Day – April 22nd – to clean up their communities.

Joe successfully borrowed this idea. His intentions with the 22-minute makeover were to find fun and engaging ways of getting individuals and businesses to take responsibility for the beauty and cleanliness of their city and to do it side by side with their Alderman and their neighbours. Joe and his mascot ‘Eartha’ brought fun and environmental awareness to schools, businesses and community and cultural groups all over the city on Earth Day as they ventured out with their garbage pickers to clean up their surroundings. The idea caught on, as from one year to the next, more and more groups registered teams and proudly reported garbage harvested during the 22-minute makeover. The 22-minute campaign went from being a Ward 9 initiative, to something the whole city was engaged in, and even bred a little friendly competition.

Joe Ceci was quick to understand that green was the colour of the future, and he was enthusiastic about finding ways to make Calgary greener. Joe was an enthusiastic supporter of the Santiago Calatrava-designed pedestrian Peace Bridge over the Bow River. He felt it would not only make a beautiful contribution to the city aesthetically, but also serve as an encouragement to all to walk and bike, and use sustainable means of commuting and recreating. While the commissioning of the bridge was hotly contested, Joe is confident that in the long term the bridge will be something Calgarians will cherish.

Joe was supportive of the Plan-It initiative, which established a city-planning blueprint that calls for increased densities and a limit to urban sprawl. In 2009, Joe also supported and enthusiastically attended the first Bow River Flow – an outdoor event that celebrates the Bow River and human-powered transportation.

The Sustainable Environmental and Ethical Procurement Policy (SEEPP) resulted from Joe Ceci’s Notice of Motion, and became legislation which requires all City departments to take into consideration the environmental and ethical impacts of any purchases they make, still in the piloting phases, under SEEPP, all City departments must look beyond price to also weigh the social benefits such as worker health and safety, energy efficiency, minimal packaging, and other sustainability aspects over the entire life-cycle of the product.

Residential/Industrial Mix

Because so much of Ward 9 is industrial, challenges arise where the needs and desires of residents are at odds with their industrial neighbours. Keeping both businesses and residents happy is one of the defining challenges of Ward 9. Opposition to the Lilydale poultry plant in Ramsay has been an on-going challenge for the Ward 9 office, and industrial accidents and disasters have also coloured the history of Ward 9 during Joe’s tenure. In 1999, an explosion at Hub Oil killed two employees and levelled the oil recycling plant, and in 2001, there was a serious fire at the Dura-Lite plant, followed by a huge fire in a residential complex in Erlton in 2002. In 2001, testing revealed dangerously high levels of lead in the soil of residents’ yards in Lynnview Ridge; a site formerly operated by Imperial Oil. Joe was very involved in the discussions and negotiations which resulted in Imperial Oil buying up 160 homes and rehabilitating the topsoil.

In an effort to partially alleviate the tension between residential and industrial components of Ward 9, Joe Ceci’s Notice of Motion on transitioning older industrial areas was passed in the spring of 2010, and gives Calgary’s older, central, industrial areas a new reason for being by expanding the uses of these areas. Further to Joe’s efforts, a whole new zoning category called ‘Industrial Edge’ has become part of land use lexicon in Calgary. Because Joe felt that land use is so important in Ward 9, he has served on the City’s Land and Asset Committee for 14 of his 15 years as Alderman.

When a City-owned tract of land in Bridgeland/Riverside was recommended by the Administration to be sold, Joe noticed, and investigated. He discovered that the land was being used as a community garden, and with the help of the Bridgeland Riverside Community Association and the City Heritage Planner, learned that the piece of land had been used to grow food by residents since the late 1920s. Together they made a case to City Council, asking for the City’s protection of the garden as a historic site. It is now permanently protected, and part of the Adopt-a-Park program.

Arts and Culture

Joe Ceci’s very first Notice of Motion after being elected Alderman in 1995 was to move the creation of the W.O. Mitchell Book Award, which was passed, and is awarded annually to a Calgary author for an outstanding book. Throughout his time as Alderman, Joe has been a supporter of arts and culture. Joe has served on the boards of the Calgary Public Library, Calgary Arts Development Authority, the Calgary Folk Music Society, the Muttart Public Art Gallery, and Ghost River Theatre Productions. When Calgary was the host to the Juno awards in 2010, Joe’s Notice of Motion resulted in ‘Music Lives Here’, a series of live mini-concerts by local musicians held in Council Chambers. While the idea of ‘Music Lives Here’ met with some scepticism initially, the concerts proved to be a hit with alderman and visitors to Council Chambers alike. Joe has demonstrated his belief in the value of arts and culture from the angles of economic impact, quality of life, and in the power the arts offers to improve the range of expression and quality of debate of citizens of the city of Calgary.

Challenges

Where thorny social issues arise, the immediate collective reflex is often to do whatever is required to drive the matter from the community, without exploring the underlying causes or seeking to address them at their foundation. Joe Ceci has never backed away from examining these issues, and asking the hard questions which address these problems at their roots.

Issues like prostitution, drug use and homelessness are very complex, and represent myriad challenges. While many frustrated ward constituents would like to see these problems vanish from their neighbourhoods immediately, this is almost always impossible, and certainly doesn’t address the root causes of these phenomena. Joe has never failed to see these issues from their many angles, and to work with residents, governments and social agencies to try to address them constructively.

The sex trade and public drunkenness were problems in the community of Erlton, which is part of Ward 9. Joe listened to the concerns of Erlton residents, and knew that the problems could never be resolved uniquely at the community and City Council levels, so he brought the problems to the attention of provincial and federal representatives and got them involved in the dialogue. Joe successfully brought the MLA, the MP and city representatives together with residents to brainstorm solutions on social problems, which resulted in improvements and paved the way for the redevelopment of the Lindsay Park pathways.

Similar dissatisfactions in Forest Lawn resulted from the sex trade operating in that community. Again, rather than just seeking to enforce the law to a point that would simply drive prostitutes elsewhere in the city, Joe Ceci determined to tackle the problem at the level of its root causes. He supported initiatives to prevent girls and women, boys and men falling into prostitution, supported groups and agencies helping sex workers get off the street, and he also tackled it from the perspective of the clients seeking prostitutes. Inspired by a program offered in Edmonton, Joe campaigned to get the Calgary Police Commission to institute a ‘John School’ which would allow first time offenders to come together to learn about the impacts of their actions with respect to prostitution, rather than serving time. This initiative was rejected by Calgary Police commission, but Bill 206, which resulted from Joe’s efforts, was passed by the Government of Alberta and allowed for the seizure of Johns’ vehicles in prostitution-related offences.

In Forest Lawn, Joe again brought provincial, federal and civic elected officials together with residents to address vexing social issues. Joe has always believed that complex issues are best tackled by many different heads and perspectives coming together, and he also recognizes the community-building value of bringing people together. Joe’s sense of fun and constructive outlook have often succeeded in making discussion and brainstorming on even the most serious of issues a positive experience. Further to the alliances built in Forest Lawn around social issues, when the Forest Lawn Swimming Pool was in peril of being closed, Joe rallied the MP and the MLA, fellow Council members, along with local residents to come to what has become the annual tradition of FLOP (Forest Lawn Outdoor Pool) Belly Flop Competition. Residents and politicians come out for a free swim and enjoy hotdogs together during an afternoon of camaraderie and fun. The FLOP was an annual event from 2004 – 2010 and raised $3,500.00 toward the Outdoor Pool Association.

In the communities of Milligan/Ogden and Forest Lawn, Joe brought forward successful notices of motion to award $400,000 to each community for revitalization. In the case of Forest Lawn, a second award of $400,000 was also secured and these monies have helped to beautify and enhance communities. One of Joe’s great accomplishments as an Alderman has been to galvanize residents’ sense of belonging by encouraging them to celebrate their neighbourhoods and their city by facilitating and supporting the collective realization of good ideas.

As Calgary boomed during Joe’s time as Alderman, big city problems such as drug trafficking and homelessness grew into very significant problems. Dissatisfactions arose amongst residents in communities close to downtown (some of which are in Ward 9), whose properties and quality of life were being impacted by these issues. While Joe is pragmatic about the necessity for enforcement where laws are being violated (illegal drug use, public drunkenness, petty theft, etc.), he also appreciates that homelessness is a complex issue which is often complicated by poverty, mental illness, drug and alcohol addictions, and unemployment, among other factors. While these contributing factors to homelessness need to be addressed, there’s also an urgent demand for immediate solutions where laws are being broken and established communities are suffering inconveniences and damage to property. As usual, Joe’s approach explored the issue from the angles of all involved, and was multi-pronged.

Joe put forward several notices of motion addressing problems of crime in the city core, and concern for public safety. In 2003, Joe succeeded in gaining approval for the striking of a Safer Streets Task Force, which protected citizens’ rights to go about their lives and business in the absence of illegal activities deleterious to their quality of life. The Task Force included members of the Police Department, the Fire Department, Emergency Medical Services, Community and Neighbourhood Services, as well as the Transportation and Planning departments of the City. The Task Force identified areas of concern and successfully acted to curb crime in those areas.

Joe also brought forward a successful Notice of Motion to approve a crime prevention investment fund which secured provincial money to involve all local stakeholders in coming up with a collective and coordinated strategy for combating crime in Calgary. A further Notice of Motion by Joe Ceci also resulted in a means of collectively tracking crime prevention efforts by all stakeholders (Calgary Police, Fire Department, Transit, Animal/Bylaw Department, etc.) to be able to more comprehensively recognize those efforts and costs in Calgary.

As a final example of Joe’s work in his ward, the issue of Cash Corner has been an informally recognized location in downtown Calgary where employers seeking day labourers can drive up and hire unemployed men, many of whom are homeless. Joe Ceci recognized this as a highly imperfect system, and tried to ameliorate it. He brought forward a Notice of Motion which sought to move cash corner to somewhere that better accommodated the parking needs of employers, and would provide prospective day labourers with a washroom and a kiosk which would offer information and support for job seekers. This Notice of Motion was not passed by City Council, some of whom opposed it on the grounds that it was seen to enable employers and employees who were not paying taxes. The philosophy behind the Notice of Motion was that it could provide occasion for men living outside the scope of labour regulations to have a safer environment in which to secure work, while also enabling them to explore opportunities for steady work regulated by labour legislation.

Endings

Beyond remaining committed to the social work aims which initially inspired him, Joe remain engaged with the Social Work community and during his five terms as

Alderman, supervised four social work students from a Mount Royal College diploma program and University of Calgary BSW program doing practica with his office. He annually addressed university students on the ‘Day of Social Action’ and was often a speaker at the University of Calgary’s School of Social Work. Joe also built a team of like-minded people with complimentary skills in the personnel he engaged – his Executive Assistant Twila Jasper and his Community Liaison Sharon Stevens. Joe was able to rally around him a team of dedicated volunteers as part of the Clean Team, and Earth Day 22-minute makeover crew.

For 15 years, Twila Jasper was Joe’s Executive Assistant, and she summarized Joe’s particular contribution to Ward 9 as follows: “He was extremely open and out there for the residents, the community associations, and especially the service groups. They knew they could come to him and talk to him.”

Consistently, Joe Ceci was a consensus builder who brought data and information to the meetings he attended, sought out the information he didn’t have in order to share it, and tried to work collaboratively with all stakeholders to make sound, informed decisions.

Joe has always been ready to engage with people, and that has meant not only residents in his ward, but members of the City administration, agencies working in the city, and fellow politicians at all levels of government. Joe has gone out to meet the people of Ward 9, initially by holding community office hours, and fielding and returning thousands of phone calls from residents over the years. Joe has an easy and friendly way with people of all circumstances, and his sincere approachability made him stand out from his colleagues of the day as someone who believed in human beings and how they could transform a city.

Until his last week in office, Joe had a list by his desk of the issues – all thorny ones – that he wanted to attend to in 2010. He often had such a list, to remind himself of the work yet to be done. Only some of the items on this particular list were accomplished, not because Joe hadn’t tried to address them, but because they were tough issues, and it isn’t in Joe’s make-up to sweep troubling issues under the carpet, or to give up on finding solutions.

A former social work colleague of Joe Ceci’s – Martha McManus  - expressed a hope that after retirement, Joe would continue to use his gifts and passion for people and social issues:

“We need you, who can reach into the world and find people on the edges of society with no voice. You do that. You touch people’s hearts, you mobilize people… You start with compassion.”

By Jane Kubke

Jane Kubke is a native Calgarian, a writer, and a dedicated member of Joe’s Clean Team.