Speaking Municipally

Mack:
Everyone needs to chill. This week, members of Edmonton City Council called for more civility and respect.

Stephanie:
Plus, we'll talk about the latest departures from Station Park, Edmonton's new brand, and you guessed it, more snow clearing.

Mack:
Hi, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're…

Both:
Speaking Municipally.

Mack:
Welcome back to Speaking Municipally, episode 340. We're on the video again, which of course, we always see each other when we record this.

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
But this is the second episode that we are publishing video for, so thanks to everyone who subscribed to us, last week. There's a bunch of new people who are now listening to the show, I think, because we're finally on YouTube. So if you've been going out of your way to listen to the show, thank you. If YouTube is your jam, and that's where you'd rather listen to us, you know, feel free to subscribe to the Taproot Edmonton channel there, and, you can get the show there. Otherwise, just keep listening to us wherever you get your podcasts, as everyone says.

Stephanie:
Yeah, and if you have any feedback on the video, let us know. Send us an email, hello@taprootedmonton.ca. And, I wanna know, this is just a silly thing, but sometimes when I watch a video version of a podcast for the first time, I'm so surprised by what the people look like because, like, in my head I've created a look around them. So I'm curious if anyone thought that I was, like, a beautiful, tall, blonde woman or anything like that.

Mack:
You know what I get a lot in person is like, people have thought, "I thought you were taller. You sound taller." But I'm not that tall. I'm pretty average height for…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
For men, I think, right? So yeah, that's interesting. I noticed you don't have the suit on this week.

Stephanie:
No. The bit was a one-week bit. I, the thought of putting on a suit today was borderline torturous. Yeah.

Mack:
I kind of expected a parka, given how cold it is.

Stephanie:
It is cold. My hand, I'm, my hands are very cold. I'm trying to warm them up. Yeah.

Mack:
Well the city has put out a notice about an extreme weather, response because it's so cold, right?

Stephanie:
Yes, so I just wanted to give a little reminder to everyone, you know the drill. When it's this cold out, if you are concerned about someone outside, you can help them by calling 911 for if someone's in serious distress or if there's an emergency. There's also the option to call 211 and then press three for the 24/7 crisis diversion team. So, that's if you see someone shouldering outside or they don't have clothing to protect them from weather, if they're intoxicated or otherwise impaired, or maybe confused, disoriented, or if they're sleeping in an unsafe place. So, you know, watch out for your neighbors. We can all get through This together. The city will be sending around, you know, buses to, get people to a safe place, safe warm place, to stay. But you can help do your part by using 211 and press three.

Mack:
Yeah, just be vigilant. It doesn't take long out in the cold. I was, I was properly bundled up just waiting for the bus, and even that five minutes was very cold. You really…

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
Really feel it. So if you're stuck outside, that's, a terrible situation to be in.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Yeah.

Mack:
Okay. Good reminder. Thank you. We're gonna talk more about cold, I guess, in a little bit, with snow, but before we do that, we have an ad for you this week.

Stephanie:
This episode is brought to you by the office of Councillor Michael Janz, who is holding a series of events called City Hall TALKS. The second one features Courtney Walcott, a former Calgary City councillor. He's coming to Edmonton on Saturday, January 31st to share what he's learned about housing, public engagement, parking, and much more. What can we learn from Calgary about the affordability crisis? What lessons should Edmonton City Council consider regarding infill and parking policy? And how can we ensure new development contributes to building an affordable, sustainable, and inclusive city? Explore these and other questions at City Hall TALK number two, The Great Housing Debates. Register at michaeljanz.ca/walcottjan31. We'll have the link in the show notes.

Mack:
Looking forward to that. It's great to have outside perspectives to come and explore these topics that we all face as municipalities, so One of those things that everyone in public service seems to face is harassment and, vitriol and negative comments, and that was one of the big stories of this week, I feel like. Council's, as we talked about last week, just kind of getting back into the swing of things, back at City Hall regular meetings and all of that. But it seems to have been overshadowed to some extent by all of this negative commentary that's going on. There's some social media interactions that people have been talking about. And I can't believe this, Stephanie, but people are throwing shovels at City of Edmonton vehicles and equipment.

Stephanie:
I just don't understand what people think they're going to gain from harassing city employees in this way. Like, I cannot fathom what a snow-clearing crew could possibly do to earn this response.

Mack:
Absolutely. They're out there doing their job, and you know, I was talking with someone and he was like, "What do you think about how the city's handled the snow response?" And I said, "Frankly, pretty good." There was a lot of snow in a short period of time. I'm not sure how much a change to our policies or procedures would have dramatically impacted things. Like, when you have such a big dump of snow in such a short period of time, it's just gonna be hard to deal with, right? And I get that people are frustrated, but as you say, it doesn't seem like a constructive way to go about it. Our mayor, Andrew Knack, wrote a post about this, calling this harassment of city staff unacceptable. So in addition to the snow removal crews, there's also been, negative things, said to people on 311, for example. He said, quote, "I've been the first to echo the frustration of the snow removal not being at the level that I think people rightfully expect, but the way to address that is not by throwing a shovel at a city worker or by berating them. It's by recognizing that, you know, council will take action on this." End quote. And he wrote a long post covering this safety and respect conversation in public service.

Stephanie:
Yeah. I, yeah, I don't know. Like, I'm like truly trying to think of what could possibly happen to earn this, and I just like really can't think of it. I don't even know what to say. I just, I can't even think of anything.

Mack:
Yeah. We had all this discussion about snow parking bans and snow clearing and how much anger there is outside city hall, but council also talked about it this week, right, Stephanie?

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
So bring us, bring us inside city hall. What did they discuss and what did they decide?

Stephanie:
Yeah, it was it was an interesting scenario, at least to me, because they were talking about parking ban fines while a parking ban was actually going on, which normally wouldn't happen. Like we've said before, usually we talk a lot about snow clearing and parking bans and stuff in the summer to prepare for the next winter, but just, it just worked out that this bylaw amendment came to council this week while there was a parking ban on. And what kind of got the attention of the media and me too was that, one of the, speakers at the meeting, like, one of the city administration members said that only 10% of Edmonton drivers actually obeyed the parking ban. Now, I think that this is, like, at the very beginning, the when I listened to it. I don't think it's, like, over the entire course of the parking ban so far it's only been 10%, but even still, like, that's a pretty bad number.

Mack:
It is a bad number. I also think it's one of those super interesting, this is a bit meta for media, right? But, like, super interesting number, like, what do people choose to do? I didn't look at all of them, but if you look at Postmedia, they went with the headline, "90% of Edmontonians ignore the parking ban." You look at CTV, they said, "Only 10% of drivers move to their cars." So, like, do you focus on the 90 or the 10 is an interesting framing question…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
That people have, right? But certainly that sounds like a terrible percentage. That must mean there's a lot of fining and towing going on, isn't it?

Stephanie:
Not really. It's really, it's a bit confusing right now. They, so the, I think I said this on the episode last week, is that they technically only had funding until December 31st, 2025 just because the way, like, budgets work out, but they actually were still continuing to use some of that money to tow and ticket. But they, haven't been doing a lot of it because they don't have that much staff to put towards it. They don't have that much money.

Mack:
Other thing about this number, the 10% and the 90%, this is not based on actual data, right? This is, how did they get that number?

Stephanie:
It was just, like, our crews' estimate.

Mack:
Estimate, okay.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
They also did a survey, right, about this, about people's awareness Of the parking ban. So, what did we learn from that?

Stephanie:
So this was from last, like, the end of last winter, they did a survey to be like, "Hey guys, so how was our communications during the different parking bans and the different weather events?" And a admin said that last year only 52% of those surveyed were aware of the parking ban that went into effect in January 2025. And, you know, the number, the actual number's probably way lower because the type of person who fills out a city survey is definitely the type of person who's going to know about parking bans, right?

Mack:
Totally.

Stephanie:
Like, if you're part of the Edmonton Insight community, you, know about the parking ban.

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
But even still, only 52%, like, that's really bad even for all those nerds that take the, take the city surveys with so much peace and love. So yeah, that's, pretty bad and I just, like, don't know, I, again, this is another thing, I don't really know what else could be done to make this better.

Mack:
I feel like one of the things the city needs to do is be less risk-averse which I know is not gonna happen and that is basically what this city's all about, is avoiding risk, but people are on their phones all the time. Why can't we just text people that there's a parking ban happening, that it's underway? Like, I know that you can go and sign up for the notifications and for information, but no one, like, not enough people clearly are doing that, right? I know there's probably other rules about spam and whether or not we have permission to give them messages and whatever, but it does feel like if we could, maybe in the province, make the rules so that, you know, geographically we can bound it and make those notifications available, that would be really interesting, and that might be a way to communicate to people more effectively. It feels like there should be a technical solution that could help with some of the awareness, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
But maybe it doesn't need to be that high tech. You found something else that might be just as effective.

Stephanie:
Yeah, so Councillor Ashley Salvador brought up something that I've never heard of before. Montreal uses sirens to alert people that their streets are going to be cleared and we are going to play a little clip from this, but just imagine it's like you're sitting at home and the snow is peacefully falling outside your window and you're just about to fall asleep and then you hear this outside your window. (siren blaring)…

Mack:
That is quite the siren.

Stephanie:
Yeah, so yeah…

Mack:
You're not gonna miss that.

Stephanie:
No, people would get the message real quick and then so this video, it's from a video from, I think O The Urbanity, a great Canadian, like, urbanism YouTube channel and they also have a bit in there where sometimes they'll, like, be behind a car on the road, like, honking their horns, like, "This is your last chance before we tow you." I think maybe this goes a little bit too far over the line. I do not like being, my sleep being disturbed and, but yeah, what are your thoughts on this, Mack?

Mack:
Well, I didn't watch the whole video, but it seems to suggest that it's effective and that snow clearing in Montreal happens with a high degree of success because of this and other things that they do. So I don't know, maybe we should be open to it. If we're having trouble getting vehicles off and awareness out about the parking ban, it's kind of like the reverse of the ice cream truck, right? It's like you hear The siren and you're like, "Oh my God, I gotta get my car outta here." Like Maybe that would be effective.

Stephanie:
The evil, the evil ice cream truck.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Yeah. And also, I mean, the video was very interesting for those of you who find snow clearing interesting, which I'm sure all of you do. But, it really shows how snow clearing in Montreal is like a whole, a whole operation. Like, they clear the snow and they immediately truck it away to this big snow dump that stays full of snow even into the summer and it's really, like, kind of an all hands on deck response. And yeah, I just think that it would require a real big change here in Edmonton to do that. Also, we've talked about this before, Edmonton is way more sprawled out…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Has less population, and it and it would just be difficult. The culture is different, right? Because…

Mack:
More laying kilometers of roadway…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
To clear and everything too.

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
Okay. Well, I don't know if we're gonna get sirens. Council didn't, I think, decide we're gonna start to pilot that, although maybe in the future, but they did make another decision, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so the whole reason why they were, discussing this was at the Community and Public Service Committee Meeting, there were amendments on the floor to lower the fine for violating parking bans from $250 to $150. So, it was increased back in 2022 in an effort to increase compliance, but it's been really hard to discern whether or not it works because there's just so many different factors, including how much money they put to enforcing, snow clearing, parking bans, which changes seemingly every single year. And I think that it's funny then The reason why I think it's so interesting that this was happening while an actual parking ban was going on is that this didn't go anywhere. There was, like, no support for lowering the fine because they were seeing such low compliance, so they're like, "Whatever, we'll just keep it at 250, move along." Yeah.

Mack:
It's It is interesting that they didn't choose to do anything about it, 'cause I thought they might see all of the discussion out in the public and the anger that people have and feel like, "Well, maybe if we can't increase service right now, at least we can give people a break by lowering the fine a little bit." Right? I don't know. I'm surprised that wasn't the argument. I'm glad, frankly, that they didn't lower the fine. Like, I don't think they should've changed it. I think leaving it at 250 makes sense. I do think it's also an example of how ridiculous a lot of the things we do at the city are, that they're unable to discern whether it was effective. I see in your notes they know enough to say that the annual revenue would be reduced by about $232,000 if they lowered the fine, so they have some data about how many fines they're actually giving out and collecting, but somehow they don't have enough data to decide whether or not this was effective. Like, if you're gonna roll out a change, it seems like you would figure out how you're gonna measure the impact of that change over time, and if you're not, then certainly now they should be coming up with a way to do that.

Stephanie:
Yeah. I think it's I think what's so hard about this is that like I said, every season they kind of change the amount that they allot to enforcement, so that's how many, how much they're gonna pay for towing, how much they're gonna pay for bylaw officers. It's ranged anywhere, I think, from, like, five officers to, like, 40 officers or something like that, and, what's so funny is that, you know, there's another line item, in the Edmonton budget that increases every It starts with a base funding and then increases every year based on population growth and inflation. And it's not, snow, which happens every single year in Edmonton and greatly impacts how the city runs. It's not We all know what it is. But yeah, it's just crazy to me that it The way that it feel What it feels like to me is that budget, like, they the budget adjustments come around every year and council has to kind of scrape together coins to pay for snow removal, where maybe in, maybe the next four-year budget we start with, like, snow clearing be one, being one of the very core services, and it, and it, and it, and it kind of forms the foundation along with other things obviously. Do you know what I'm trying to say?

Mack:
You're It sounds like you're arguing for a funding formula for snow clearing.

Stephanie:
Not exactly. I think I'm arguing for, like, a funding formula…

Mack:
A stable funding.

Stephanie:
For everything but…

Mack:
Yeah, some stable funding. I get it.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
I mean that cou…

Stephanie:
Stable funding for services, yes.

Mack:
That could be something that they approach with this new four-year budget, right? In a, in a different way, or even just being clearer that, like, "Here's our base standard. Every year it's gonna go up by this percentage budget for snow clearing. If we have a year that is far less precipitation than normal, all of that money is going into the FSR because we're know we're gonna we know we're gonna have to draw on that again at some point." Right? And just making that clear upfront that's the policy rather than being more reactive, I think that could be kind of interesting too. What else did council decide?

Stephanie:
Yeah. So there was a bunch of different notices of motion or motions, et cetera. There was the one that we talked about last week about how Aaron Paquette, was gonna introduce a motion to talk about, "Hey, what can we learn from other jurisdictions to have, like, an advanced snow clearing, or a surge capacity, sort of package?" Also, Coun. Jon Morgan, said he wants a report analyzing options, risks, timelines, and resource implications for innovative operational tactics. Mack, you said you like snow clearing innovation.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Including but not limited to calcium chloride application to roadways to improve snow and ice control service delivery. And we've talked about this a bit too now, I actually don't exactly know what the issue was with calcium chloride. Can you explain that to me, Mack?

Mack:
I mean, some people think that it's just really bad for vehicle longevity and that more salt causes erosion and has negative impacts on vehicles. There's also concern about environmental implications of that. There's a, there's a long list of concerns that people have with this. You had me there for a while, right? Innovation and snow clearing, and then it's like, "No, we're gonna reopen calcium chloride-"…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
"… as a conversation."

Stephanie:
Innovation and it's just going back to what we used to do. Hmm.

Mack:
That's not quite what I had in mind. You know, I was thinking like, is there some new snow clearing robots that we can use or, I don't know, do we deploy drones to help track where the stuff is going and where we need to deploy resource there's lots of things I feel like we could be exploring, but I'm not sure calcium chloride is the one we should be looking at.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Also, I'd love an update on all of the previous pilots that were done around different materials for roadways. Some of them are supposed to be better for reducing potholes and making it easier to clear snow and things like that. And it's one of those things where we don't really get a lot of follow-up. I'd love to know what happened to the previous attempts at innovation, to help inform where we go from here. Well, what's your sense? Are we gonna be talking about snow clearing again next week?

Stephanie:
Honestly, probably. I mean, okay, so like just in general in the city, yes, I don't think that this is over 'cause maybe with this cold snap we're getting, we'll get some snow. But it's because committee said no to these changes. It will not be moving on to Edmonton City Council. They, Edmonton City Council will not be voting on whether to reduce the fines or not. They just received the report for information, which basically means no action taken.

Mack:
Okay, thanks for that update, Stephanie. On snow clearing, another thing we'll probably hear about, although I'm not thrilled about it…

Stephanie:
.

Mack:
Is the place brand and…

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
This came back to committee, executive committee this week, right? So tell us what executive committee was talking about.

Stephanie:
Yeah, so administration presented the Edmonton place brand framework to executive committee this week. Administration said that it amplifies Edmonton's strengths and presents a clear, credible, and consistent value proposition that attracts investment, talent, and opportunity. Yeah, that's a lot of words that mean, definitions. You know, so the framework includes high level vision and guidance instead of specific objectives and tactics. And the report says this is because different partners have unique mandates, needs, and timelines.

Mack:
So place brands are this concept that if you want people to come to Edmonton, if you want people to visit as a tourist or choose to invest as a business or move here as a resident, as somebody who's gonna work here, you gotta attract them in the same way that, you know, corporate brands attract people to their products, right? And so the place brand is like, what is the brand for Edmonton? What is the way that we talk about Edmonton out in the real world? And the reason I don't love this conversation is because it's never-ending for one thing. It always comes up. But also, it's always been super unclear who's responsible for this. Like, should it be the City of Edmonton that is responsible for Edmonton's place brand? Should it be maybe a destination tourism marketing organization like Explore Edmonton that is responsible for this? Should it be a collection of key stakeholders? Maybe we get the universities and the economic development agencies and the governments and all them together and collectively we do it, which, you know, definitely sounds like you could end up with, a horse or a camel, whatever it is, a horseback committee, right? That could be bad. Or is the reality just that place brands are not defined by the people who want to establish it? The place brand is what people elsewhere in the world think about Edmonton and how they talk about Edmonton. So for lots of people, it's the mall and it's Wayne Gretzky and it's the Oilers, and that's all they really know. And maybe to some extent, like, large urban river valley, you know, that's a big defining feature. Not the fact that we have a river. Lots of cities have rivers, but just the size and scale of it is something that gets talked about a lot. So anyway, should Edmonton come up with a place brand, you know, Edmonton take a risk, it's the most Edmonton thing you could do or make something Edmonton or whatever these things are? Or do we just focus on being a really great place to visit, live, work, and play? And then the brand kind of writes itself, which I know the marketing people listening to this are just like, "What are you talking about?" But it's just like municipalities are different animals than companies or products. They do not get branded, I think, in the same way.

Stephanie:
So a lot of the conversation at the meeting was kind of about how important it is to work with all these different, organizations. So I do think that it will be a, you know, group effort and everyone will kind of own different parts of it. And also, of course, the classic thing came up, which I'm really curious to know if people say this about other cities, 'cause it seems like one of those things that everyone says about their own city.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
But there's a lot of talk about like, Edmontonians themself have to, like, really represent Edmonton because we're a humble city. And I feel like you can only say that you're a humble city so many times before it's not true anymore because saying you're humble isn't a very humble thing to do. But it was a lot of the, yeah, people need to, like, really be proud. We punch above our weight and, like, we need to really show that. And there's a lot of, like, Edmontonians themselves need to be the ones also promoting this and working with all these organizations.

Mack:
No disagreement from me.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
I think that's super important. I think the way that we talk about our city when we're you know, out in the world or engaging with people elsewhere in the world is really key to what that brand looks like and how people perceive the city. But equipping people here with a slogan is not the way to do that. I think doing things that make them feel pride about their city is the way to do that.

Stephanie:
I'm trying to think of if I've ever been like, "That city's slogan is amazing. I'm visiting there immediately." Like, I can't even name it. I know that I think Calgary's the Blue Sky City.

Mack:
Yeah, I think that's what it is now, yeah.

Stephanie:
I don't even know what that means. And then, I mean, I guess New York is the Big Apple. Take a bite of the Big Apple. I, that's not the reason why I would wanna visit New York. Yeah, I don't know if a slogan is really the answer here.

Mack:
But this is where place brand discussions end up, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
You noted something in the report that went to council.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I thought it was so funny. Okay, so this is reading, me reading directly from the report. "Placemaking is an approach to defining public places to make them attractive for people to live, work, play and learn. Placemaking personifies Edmonton in a way that attracts investment, skill, talent, and signature events. 'I love New York,' for example, is a campaign that has contributed to the City of New York's overall placemaking and brand efforts for nearly a half century. In that same timeframe, Edmonton has had over 15 slogans or place brand related campaigns. In other words, storytelling ultimately reinforces the overall brand." And then just kind of goes on to say, we need to, convene the strengths and stories of partners to amplify Edmonton's identity. But like, I don't Like, I love New York is not why people go to New York is because it's a cool, interesting place.

Mack:
Yeah, and people who live there are proud to be New Yorkers, for both the positives and the flaws, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
If you watch late night television hosts who are based in New York, this becomes really apparent, right? They're sort of proud of the things that make New York, New York, right?

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
Whether they're good or bad. And, you know, slogans and place brands, what typically happens, especially when you've got 15 over that timeframe, like, you just compare it to other places, right? There's endless comparisons of, we're not the only City of Champions. Lots of other places have tried to call themselves City of Champions. There's of course Keep Austin Weird, but also Keep Portland Weird, and a bunch of other places wanna stay weird. So, you know, these things are often not unique either, right? And, they're not really the reason why, that place is known, right? There's other things about it that ultimately allow it to be known. So, okay, so they're talking about this framework. Does It sounds like we didn't get very far, if we're talking about the framework. So no new slogan is what I'm taking from this conversation.

Stephanie:
Not at this time.

Mack:
Okay.

Stephanie:
That's the vibe I got. So, maybe soon. Start thinking of slogans, guys, in case, in case you wanna submit one. Yeah, what's happening next is that basically there's not enough funding to actually create a strategy and, like, the related content that would have to go along with this new place brand framework. So, they're just gonna keep working on it within their existing funding, then they may come forward to ask for more in the future. Two kind of interesting conversations were started and questions from the mayor and one councillor. Mayor Andrew Knack said, you know, "Hey, at some point, I remember there was some businesses and some organizations that wanted to pool some money together to help with this branding." And, administration was like, "Yeah, we're gonna reinvigorate those conversations," so that might be an interesting thing. And then, Coun. Aaron Paquette spoke about negative perceptions of the city, you know, how it's been called Deadmonton, and he suggests we could kind of reclaim that identity. So, of course, administration did mention the, Deadmonton, like, haunted house, which is for sure…

Mack:
-huh.

Stephanie:
You know, definitely directly reclaiming that.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
But Paquette also mentioned, we could call it Shredmonton to align with the mountain bike industry, or a Aheadmonton to point to our artificial intelligence in tech. But fun fact, Coun. Paquette, Shredmonton does exist. It's an aggressive inline, organization, and I have a little cup from a…

Mack:
Oh, look at that.

Stephanie:
From a Shredmonton as Heck. If you are watching on video, you can see. It's from, like, they hold these skating competitions. So Shredmonton is at least something that's real, so good on you, Paquette. You got it.

Mack:
I love that. Well, maybe we, instead of one brand and slogan, we end up with, like, 30 of them. That would be kind of fun, actually. A little bit more creative. I still don't think that's how we're gonna get known. People aren't gonna start calling it Shredmonton or a Aheadmonton. And then, you know, inevitably What would happen, is people would, like, "That is really pathetic," and they'd make fun of it and whatever, right? That's what happens with place brand slogans, so. Okay, no funding to actually do anything here, so a conversation and I guess we'll get a report back in the future, probably with a funding ask, is the takeaway. All right, well, shifting away from City Council, one other thing we wanted to talk about this week, quickly, is a closure at Station Park.

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
Taproot reports on openings and closings in the Food Roundup every Tuesday, and the one we had this week was about EPIC Market.

Stephanie:
Yes, RIP to EPIC Market. They are leaving their two-story food hall in, Station Park. If you're not familiar, if you're not a real Strathcona head like myself, it's at the corner of, the southeast corner of White Avenue and Gateway Boulevard. It's where all those sea cans are. And it's just one of the latest, departures at Station Park, because I walk by there very often, and right now I believe there is one business actually day-to-day operating out of there. Now that or now that EPIC Market is gone. It's a grilled cheese place, which I would love to try out, because, I love grilled cheese.

Mack:
Who doesn't? Yeah.

Stephanie:
But then the thing is, it's like right now, I'm gonna have to stand outside in the minus 30 to eat my grilled cheese. It's not gonna be very grilled after a while.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
It's gonna be…

Mack:
Fair enough.

Stephanie:
Cold cheese. But anyways, yeah, this is what they said on their website. "Operating that corner was, unfortunately, a Herculean task without parking or foot traffic." Now, I think this is such an interesting phrase, because I don't think those are two things that can really fully exist at the same time together. You can have a location with amazing parking, where you can park right outside and walk three feet and be seated at the table. Or, you can have a place that's good for foot traffic, where people will be walking by, say, "Oh, I'm in the mood for a drink. Why don't we walk around and see what looks cool? Oh, that place is nice 'cause it has, you know-" "… like, a nice patio and it's, and it's lively and green and vibrant," and they'll walk up. Those are two different things. You I don't think you can have foot traffic and a ton of parking. What do you, what are your thoughts on that though, Mack?

Mack:
I think you're right. In general, those things are a bit incompatible. So I think about Unity Square and the Brewery District and those things, those are very much, the first one you described.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
You can drive and park and walk three steps into the business. Like, they're very car-centric and as a result, they're really terrible to walk through as a pedestrian. Like, you're fighting with cars the whole time, and you have to traverse through big parking lots to get to where you wanna go. So it's very car-centric. The thing that always comes up to me about this, I didn't coin this was a number of years ago when Edmonton really took off, nobody goes for the parking. And the folks at EPIC might not want to hear this, but I think saying there's a lack of parking is a bit of a lazy excuse for organizations who otherwise aren't a destination. We know all the time that if people want to do something, they will go regardless of the parking. There's lots of things that Edmontonians do in this city that have no parking, and they do it because that's not the reason they went. They didn't go because there was a place to park. They go because the thing is what they wanted to go to. Now, maybe that's unfair to EPIC, and I'm sure there's actual challenges here, but in general, nobody goes for the parking you know?

Stephanie:
Yeah. Well, think of Oilers games. Another thing is, Flying Canoe Volant coming up, I think, at the end of this month, as someone who lives kinda near there's a, it's very difficult to find parking for that festival because it's in a forest. But yeah, like, no, it's, there's people that visit things all the time that don't have good parking.

Mack:
Yeah, that's the thing.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Yeah, and, I think that his phrase, this person's phrase about the, Herculean task of, without parking or foot traffic, I think it should read, "Operating at this corner was hard because the development is an attempt at being pedestrian-friendly at the corner of two arterial roads that are four to five lanes each." Because I've been there…

Mack:
Totally.

Stephanie:
Like I said, I go there, I go there quite often. I go there in the morning and during the day and in the afternoon and evening. I've been there at all those times, and it's it, in the summer, on an evening or on the weekend, it's very, it's nice. It's nice because there's tons of people around. There's music playing. You can get your little ice cream, sit in the sun for a bit. But if it just, like, dies down a little bit, you are reminded very quickly that you are in between two roads, and it's just not a great place to hang out.

Mack:
You don't wanna sit there while all these cars are driving by you, absolutely.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
I think this is a good or a good reminder too, right, that we can talk about a place like Whyte Avenue as being pedestrian-oriented pedestrian-friendly but that doesn't mean that it's a blanket, everywhere along there is great for people. There are definitely situations like this intersection that are geared more toward cars, and it's just not a very pleasant place to be. I mean, I walk back from, Wa-kwen-to-in to downtown every day, and I choose to do 102nd Avenue because there's less cars. It's much more pleasant to walk on that street than it is, say, on Jasper Avenue or 104th Avenue, where there's just multiple lanes of vehicles going beside you. It's not a fun place to hang out, as you say, so.

Stephanie:
Yeah, definitely.

Mack:
Other things happening in the area, might wanna learn from this.

Stephanie:
Yeah. So, yeah, this, like I said, this place is almost completely empty at this point, which, yeah, it's just a shame to see. Just under a block away is the Army and Navy building. You guys remember that? Throwback. So I was looking, I was, I was thinking about this because it's another, like, big, empty space just a little bit away, and I remembered that about a year ago, there was some news article that said, "Construction on the new Army and Navy building will be finished in a year." it's a year later, nothing. And then there was also a story in the summer that said, "A year." So we will see if they're able to pull something together for this coming summer, but, here's a direct line from the CTV article from in the summer. "The empty space will be transformed into a retail space, restaurants, and a patio rooftop." Does that sound familiar, Mack?

Mack:
Sounds very familiar.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Sounds like Station Park all over again.

Stephanie:
Yeah. And I mean, there's just so many, oh, there's already so many empty retail bays on Whyte Avenue. I don't know, there, I just think that there's so many better things that could go into the Army and Navy building that would be so much more useful, both for an attraction place to get people to come in, but also just for the people that live in the neighborhood.

Mack:
I hear you. Sometimes people listen to our show and say, "All you guys do is complain." What are your suggestions, Stephanie?

Stephanie:
Yeah, I…

Mack:
What should go into that space?

Stephanie:
I do have suggestions. I think about it very often. I'm thinking a roller rink. I'm biased because I love roller skating. But the basement would be so good for a roller rink, and it would be so cool to have a roller rink on Whyte Avenue. And I'm also imagining, like, 'cause I play roller derby, imagine a roller derby game. Like, you're walking down Whyte Ave on a Friday night, and you hear all this, like, noise, and you see all these strong women, and you're like, "What? What's going on?" And then you go downstairs…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
And you're like, "Oh my God, roller derby is so cool." Okay, that's my other thing. Maybe turn it into, like, a concert venue. It kinda has, kinda reminds me a little bit of the Starlight Room, how it's just kind of like I don't know. It, the, I just think it'd be cool to have, like, a massive, concert venue, You know, we could always use more live music south of the river. So those are a couple of my, suggestions.

Mack:
The roller rink one is great, or you know…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Like, a bowling alley or I feel like there's a resurgence of some of these shared kind of quasi public spaces. And, that would, you know, Whyte Avenue would be great to have,…

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
More of those kinds of things.

Stephanie:
Yes, it would be. We are definitely, lacking on those things because there's, okay, so there's the library where you can hang out for free. You can actually hang out for free at the Fringe Cafe, but they're only open during the day. Then there's a bunch of bars where you're encouraged to drink alcohol, right? I, like, there's restaurants and cafes, but you still, you know?

Mack:
A bit different, yeah.

Stephanie:
It would be super fun to have, or even, like, I don't know, some sort of a Magic the Gathering card-playing board game. I guess we do have board game cafes, but you know what I mean? Like, something interesting and not just another micro retail building where people are just gonna sell landfill core resin trinkets…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
And low-quality jewelry. I'm getting mad now. I need to calm down. I need to stop talking about this. Sorry. Whoo! But yeah. We'll…

Mack:
Well, Epic…

Stephanie:
We'll see what happens.

Mack:
Epic Market did say, "This is not the end of Epic Market." They're gonna try to find another location. So this would be the third location 'cause they were also downtown over at 105th Street here and, had to pivot when they went south of the river. So we'll see where they end up next, and you can stay tuned to the food roundup to find out when we find out what's happening there. All right, well, those are the news updates we wanted to talk about. Just before we go, to close the show, we thought we'd give you a few updates on some things that we are doing at Taproot and that also dovetails with something that you noticed at City Hall. So first thing is, I love On The Agenda. You've been writing this feature every Monday. It's a bit of a preview of what's coming up at City Council, and you guys are making a small tweak, which I love. Tell us about that.

Stephanie:
Yeah, so this is, I'm really excited about this too because there are, lots of decisions go through City Hall, like, constantly. They're constantly making decisions, and sometimes they're really small, and sometimes they're really big, as you know. The really big ones get stories written about them, obviously, but sometimes the really small ones, they don't. Or sometimes decisions, like, I'll write about something in On The Agenda, and then it gets delayed or it gets, postponed or, s-… that gets referred back for information. So, what we have done is introduced a little section at the end of On The Agenda that kind of recaps what happens the week before. So, if you read it one week and you said, "Oh, there was that rezoning in Windsor Park, I wonder what happened with that," the next week, you know, if they I'll, they You know, no one If they get to it, you know? It's kinda on…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
It's on city council to see. But I'll be, I'll put as much information as I know about these updates to, stories. And, I think it's just like a good accountability, like, almost, you know, democracy thing, where it's like people are reporting on all of these. Even little decisions, even little decisions, they matter a lot to people.

Mack:
And we can close the loop for folks this way too, right?

Stephanie:
Exactly.

Mack:
Hear about it on the Monday, and then you can find out what happened to that. Okay.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
And then you noticed something at city hall that might be supportive of this, maybe?

Stephanie:
Yeah. Yeah. So, I don't know if this is, like, a super small thing that only nerds like me would notice. But, Mayor Knack, when they were receiving Or they were about to close discussion on something, and typically a lot of times what they would do is just receive for information. Which basically means, we I mean, it means what it says. We're just gonna receive this. Nothing else really happens. But sometimes it can mean Like, in the report it might say, "If you receive this for information, administration will do da-da-da-da-da." So instead, what they're doing is they're trying to move away from just receiving for information. So, what they might do is, instead of saying, "Council votes to receive for information," it's like, "Council votes to, you know, increase the fine to $250 as laid out in attachment one of report da-da-da-da-da." So basically, I just thought that was an interesting little procedural change.

Mack:
Yeah. So, they have to do that for things that require council approval. This would just make more explicit the things they are implicitly approving when they receive something for information.

Stephanie:
Exactly.

Mack:
Which I think is a positive change for transparency and should make your job a little bit easier to find out what happened this week. Yeah.

Stephanie:
Yeah, exactly. Because if you look at, like, the minutes or you look at the Like, some of the documents that lay out what happened in the meeting, if it just is a bunch of different In the table, it's like, "Receive for information, receive for information," then I have to go and, like, look up what actually happened. But this is really helpful that you can You know, it's a bit more clear what they actually talked about.

Mack:
Little bit of transparency. Okay, great.

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
And then when There's one other new Taproot…

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
Thing we wanted to talk about.

Stephanie:
Yeah. So, what we're gonna start doing is we're kind of reviving and modifying a segment that we used to have. What we're gonna do now is every Friday we're gonna have Your Turn, which is our new calls for public engagement. We're gonna have opportunities to have your voice heard for, in and around the Edmonton region. Sometimes it's just specific to a municipality, and sometimes it's It can be open to, you know, Albertans or anyone here who uses, like, who recreates in Big Lake Provincial Park, you know, that sort of thing. And we're doing it a little differently because sometimes a call for public engagement requires a little bit of context and explanation. 'Cause before it would just be like, "Click on this link and you can go give your, give your feedback." But like, for example, the one that it will be published on the day that this episode comes out is all about the infill changes, or the proposed infill changes that we talked about last week. So, I felt that needed a little bit more context around it. And next week will be I won't say quite yet what it is, but it's another thing that we've reported on before, and it'll be interesting. It's a bit more of a story than just, you know, "Click on the link here." It requires a bit more context and explanation.

Mack:
It's fantastic. I mean, I think people who read Taproot are pretty engaged. And they care about the city and the region and they wanna get involved. And so, this is a great way to make that a little bit more accessible, to provide them with some actionable information that they can use to go and have their voice heard. So, I'm really looking forward to that. I think that'll be a fantastic revival and addition to the weekly remit from Taproot.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
All right. Well, that's our show. Thanks so much for listening or watching if you are on YouTube or Spotify. If you've got feedback, let us know. Hit us up by email, hello@taprootedmonton.ca. And, come back again next week and we'll have more news about what's going on at city hall. Until then, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're…

Both:
Speaking Municipally.