SIX MONTHS SMARTER

Building smarter means making best use of what we have and looking for opportunities for the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts. 

Breaking Down Budget Silos to Find Systems Savings and Considering Full Lifecycle Costs of Infrastructure

We all know that we need to think differently about our budget to find savings and also make sure that we can deliver on our priorities as a community. I have been prioritising thinking differently about how we spend the city’s money and collect taxes to make sure that we meet our needs as effectively and efficiently as we can.

As highlighted in my Six Months Stronger post, I've advocated for a range of resources to address our housing crisis. This type of spending is absolutely an investment -  if we don’t spend it here, we end up paying for it in other ways, often in increased police, bylaw and fire rescue services, not to mention non-municipal impacts like the health care and justice systems. I will continue to advocate for solutions that provide system savings like this. 

I also started a conversation about moving to a tax regime that better reflects the cost of infrastructure the City has to spend money on. This will no doubt be a tough conversation but it's one I think we need to have. It will allow us to have a clearer understanding about what's driving tax growth and enable an honest conversation about how we want to manage our collective assets moving forward.

We absolutely have more work to do on both revenue and spending as part of our next four year budget for 2023-2026. I look forward to working with my Council colleagues to take a holistic approach that best meets the needs of both current and future Edmontonians. 

The 15 Minute City

The 15 minute city is a City Plan goal that I'm really excited about. It’s a goal to ensure that people can meet most of their needs within a 15 minute walk, bike or transit ride from home, something that leads to higher quality of life, greater health, and a lower carbon footprint.

The most direct way we have on Council to support the 15 minute city is through our decisions at public hearings where we decide whether or not to support rezoning applications. Over the past six months, I've been consistent in supporting rezonings and projects that align with the City Plan. When making my decisions, I try to stay mindful of the needs not only of existing residents, but those in the future who will live in the city of tomorrow that will be shaped by the decisions we make today. 

I know the land use decisions I've made have meant change for some neighbourhoods, for example the Redline  project in Westmount. I know these types of changes are hard for neighbours and figuring out how we work through the evolution of our neighbourhoods is something we need to continue to do together. I'm hopeful there will be opportunities to share more about what change looks like in our neighbourhoods through the District Planning process, which I'm pleased will be getting into full swing this summer.  

In addition to supporting applications that advance our City Plan goals, I've also pushed back on projects that don't hit the mark. One focus has been raising the bar with Direct Control (DC) zones in new neighbourhoods and I voted against two of these types of rezonings. I continue to struggle with an approach to suburban development. City Plan does still see 50 percent of our growth happening in new neighbourhoods, and given that's the case, I believe it's vital to get the design of these neighbourhoods right. I'm collaborating with Council colleagues to bring some motions forward to improve subdivision policies, which are fundamental to how walkable and transit connected these communities are. I should have more to report about this soon!

In order to improve the places that we live, sometimes that means saying no. I opposed the pedway from Churchill LRT station to Station Lands, just north of downtown and tried to stop the City from building a parkade at the Orange Hub. These projects pre-dated my time on Council but I think are in tension with some of our goals related to walkability and vibrancy. While these projects ultimately moved forward, I'm glad I created the space to dig into these issues and hopefully set the expectation that a different direction moving forward is needed. 

Making Data-driven Decisions Informed by Effective Community Consultation

City Council makes dozens of decisions every week. I want to be sure that we are making those decisions based on good, clear data, as well as effective consultation with Edmontontonians. This is easy to say, but trickier to do. At times, technical data will be at odds with community feedback, or community feedback will contain a variety of perspectives with no clear consensus. But these complexities don't detract from the huge value there is in speaking with those most directly impacted by a decision. 

The multi-family waste strategy is an example of tension between technical analysis and feedback that I experienced through my role on Utility Committee. Council heard that the current City-provided services aren't meeting the needs of multi-unit residential buildings. While some stakeholders called for privatisation of these services, the technical analysis available to Council didn't support this direction. Ultimately, we were able to strike a balance by moving forward with City-provided services but with direction to update standards and service level expectations to meet the needs of stakeholders. I was also able to clarify that the decision we made now wouldn't preclude us from other alternatives in the future, allowing us to respond and adapt to new information as it comes forward. 

Another example of the incredible value in community engagement I've experienced is in my conversations with stakeholders in Chinatown. I’ve had the opportunity to host two workshops with stakeholders in the area to fully understand the complexity of the needs, and to figure out the concrete steps we can take to enable Chinatown to become the vibrant economic hub it is so capable of being. I look forward to continuing to work with the The Chinatown Business Association, the Chinatown Transformation Collaborative and many other groups in the area to make good decisions for the long-term health of Chinatown.

Two minds are greater than one. 

Becoming a smarter city necessarily means collaborating as a community.  Read more about the exciting initiatives Council and I have been working on to bring our community together.