Speaking Municipally

Mack Male:
Chinatown, downtown, and priorities around town. This week, executive committee looked at progress in Chinatown and a downtown housing incentive.

Stephanie Swensrude:
Plus, council released its strategic priorities for the term ahead of budget planning.

Mack:
Hi. I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're…

Both:
Speaking Municipally.

Mack:
Welcome back to Speaking Municipally, Episode 346. I got a little congestion going on, Stephanie. I'm feeling like the winter illness has really hit me this year, but as we're recording this, it's beautiful outside. It's sunny. It's above zero degrees.

Stephanie:
Hey, maybe climate change climate change is kinda cool in that way. No…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
I'm just joking. Every year though, you mentioned being congested, like when we have our fake spring when it goes up to like 17…

Mack:
False spring.

Stephanie:
Degrees for a few days and then goes back down, it always makes me so sick. And I think it's because like everything melts a little bit and then all of the like…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Spring allergies, and then like I can't breathe for two weeks. So, that's probably coming to me next week.

Mack:
Yeah. I do get really bad seasonal allergies. And I have found actually the more false springs we have, the little bit easier it is to manage because you don't get hit with it all at once, you know? You know…

Stephanie:
Micro dosing the…

Mack:
Micro dosing of the, allergies. That's right, the allergens. Probably not so great for our hardworking city staff who have to deal with the constant freeze, thaw, and melt, more snow, you know, all that kind of stuff. And as a pedestrian or a cyclist or anybody who's not in a vehicle especially, it's pretty challenging to traverse in these kinds of conditions. Another sign that spring is coming is the return of Downtown Dining Week. So, here's our ad for this week's episode.

Stephanie:
This episode is brought to you by the Edmonton Downtown Business Association, which is putting on Downtown Dining Week from March 11th to 22nd. More than 65 restaurants are participating in this year's event, offering multi-course and multi-item menus at a discount. The menus are now live at edmontondowntown.com/diningweek. Mack, did you see any deals that intrigue you?

Mack:
Well, I'm one of those people that's so boring. I like my usual favorites, right? And I have to really be in a mood to go and try something brand new.. And of course, being a downtown resident, I've tried a lot of the places downtown. But my favorite, of course, Rosewood Foods. I've probably talked about it on the show many times before. I love Rosewood. All the things they make are fantastic. Their breakfast sandwich is fantastic, and that is the brunch deal for Downtown Dining Week. So, if you've never, given them a try, I encourage you to check it out. How about you…

Stephanie:
Actually…

Mack:
Stephanie?

Stephanie:
I haven't tried Rosewood, so maybe that'll be one of them. And…

Mack:
Good excuse.

Stephanie:
You said that you always go for the same places. I also chose somewhere that I go very often, Fu's Repair Shop. Love it there. So cool. Such good food. Really reasonable, and especially the deals that they got going on. Yeah, love Fu's.

Mack:
Fu's is great as well.

Stephanie:
Mm-hmm. So, this is Edmonton's largest dining week, and it's a great way to support locally owned restaurants in the heart of the city. Discover your new favorite dish today at edmontondowntown.com/diningweek. That's edmontondowntown.com/diningweek.

Mack:
Thanks for that, Stephanie. Chinatown was at council, or at Executive Committee, and they were talking all about the Chinatown strategy, which we've discussed several times over the last number of years on the show. Stephanie, what did Executive Committee hear and discuss this week?

Stephanie:
Yeah. So, it's an annual update on the Chinatown strategy. So, in the report, administration highlighted a couple of things. Construction of the new Harbin Gate is expected to begin this month-ish somewhere very soon. The previous gate, of course, was removed in 2017 during construction of the Valley Line Southeast LRT. So sad because can you imagine how cool it would be to have like the train coming in under the gate? Would have been very neat if they could have incorporated that into the design. But anyways, the new gate will be built on 97th Street between Jasper Avenue and 101A Avenue, where the original Chinatown began. So, I guess that's nice that there's a bit of that historical connection. And then, some other highlights. Administration said that the Chinatown Transformation Collaborative is working with the U of A to create a tourism strategy for the neighborhood. Some other highlights from 2025, the city renovated Mary Burlie Park. They worked with the Chinatown Business Improvement Association to retain businesses, and they advanced neighborhood renewal with a focus on walkability, accessibility, and streetscape quality.

Mack:
Now, I think the renovation of Mary Burlie Park was a pretty big deal, right? That had long been a problem spot in Chinatown. And to see that project completed and move forward is pretty encouraging. And this follows, of course, the demolition of the old Remand Centre. Like, there's been quite a bit of physical change around there. But I think there are still so many things facing Chinatown. Like, there's you know, anytime these kinds of updates come back on a strategy like this, there's obviously gonna be some wins. There's some things that we have done, but there's still a lot of work to do. You know, the gate having not been installed for all of that time.

Stephanie:
Almost 10 years.

Mack:
You know, it's crazy. That's a long time.

Stephanie:
That's very sad.

Mack:
There's been lots of events over the last couple of years where there's been city staff and others there to show you what it's gonna look like and to talk about the new design but still, it's not there. So, I'm glad to hear that's gonna finally move forward. What else did, Executive Committee hear, maybe from the community itself, in this update?

Stephanie:
Well, basically, they all said something along the lines of what you just said, is that this is great and we need more. Thank you, more please. A ton of members of the Chinatown community and, you know, it was both kind of the official heads of, like, organizations, but also just people that live there. They came to share how they thought things are going. So, many members said, "Yeah, thanks. We need thanks for what you're doing, but we have some gaps to fill." And a lot of them were just little things that make a big difference. Like, for example, garbage cans are not being emptied. People are not littering. We love that. But then they go to put it in the garbage can and it's full and overflowing. That's just, like, one example. Neighborhood renewal is ongoing. That's great. We're gonna have nice new sidewalks. But because it's a construction zone, it looks terrible in the short term. There's stuff sticking out of the sidewalk and whatnot. Vibrancy funding is great. It helps bring people there and, you know, put on these great, like, Lunar New Year events, like the, Chinatown After Dark kind of events. But at the same time, a lot of the members were just asking for more police presence. Another thing that came up was the 101 Street dedicated bus lane. So that's kind of on the, boundary of Chinatown. It's not right on, like, the 97th Street where they have those, like, beautiful decorative lamp posts and everything, but it's still part of it. Some of the businesses along that stretch, like Tan, Padmanati, that record store, they've lost some, they've lost some parking spots because of that, 'cause of this lane.

Mack:
Right. And it sounds like council is going to be taking another look at the bike, the bus lane issue, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah. So part of the discussion, involved, you know, someone, Rizwan Mohiuddin, who represents those businesses, said that the bus lane conversion was like bike lanes on steroids. Which I just thought…

Mack:
Bike lanes on steroids.

Stephanie:
Which I just thought was a great turn of phrase. And you know, a lot of those businesses are accessed by seniors with mobility issues, so it's really helpful to have that parking right out front. You know, there's parking around the back in the alleyways, but in these presentations, they attached pictures of what those alleyways look like. And as you can imagine, not super clean, folks sheltering back there, which is not ideal, overflowing dumpsters, not ideal. So Ward Karhiio Coun. Keren Tang confirmed that they're reviewing this bus lane at the March 23rd committee meeting, so, and they could potentially reverse that decision.

Mack:
Yeah. Okay. Well, that's, encouraging to hear that they're gonna take a look at that. You know, it's a little bit of, the more things change, the more things stay the same. That's what's coming to mind here, right? So you mentioned, you know, the fund and some of the great things that it's supported. I'm thinking of the Van Block Parties…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
ToGather. There was that great Lunar New Year event that just happened at the Royal Alberta Museum. My family and I got to go to that. It was, it was really great to have so many people. Like, the place was absolutely packed, so many people. You know, there's been lots of really positive, encouraging things, but the things that haven't changed are the things that people complained about or raised concerns about when the Chinatown strategy was first being developed, right? Which is the high concentration of social service agencies. Which, you know, directly affects that perception of safety, if not also the, real, safety when you're in the area, the cleanliness, of course. You know, we've talked about encampments over the years and tents and things like that. And, you know, 106th Avenue continues to be primarily a place for people who have nowhere else to go…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Rather than people who are coming to Chinatown for tourism or business purposes, right? And so that's a real challenge. And then I'm gonna jump ahead here in the conversation, because I think another thing that remains the same about Chinatown, Mary Burley Park was a great advancement, but that 97th Street bridge…

Stephanie:
Yep.

Mack:
Is still there. And from the very early days of, "What should we do about Chinatown?" the conversation has been, "That bridge has gotta go. Something's gotta happen with that bridge," because it divides North Chinatown, which is the economic one, the one we think about with, you know, the decorative lighting, like you talked about, a lot of the restaurants up 97th Street, and South Chinatown, which is the historic cultural Chinatown, closer to what you think of as The Quarters and The Armature, that area. And the bridge is this unnecessary divide between the two. Taproot did some reporting about this, in our Moment in History series, you know, talking, looking way back in 1929, it was called the 97th Street Subway. They didn't call them underpasses at the time. You know, and at the time, it made sense, but in 2026, it really doesn't. In 2016, it didn't. The only thing we got between now and then was this, living bridge project that lasted for two and a half years…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Where there was community gardens and things like that installed on the bridge to make it a little bit more inviting. But, you know, those sorts of, placemaking initiatives are only They only go so far. We talked about this a little bit last episode. The bridge is still a division of the Chinatowns. It's still a barrier to get into Chinatown. It's still a place for waste and other things to accumulate underneath the bridge, which make it very uninviting. You know, the 3,000 people or whatever that were at the Royal Alberta Museum, how many of them actually, you know, went around the corner, went down under the 97th Street Bridge and up into Chinatown? And if they did, what kind of experience did they have, right? So, lots of great things happening, but lots of the same problems remain. So with that bit of context I gather that council did talk about, or executive committee did talk about the 97th Street Bridge a little bit.

Stephanie:
Yes, they did. So I also wanna just clarify, this is the bridge. It used to be for rail. And also I think another important piece of context is that I've seen in years past, it can also be a place where a ton of houseless folks will set up encampments, because it's like a kind of central place stall too, and like, it's flat and everything. So at the end of the conversation, the committee passed a unanimous motion. It was a three-part motion. So, the first was that administration work with Chinatown community groups to explore a community cleanup program focused on Chinatown, and prepare some funding options, so that addresses that, the overflowing garbage can issue. And then they also, they didn't I think what would, it's not in this motion, but I think what will be included, is Mayor Knack was like, "Okay, so we empty the transit…"… garbage cans once a week, but the street ones every day. Can we just do them all every day? You know, like again, like those little, tiny, weird things that, can we just fix those? So I think that would be, maybe that's already in the works, but that was kind of the vibe I got.

Mack:
That should be.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
That should be, right? This is one of those, like, do we need a community cleanup program or do we just need to prioritize and better operationalize the thing that is already a city responsibility? Like, I think this is the very slippery slope that we have gone on downtown where instead of having the city fund and do that work, or having businesses take ownership directly and do it, we rely on philanthropic funding in a way…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
To fund the downtown cleanup crew, and we don't have that crew in all these other neighborhoods. So what do we do in a in a neighborhood like Chinatown which is facing the same problem but doesn't have the same kind of, supports or resources available, right? So…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Hopefully the city can address that. Okay, so that was part one of the motion. What else did they decide?

Stephanie:
Part two was that administration work with Qualico and adjacent landowners to prepare options and analysis for the improvement or removal of the 97th Street Bridge, including costs, potential funding sources, legal implications, and other considerations and return with a report to, yeah, about either improving or destroying the bridge. Because I guess there's some sort of ownership, like they don't really know who owns this because Qualico has their development right there, and it's just kind of unclear and confusing who owns it. So they're trying to figure that out.

Mack:
You know what that sounds like to me, Stephanie?

Stephanie:
Hm?

Mack:
A really poor excuse to just not take action. Like, at the end of the day, I find it really hard to believe that whether the city owns it, or Qualico owns it, or the province owns it, that anyone would be happy with it staying. Qualico wants their developments to be successful. The city wants Chinatown to be successful. Everybody would benefit from the removal of this bridge. So I really hope this motion ends up on the destroy the bridge part of it, not the improve the bridge part of it. And let's not use this, "I don't know who owns it" as an excuse to prevent…

Stephanie:
Get rid of it.

Mack:
Further action. Just do something about it.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
I recognize there's gonna be a cost and all those kinds of things, but there's already a cost. We're just not paying for it directly, right? And so let's just do that properly.

Stephanie:
Totally. And I just was, I wanna say that, you know, I if you take away all of the kind of negative connotations, I do think as an infrastructure nerd that it's a cool thing and that if the, if it fit better into the neighborhood and it wasn't so, such like a magnet for… (sighs) I don't know, just I think that it, I wish that it could be a cool thing to have like this nice green bridge over a big street. So part of me is like very naively hoping that maybe there's an option for improvement, but like know realistically it should probably just be torn down unfortunately. It reminds me of the rat hole that they used to have, on 109th Street that like…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
I think that's an interesting piece of infrastructure but in the end gotta go.

Mack:
Yeah, no, I agree with you there. They're very interesting pieces of infrastructure. It'd be cool if there was, maybe this is a failure of imagination, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
To do something, but anything that is gonna be imaginative enough to address the issues that bridge brings into play is probably gonna cost more…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Than it would just cost to get rid of it, right? So that's a, that's a challenge for sure, and this is why we have museums and…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
History articles and, you know, other cultural assets to remember things like the rat hole Without having to deal with the challenges they provide day-to-day right?

Stephanie:
Yeah, it's just, it's kinda sad. And then the third or the third part of the motion was that administration provide a report with options and analysis for a housing incentive in the corridor's area and return with options for funding, et cetera.

Mack:
Music to my ears. Housing incentives. That's what I've been all about lately, so that's fantastic. I hope that there's money put toward that. There is other money coming to Chinatown though, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so the applications for the, like, existing Chinatown Vibrancy Fund just closed a little while ago, so that would again bring those kind of events, like you said, Van Block, ToGather, and this…

Mack:
Chinatown Chow Down. Like there's a whole bunch of things. The Dragon Boat Festival I think was supported quite extensively through that fund.

Stephanie:
Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, these things are usually funded a couple years at a time, so for the 2027 to 2030 budget deliberations which are coming up in December, council has asked administration to bring options forward for how do we extend this.

Mack:
And this would be, if I read correctly somewhere, I think it was $500,000 a year, so like about $2 million over the next budget cycle, for the Chinatown Vibrancy Fund.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Great. Okay, well, I look forward to that and I look forward to finding out who got the most recent round of funding as well and hopefully, you know, a lot of those things we've talked about that have been so positive for Chinatown can either keep going or build on the previous success. Maybe we'll get some new things in there as well, so that's fantastic.

Stephanie:
Right.

Mack:
Anything else about Chinatown come up this week?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so on a sadly related note, this week, Justin Bone, the man who is accused of killing two men in Chinatown in May 2022, he testified in court. So, you know, that incident, that horrible tragedy was part of like the big spark that led to a lot of this because that was around the time where, like the provincial government said, came in and said that city council needs to come up with a safety plan, and this was part of it, the Chinatown Vibrancy funding and stuff. So, if you don't remember, maybe you didn't live in, Edmonton at the time. On May 18th, 2022, Hung Trang, who was 64, and Ban Fuk Huang, who was 61, they were found fatally injured in their businesses in Chinatown, and the man accused of this, Justin Bone, he-… he's fired four of his lawyers over the course of the last, I guess, nearly four years now, and some of them several times, and it's just been delayed and it's getting to a point where they're risking, like, a miscarriage of justice sort of thing. I mean, this is not a law podcast, but, you know…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
It's getting to a point where the trial's taking a really long time, and I can only imagine that the families and the entire community just want this to be put behind them, and we'll have some links in the show notes, and you can read up, on what's going on with that court case.

Mack:
Yeah, very interesting. It is a, it is an unfortunate but real connection to all of the vibrancy, activity that has gone on in Chinatown in the last several years. You're right, that was really a catalyst, an accelerant for a lot of the things that have subsequently happened, and it's unfortunate that it was a tragedy that did that, but hopefully we can get some closure to that. Okay, well, I was celebrating the potential for a housing incentive in Chinatown. Last week you promised there might be some news about a downtown housing incentive. And you're here to deliver.

Stephanie:
Yes. So Executive Committee took a look at the Downtown Attainable Housing Incentive. Basically, you know, TLDR is, it's expected to fund between 570 and 850 units that are fixed at about 30% of Edmonton's median rentier income. We'll get into a little bit more of the specifics later, it's, it is a little bit more complicated than that, but basically, they're hoping that this will help with a couple hundred attainable, quote unquote, "attainable" units, but then overall, thousands of units in the buildings overall. The incentive would be funded through the extended Downtown Community Revitalization Levy, which, of course, Council approved in, the summer, and it was a bit controversial at the time 'cause it involved giving some public money to the Katz Group to build that downtown, event park, but here we are. This is one of the things that was promised. This was one, a bit of the, like, the sugar that was included in the medicine, if you wanna…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Use that, analogy. So, it's structured as a 10-year tax rebate, and applicants are required to construct a new rental building, so no upgrades, office to resi-, conversions, with at least 25% of units meeting the attainable housing criteria for at least 10 years. That criteria is different from affordable. Affordable typically means, like, it's fixed at a certain amount, and usually, it involves, like, much deeper subsidy, affordable housing, but it, the, for this particular project, it's calculated around the maximum one-bedroom apartment rent in downtown Edmonton. So it's kind of convoluted. I'm about to say a bunch of numbers. A studio can be rented for 85% of the maximum one-bed. A two-bedroom can be rented for 125% of the maximum one-bed. And I just won't go on. A three-bedroom is a little bit more. So essentially, what this means is that these brand new sparkly units created with the incentive will be rented for around the same price as existing downtown apartments, slightly more, but not quite as much as what a brand new downtown apartment typically goes for. E…

Mack:
Let's ignore the numbers. You've got a handy chart here That we'll link to in the show notes. This is from the presentation that administration made. So, what you're really saying here is that attainable in this context means these rents will be a little bit higher than the average rent for all of downtown. But not as high as other new buildings. So, if I were to build a new building today, you know, at full market rates, I could charge quite a bit more than what the average is.

Stephanie:
Exactly.

Mack:
And so attainable means you won't have to pay quite as much, yeah?

Stephanie:
Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly it. So, you know, take for example, there's a couple new, brand new, like, quote unquote, "luxury high rises." That term gets thrown around a lot. And there's a couple of those downtown that are brand new, and you'd expect those new buildings to be going for, you know, for a one-bed it's a little over $1,500, $1,600. But an existing one bedroom from an old building, like I used to live in Edmonton House, an older building from, like, the '60s or '70s, and the rent around there is, you know, $1,200-ish. So the idea for this program is that they're fixing it at a little bit higher than those old buildings from the '60s and '70s, and you can't go as high as the brand new luxury high rises. And part of the idea of that is, I mean, these developers are getting an incentive, a financial incentive, but at the same time, it's helping the financials work out for them. Because, like, existing rents downtown, if they don't have any other incentives, are not enough to make housing projects downtown work out. So, by keeping it a little bit higher than an old building downtown, it's supposed to make the financials work out better. This is what I, this is the impression that I got from the presentation that administration made, and that it's kind of almost a win-win or, like, trying to please the developers by giving them a little bit higher than existing, but then also making, you know, these brand new sparkly units with, like, en suite laundry, probably has, like, a hot tub in the As an amenity, you know what I mean? Like, these, like, nicer buildings for much cheaper than you'd normally be able to move into them.

Mack:
Yeah, another way to say this is, what it looks like they're trying to say in the presentation, which is that we have this desire to hit, you know, tens of thousands of more people living downtown, 24,000 by 2030. And the current market conditions just aren't gonna be enough to do that, so we've got to incentivize it in some way. This housing incentive is one of the first real practical ways we can do this. We've got the student housing incentive that we talked about previously, but this is another way to do that. And there's also in the, in the presentation, that we'll link to, a pretty helpful graphic that shows, you know, that they are taking the, uplift that would all go to CRL revenue, that's how the CRL works, right? You get more tax revenue as a result of the improvements that have been made 'cause instead of an empty lot, you now have a building. Instead of all of that going into the CRL-We're basically saying most of it goes to the CRL, but we're gonna keep some of it back for this housing incentive.

Stephanie:
Yep.

Mack:
And that's how we'll pay it back over time, which is good. So it's a way to both increase the amount of housing that we're getting downtown. It says up to 3,400 total units, which, you know, could be almost 5,000 people potentially if it was fully built out that are living downtown. So that's significant, but also a way to make sure that all the housing we're building is not super luxury, like you're saying, and that people can actually afford to live there.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Okay. Well, this is, this sounds encouraging. I presume executive committee did something positive with this, fingers crossed?

Stephanie:
All of the councillors said, "We don't want people to live downtown." no…

Mack:
Ugh.

Stephanie:
I'm just kidding, obviously. It was approved, and so what's gonna happen next is, it goes from committee to council, and council, I'm assuming, will give it the rubber stamp and,…

Mack:
Yeah, because it's related to the CRL, it needs full council approval. So that'll happen at a upcoming meeting here right away. Okay. Well, that's really, that's really encouraging.

Stephanie:
Mm-hmm. And I wanted to say one more thing about this, one issue that some, so obviously like BUILD, DBA, all of these groups came out to talk about this and said, we mostly, kinda similar to Chinatown, "We like this, but we want more."

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
And one of the things was that the boundary for the housing incentive does not include all of downtown. Notably, it doesn't really include like the very center of downtown, like 102 Avenue 101 Street. Does not include the BMO site, the, arts-driven parking lot. So, eh, yeah, it is, it is limited. It takes, when you take out, every lot that you take out, there's, that's one fewer lot that you can build a new tower on, right?

Mack:
And that's presumably because this is related to the CRL. This is not money that is in general revenue. This is CRL revenue, and that means it's gotta fall under the CRL boundary. Is that right?

Stephanie:
Yeah. So the CRL boundary does not align perfectly with the downtown neighborhood boundary. So yeah, not every lot is eligible for this, or anything to do with the CRL.

Mack:
Okay. Well, thank you for that update on housing. Next, we wanna talk about something that we talked to the mayor about the last time we interviewed him. He promised that this council was gonna set some priorities or a different strategic framework, a different way for them to make decisions, and they've now followed through. They've done that. So, I saw the mayor post about this on, LinkedIn, and then Postmedia did some reporting, so I'll put some links in the show notes for you. But they have agreed to four strategic priorities for this council term, so economic development, growth management, quality services, and safety. Those are the four. And then they've also agreed to three guiding principles, affordability, fiscal sustainability, and relationship driven. And so the mayor basically said, you know, when everything's a priority, nothing's a priority. And that's what this is meant to do. It's meant to bring some clarification to the decisions that they have to make about budgets and, limited ability they have to spend on things in the next four years. What are they gonna put to the top of the list? If they have to choose between two things, how do they make the decision between those two things? I gather that these strategic priorities and these guiding principles are intended to be the way that they answer that, right? So I'm thinking about this as a little bit of a lens. So, when I, when he first talked about this, I was confused, and we might have talked about this on the show. I said, like, "We already have a vision. Council already has a strategic document that they've approved. We already have city plan. We have these things." And so it's not meant to replace that long-term vision. It's really just meant to bring some clarity to decision-making in the shorter term, is the way that I understand, these strategic priorities. So I have thoughts about this, but first, Stephanie, I thought I'd, give you an opportunity to share what you think.

Stephanie:
Honestly, I don't really understand the point of these kinds of exercises in any situation, 'cause I feel like, you know, big companies and, like, institutions, post-secondary even arts organizations, they always come up with these strategic priorities. And honestly, they're just really vague in any situation. And now in this, in this situation, like, of course they're gonna say that affordability and safety is important. They're not gonna say, "I wish that the city was more expensive and less safe." I don't know. Maybe I'm just being cynical, but like I just think that like every single thing that council decides could be justified using one of these priorities. You know, for example, if they're approving a new neighborhood that just sprawls and sprawls, they're managing growth, because they're making space for new Edmontonians to live. And there was, and it's even economic development, because they're creating, like, you know, new housing, but then also making infill way easier. Could be also seen as managing growth, because they're managing growing up instead of out. You know, something like funding anti-racism initiatives, which was a big thing for, former Mayor Amarjeet Sohi. That could be filed under safety and building relationships, but it could also be taken away under fiscal sustainability. I don't know. Yeah, maybe I'm just being too cynical, but I just, I truly just don't see these strategic priorities having any impact on council decisions. I think that it's, this is like, I'm being so uncharacteristically negative right now, but…

Mack:
I love it.

Stephanie:
But, you know, like, I honestly just think this is something that they did at the beginning of the term, and then it's gonna go sit on a shelf and get dusty. I would love to be proven wrong, but again, it's just so vague, like anything that they decide, literally anything they could, they could decide would, could be fit under any of those priorities.

Mack:
I think it's a fair point. They are very high level and very vague. I too will watch with interest to see if these things just get shelved or if they actually follow through. I saw in some of the reporting that the mayor was pleased that Coun. Tang already had referenced these in a, in a subsequent discussion. You know, basically saying, "If we approve these, like, does this support economic development or whatever?" I think the mayor talked about the economic development one in a, in an interesting way. So perhaps it's not surprising. Every city is gonna say that they care about economic development. But his point is that it hasn't ever really felt like a priority. It hasn't been brought to the level of, "This is why we're making this decision, and why we're deciding against these other things." And so from his point of view, you know, bringing these priorities together is a way to provide that clarity to people. But as you say, they're pretty vague, and you could argue that a decision's gonna fall under one of them. There's two other things I wanted to say about these strategic priorities. So one is, it's interesting what's not prioritized, and so climate change stood out to me right away, and so you might look at this and just say, "Well, that's because climate change is already agreed to be a sort of foundational thing. It's part of every decision that we make." You know, there's that little section on the bottom of every report. But I'm not sure the evidence supports that assertion, right? So I don't know about that. So why isn't climate a priority? Why isn't that one of the top level priorities for them? So that's one thing. It's like, there's a lot of stuff that is missing here. And then back to your point about, is this just a empty exercise that organizations do? I understand, I think better in the business context, right, like, when you have the ability to do everything, you end up doing nothing, and you really need to say no to stuff. Like, I've learned this the hard way about being an entrepreneur. Most of your success is gonna come from what you say no to And that you have to find a way to focus in on the things that are gonna give you the best return or take advantage of the current context the best, and you just can't say yes to everything. As much as you want to, you just can't, and nothing will move forward if you do that. So I think it's pretty powerful that city council tried to bring that kind of thinking to its work and that they're able to agree and narrow it down to just four priorities. I think that's kind of impressive, right? There's a long history of much smarter people than I talking about how, you know, editing is about removing everything until you get to the point where nothing else can be removed. That's when you know it's done, right? Steve Jobs famously coming back to Apple, making the product line so simple. Like, there's lots and lots of examples, but they're all based in business, and the city is not really a business. I'm not sure council has the luxury of saying, "We're not gonna care about that. We're only gonna care about these things." Like, they have to care about all of the things that our public dollars fund. And so I think that will make it very challenging for them to actually put this into practice as they especially as they start getting into budget decisions, which is a very different thing, as we know, than priorities or visions or strategies or plans. Like, this is where the rubber hits the road. Where are you actually gonna spend your money? That's where you get to actually put that into action. So, I think it'll be challenging. I'm a bit more optimistic than you, Stephanie, maybe, that this will be a useful tool, but I guess we'll get a first test here this year because the four-year budget cycle is coming up.

Stephanie:
Yes, exactly, and that also, was discussed at length this week at council. It's actually, as we're recording, they're probably still talking about it because this week they started their quote unquote, "zero-based budget process," that's not really a zero-based budget process. They've been talking about this for years. Actually, Andrew Knack and Tim Cartmell kind of collaborated on something when they were councillors together to get this sort of budget process going. Essentially, what they wanted was we start from zero and we add things on bit by bit by bit and do, like, the line by line every dollar the city spends. That's not really possible for several reasons Especially it would take, like, so long to develop this. So what they are now using is a results-based budget process. That's what administration is calling it. So what's happening this month, at five or six meetings throughout the rest of the month is that staff from each city department and branch will present a line by line budget and information on the funding model, key drivers of cost increases, structural budget variances, staffing composition, outputs and deliverables, services, service levels, benchmark comparisons with other municipalities, and audit information where applicable.

Mack:
Bingo. Bingo. I got the drinking bingo. Service levels.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Budget variances. I got all the keywords.

Stephanie:
Okay, perfect. So they, yeah, they have six days throughout the month to do this, and then after that, administration and the mayor and the ward councillor, apparently, are gonna go do in-person engagement sessions around the city. I want more information about that. I think that's gonna be interesting, very Parks and Rec. As I mentioned, I love that show. But yeah, so that's what they started doing this month.

Mack:
Okay, and so we've got a few months of this engagement to happen, lots of other reports and things to come. Anything strike you as missing so far?

Stephanie:
Yes. So, the Edmonton Police Service is not included in this presentation, the largest line item in the city's budget, and other agencies, boards and commissions, so I don't think the library is in there, because they're under a different governance structure and their funding is decided in a different way.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Also utility related, because, you know, technically utility is kind of, like, a separate budget.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
It's just a little bit complicated. So they are still going to touch on these areas, of course, but not until September, and then honestly, I was surprised to not see more pushback about the police not being included, though I guess they're respecting the governance model. And, Mayor Andrew Knack did ask if police are going to be police and, like, the police commission, the funding body, are going to be involved in these engagement sessions over the next few months, and the commission already does their own engagement, but admin said that they're working to kind of involve the commission in that.

Mack:
And you said these, initial presentations are starting, as we're recording this today, Thursday and Friday.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
So we should know a little bit more next week, potentially, about what council's heard.

Stephanie:
Yeah, so this week they started with, the ones that I've listened to so far were like the office of the city manager, which is you know, that's extremely high level. He's the city manager, manages the city.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
But, you know, when they'd get down to like, I don't know, urban planning and economy, make it a little spicy, parks and roads, who knows? Might get a little, might get a little more interesting.

Mack:
Sign me up for when we have the golf courses conversation.

Stephanie:
Oh. Hmm.

Mack:
All right. Well, that was a full one, Stephanie. Lots…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Of good stuff this week. I'm sure there'll be lots of interesting things next week, but you and I, before we get to that, as you're listening to this episode, maybe, it's come out on noon on Fridays like it always does, we're doing another edition of Taproot Exchange, which is our members only livestream that we've been doing every couple of weeks for people who are members of Taproot Edmonton. It's a way to offer a bit of perspective and bring some new voices and have a more fulsome conversation about things that are going on in the news that are kind of interesting. So, let's do a little promo, Stephanie. Who are we talking to this week?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so, I think we talked about it on the podcast, and if not, you probably saw the news that, the King Edward Park Community League was on the brink of closing because they didn't have any volunteers and the existing ones were like, "We can't do this anymore." And if it closed, they would've lost their tennis courts, their rink, their halls, and the community showed up. They had standing room only, a line out the door of volunteers wanting to come forward and save the league. So, it's a really, happy, good news story. So, but at the same time, I think that it kind of reveals something about what's going on with civic engagement in Edmonton. So, we're gonna talk to someone from the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues and someone from the new board, one of those great folks that stepped up to help save their community league. It's giving like old you, like musical where they have to put on a talent show. Anyways, but we're gonna talk to them about, you know, what happened, why did, why did people show up at the last minute to save things, and also, what can other communities learn from this if they're also facing a decline in, volunteers? Why are we seeing this decline in volunteers? I love this topic. It's very important to me. You know, community engagement, both on the kind of official level with community leagues and also on a more just informal level. So, I'm obsessed with this conversation. I'm so glad we're gonna be talking about it. It's gonna be so cool.

Mack:
If you're a Taproot member, you can listen to that, we'll have the recording available and the transcript next week. And, if you're not a Taproot member, that's the kind of thing you can get access to, if you join and become a member of Taproot Edmonton. You get access to Taproot Exchange as well as our weekly giveaways of tickets and perks and discounts and things like that. So, it's another good reason to support Taproot and become a member.

Stephanie:
Mm-hmm. And you can like send in questions ahead of time or you can add questions to the livestream while we're going. We also have had interesting conversations like with the founders of RWI Synthetics, which is a really cool local startup that just launched like a new AI tool. A few weeks before that, we talked to some folks on both sides of the infill debate to, ahead of those proposed changes to the zoning bylaw. Like, we do really interesting conversations. It's honestly one of my favorite parts of the week is just getting to nerd out on these things for an hour. So, definitely would recommend subscribing.

Mack:
We'd love to have you join us. (instrumental music plays) but of course, you can always join us here every week as well as we dig into what's happening around City Hall. We'll be back again next week with another episode of Speaking Municipally. Until then, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're…

Both:
Speaking Municipally.