WEEKLY UPDATE - SEP 5

Welcome back to the weekly wrap up for #yegcc! Hope you had a wonderful Labour Day long weekend. Last weekend was a full one at Committee with lots of important reports being discussed.

At Community and Public Services we heard the Community Safety and Wellbeing Strategy annual update. Safety and wellbeing are influenced by a wide range of factors and taking on such holistic work can be daunting. I appreciate the work the City is doing to bring a wide range of agencies together to maximise the collective impact we can have. I'm encouraged by the range of powerful investments that have been made to date from anti-racism, to reconciliation, to community and personal healing initiatives.

I'm also excited to see the work that will come back as a result of a motion put forward by Keren Tang for the City to develop a violence reduction strategy as part of the CSWB work. This will build on existing best practices and will help make #yeg a safer place for everyone.

We also heard an update on how the City of Edmonton is supporting Indigenous-owned businesses and community initiatives through the Indigenous procurement framework. It is one of the ways the City is helping to support an inclusive and diversified business community in Edmonton.

At Urban Planning Committee, we had a robust discussion on substantial completion. This is all about how soon we open up new land for suburban growth. It may sound dull but it's a critical part of building a financially sound city. Many thanks to Ashley Salvador, who has a fantastic blog on substantial completion that I would encourage you to check out. I look forward to further conversations when this item is back at Committee next year.

Transit access was another major item for Urban Planning Committee. We learned that there has been virtually no additional bus hours added to our system since 2015. It will take an additional 260,000 hours a year to get us back to our 2015 per capita service levels. I was pleased to move two motions to advance options for closing the gap in transit service. We'll debate these further at our budget deliberations in November and I'll be working to secure the resources ETS needs to provide great service to all Edmontonians.

At Executive Committee, I was happy to have gained support to forgive taxes for the YWCA. This will rectify a clerical error from their move to their fantastic new location on 124 Street and will enable the YWCA to continue serving individuals and organisations in our community.

Tune in next week for another round up! Until then, I hope the transition to the new school year goes well!