Speaking Municipally

Mack:
Maybe it is a municipal responsibility. This week, city council approved funding for day spaces to get us through the winter.

Stephanie:
Plus, the southeast transit garage will be a little bigger, and we take a look at engagement on the police budget.

Mack:
Hi, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're…

Both:
Speaking Municipally.

Mack:
Welcome back to Speaking Municipally, episode 361. We talked about this previously, but you are hosting a fun event coming up, you're a trivia guru, so tell us, tell us what to expect, when it is. And there's a link now, right? It'll be in the show notes, if you're watching or listening.

Stephanie:
Yeah, so, it's gonna be on June 23rd at Earth's Refillery Co-op and Cafe. It's gonna be a Edmonton trivia, you know, municipal kinda themed, and you should totally come and check it out. It's a great little space, it's gonna be super fun. Please come. It'll be great. And if you've listened to this podcast or if you're a Taproot reader, you will probably know a lot of the answers because they're coming out of my brain and Speaking Municipally and a lot of the Taproot stuff also comes out of my brain, so you will probably win.

Mack:
Excellent, okay. Well, looking forward to that. June 23rd at Earth's Refillery Co-op and we'll have the link in the show notes. We have a little correction on something we talked about last week when we were talking about parking. What did we get wrong there, Stephanie?

Stephanie:
So, we were talking about the, all of the changes to parking that are coming up, you know, new fees and the redesign of the residential parking program, and we were also talking about administration's recommendation to take away the 15-minute free parking period at the beginning of the session, and we did not, realize that council had actually voted, or committee had actually voted to keep the 15 minutes, so the exact motion was that administration maintain the 15-minute free parking period and revise the parking rate structure for sessions exceeding 15 minutes to fully recover the costs of offering free 15-minute parking. So, it'll just kind of even out in the end, I guess, for the city, so that they're not losing the money from offering this 15 minutes.

Mack:
This was passed unanimously by the committee, but it was a motion from Coun. Stevenson, who I think would hear the brunt of complaints about this, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
With all the e-park locations downtown. And, we'll link to her Instagram post in the show notes, but she basically did a little bit of a victory lap, saying, you know, "I brought this motion forward. This is great for you to be able to continue to support local businesses. You can, you know, pop in, get your coffee quickly, and hop out." It's kind of funny to me that we're celebrating this win when, like you said, if you read the text of the motion, we are still recovering the cost of this. We're just moving it from the start of your parking session to later on. So if you, for all those folks who are parking longer than 15 minutes, they're gonna help subsidize the people that only park for 15 minutes for free. Which I guess is pretty clever, actually, as a way to maintain that window.

Stephanie:
Yeah, especially when it's, when that change is probably going to be cents, like, 'cause city parking is so cheap.

Mack:
Right, compared to private parking, for sure.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Thanks for that correction, and again, link in the, in the show notes for more, if you wanna know more about that. And one of the things that we collect to help pay for this podcast is revenue from advertisers, and so let's read our ad for this week before we keep going.

Stephanie:
This episode is brought to you by Park Power, your friendly local utilities provider and title sponsor of Taproot's regional roundup. Park Power offers electricity, natural gas, and internet to homes, businesses, and farms throughout Alberta. It also has a solar club that you might wanna check out. If you live in Alberta and have a solar PV system, Park Power can offer you some of the best solar power buy-back rates in the province. Get rewarded for your contribution to Alberta's renewable energy. Learn more at parkpower.ca. That's parkpower.ca.

Mack:
All right, we're gonna talk about day spaces, because council has approved some significant funding for this, although it is for a short period of time. So, tell us what this day space conversation was all about, and what happened at council this week, Stephanie?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so council voted without debate and unanimously to fund, $925,000 to fund day spaces for next winter. This was a recommendation from the Community and Public Services Committee meeting the week prior, so most of what we're gonna be talking about, the discussion came from the week prior, but it was technically approved at council this week. So, Mayor Nack's first motion of the term was to fund a million dollars for winter day spaces. You know, it was kind of like the, I think we talked about this like symbolic first motion, it happens a lot of, the time in, city council. And so they put $1 million to expand access to day shelter spaces, and they found that over 6,600 people visited the spaces. It, there was a 169% increase over the previous winter. They were able to expand the hours, four different sites across the city from 99 hours per week to 250. So a pretty substantial increase, and then this report, though, that came back to council about, you know, reviewing the whole program said, well, there's no sustainable funding options at the municipal level to continue this on for a second year.

Mack:
So this was a much needed program, judging by the metrics here, but only funded for that one time, and essentially what committee and council had to decide upon in the last two weeks is, how do we keep this good thing, this much needed thing in our community going?

Stephanie:
Mm-hmm. Exactly, and this has been such a common debate over, as long as I've been, a reporter, and I'm sure before that too, is this municipal jurisdiction or is this provincial jurisdiction? Some people, like people on, both sides are very adamant that it's one way or the other. At the committee meeting, there was a couple of, decisions that were made. Administration said, "Yeah, there's no there's no funding options, but if you did want to fund things, here are your options." Which is kinda strange But that's kind of how it works. So there was four options. The first option was, no funding, it's, kind, I guess it's an option. Second is winter respite model, so pretty similar to what they did last year. Third option is a year-round model, so having these day spaces year round and not just when, you know, people are gonna freeze to death.

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
And the fourth option is a community service hub model, which the, report says would provide robust on-site support to provide multidisciplinary support for people with a broad spectrum of needs, including those with more complex issues that require intensive case management.

Mack:
So those sound like an escalating cost of options…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Essentially.

Stephanie:
Yeah, exactly.

Mack:
Do nothing is free. This other model would be, you know, the Cadillac version essentially.

Stephanie:
Yeah, exactly. So council voted to bring forward unfunded service packages for option three, which is the year-round day spaces model, and option four, which is to establish the community service hub. You know, this community service hub is so interesting to me because it, I don't know if I've seen the city do something like this. It seems like something a homeless serving agency would have. Like, it's kind of just, like, a social service. You know what I mean?

Mack:
It's like, all the services that they would provide in one place, right? So there's a…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Space for people to go, that's the shelter part, but then there's also We often hear the term wraparound services or support services, right, that would be alongside this. Probably meals, I'm guessing, connections to employment and housing options, things like that. Did any of the shelter operators speak at committee about this?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so tons of folks showed up, from BOYLE, BISSELL, The Mustard Seed, and they were talking about how this sort of thing is desperately needed, obviously. Like, those services are so underfunded. It would be a take a long time before those folks showed up and said, "No, we have enough money. Don't give us any more." and yeah, it was just basically, like, the services that did get some of the money to open up the day spaces were like, "These were great. We were able to, you know, really support some people," and then other groups which didn't get any kind of threw their support and said, "Yes, this was a great service."

Mack:
And did they say anything about, you know, those options three and four, so the year-round shelter spaces or this, service hub?

Stephanie:
So based on what I got from hearing all of this discussion was, again, as much as you can give is kind of needed. I think that the community service hub would be really welcome, just 'cause you know, we always hear about, like, aligning supports and wraparound services, like you said.

Mack:
Coordination, yeah.

Stephanie:
Coordination. And this is one example of that.

Mack:
I think most people would agree that the service hub sounds like a good idea, but, you know, like we said, also the most expensive. And I'm thinking, does that require a new building, a new space? Would it be one of these existing shelter operators? Would it be somebody new? Certainly wouldn't be the city itself, I don't think. Did we get any of those questions answered?

Stephanie:
Well, that's what I was wondering, because when you say, like, a hub, it kinda sounds like, a physical hub, right?

Mack:
Right. Yeah.

Stephanie:
And that's what, my question is too. I mean, some of the, in this one of these attachments, it says, like, on the limitations side, it says that additional sites may need to be secured depending on scale. It would require alignment and funding capacity across multiple, government of Alberta ministries. It also says that services exist elsewhere within the homeless system of care. It's just like, it Then that's why I'm saying it seems like a new thing that the city has never done before. I could be wrong, but it's just, it's very interesting to me.

Mack:
So we will probably learn more about that when those unfunded service packages come forward in the fall budget deliberations. So you said there's two, right, for the year-round shelter spaces, which is essentially, I think, just funding existing capacity but year round instead of doing this separate winter, you know, limit, more limited summer program. And then the other would be this, would be the service hub. What else did they decide upon during the meeting?

Stephanie:
So all of these options though, winter spaces, the community service hub, this will all be decided in once it's already minus 20.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
So committee members were saying, "Okay, what are we gonna do for this coming winter to kind of get, build a bridge to get us to this future state where potentially we're funding year round shelter spaces, day shelter spaces?" So they decided to fund $925,000 towards day spaces this winter, so a little less than the one million from before. It doesn't seem like it's gonna be a huge material difference. I don't think they said, "You know what? They don't deserve as much." It's just kind of based on where the funding is coming from. It's coming, part of it is about half from the Council Contingency Fund and the other half from the Community Safety and Wellbeing Fund.

Mack:
So that gets us through the winter, extends the runway a little bit, allows time for those budget deliberations to take place. You mentioned that, you know, the discussion at council really went down to, is this our jurisdiction or not, right? What did, what did they decide about that, or say about that?

Stephanie:
Yeah. Well, this was It did kind of seem at certain points that some of the councillors were leaning away from supporting this because, again, like I said, this discussion all the time was, is it municipal or is it provincial jurisdiction? And, like, I could I swear that I have heard multiple councillors on this council before say, "We're not gonna fund social services anymore." Like, "We're gonna stick it to the man. We're gonna say the province," like, "We're not gonna do this." one of the things that was mentioned in this report this week was that there's another report coming that is going to outline a way to transition the city out of providing social services to vulnerable populations. So council asked for that at one point, "Hey, how do we get out of paying for this stuff?" But then here they are turning around and saying, "A million dollars almost here. Let's fund a community service hub. Let's fund year round day spaces." I'm not saying either way whether they should or shouldn't. Do it. I'm not arguing either way, but I'm literally just confused about whether or not they want to fund these services.

Mack:
I mean, I can imagine they're in a really difficult position, right?

Stephanie:
Of course.

Mack:
You know, on the one hand, you're gonna get that criticism. Like, "This is not city jurisdiction. I'm already paying too much in taxes. Why are you paying for stuff that, you know, isn't core to your responsibilities?" But then on the other hand, there's all of this need in the community, and people want to have some sort of action on those root causes of disorder and the other things that, you know, they perceive as issues around downtown especially. So, yeah, bit of a rock and a hard place for council on this, right? I imagine that what some of them are thinking at least is just, it's better to have information. So even if this isn't a city problem or even if this isn't city jurisdiction, getting these unfunded service packages on these other approaches will presumably provide us with more information about what those things might cost, which might strengthen the argument for going to other orders of government to say, "Look, this would have this kind of an impact. It's only gonna cost this much," right?"We don't have the funding to do that, or maybe we can be partners, or maybe we can figure something out." But maybe that's what some of them are thinking when they're like, "You know, it's not really our jurisdiction, but we're gonna still get some more information on how to take this forward."

Stephanie:
Yeah, that could, that could totally be it. And also what you were saying about the whole dichotomy between "My taxes are too high, but you need to do something about this," Mayor Knack totally agrees with that. As the mover of the motion to bring forward these two service packages, the other councillors were allowed to question the mover of the motion. So Coun. Keren Tang said exactly what I was thinking, that Mayor Knack has kind of gone back and forth on whether or not the city should be providing these services. And then he said he hears every day, yeah, council needs to keep property taxes down and stay in its own lane, but then the same people and the same groups will turn around and say that council needs to do something about safety and vibrancy, especially downtown. So here's a little bit about what he said.

Andrew Knack:
For me personally, I lean more towards I still would prefer to step up and do the right thing than not. Yes, I would like the right governments to take over the responsibility, but seeing the results of this, and albeit we don't have, as much detail as we need, I'd like to see I think there's been some success on this, particularly in the iHuman side, that I saw some really direct results about gang members and youth gangs, being able to access this space and get disconnected, from those not-so-great folks.

Stephanie:
And when he's saying, like, "We've seen that this is working," he's just referring to those day spaces that they funded last winter.

Mack:
Yeah, that they were heavily used, obviously, just kinda confirming what I'm sure they've heard from all the service providers and from other people that there's a real, a real need here. And, you know, like the mayor said, "Somebody's gotta step up." In this case, at least for the next winter, it's gonna be city council. Beyond that remains to be seen, I guess, pending, what gets discussed at budget this year. So Stephanie, did you get a sense from this conversation that, you know, the municipal jurisdiction question is dealt with, or you're anticipating that coming up again?

Stephanie:
Most definitely will. You know, I don't know if it ever won't come up, unless we solve homelessness and it's not a problem anymore to be solved, which I'm not optimistic it's gonna happen anytime soon.

Mack:
No doubt.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Well, jurisdiction came up in this next item we wanna talk about, which is the engagement that the police have done on their upcoming budget. And, you know, they asked about funding and things like that we'll get into, but there was, you know, an interesting mix of folks there saying too, on the one hand, "Yes, we wanna increase funding in police, but on the other hand, we also support the city increasing investment in social services and issues." So really, you know, kind of interesting there too. Like, should it be police or should it, should it not be police? But, this was from the May 21st Edmonton Police Commission meeting, and they shared the results of this engagement on the, upcoming police budget. So there was a survey of a thousand and 25 residents that Leger did. There was an open survey that had 560 respondents. They did an in-person survey with a hundred unhoused people in our city, and then they did consultations with 22 community groups. So, pretty broad engagement. There was some caveats about how representative, this engagement was, but still a pretty useful look at what people are thinking about police budget as we head into budget time.

Stephanie:
Yeah, you know, this time about four years ago, the rhetoric around police was obviously extremely different. 2020 was a very transformative year of the relationship of police and the Western world, and in North America well, in America especially, but in North America, in Canada, we obviously have our fraught relationship, I think, with police too. Though at the same time also, I think that the last few years have flipped stuff too, that a lot of people are very much in support of police. So, I can imagine this survey, if it was like a voluntary thing, it's like only people on the extreme ends would go in and say "Defund the police," or they'd say, "No, keep funding the police." So…

Mack:
I think that is kind of the mix that we saw, yeah.

Stephanie:
Yeah. So what did, what were the answers to the survey? What did they find?

Mack:
Well, the high-level takeaway here is that most Edmontonians, who responded to this, the survey at least, want police to be more visible, more responsive, and more focused on core public safety concerns. But the other thing is they said they don't want the police to be responsible for everything. They want better social service response infrastructure so that the police are not the default. Responder to concerns about homelessness, addictions, mental health and social disorder. And this tension has been present over the last number of years, you know, through the pandemic and beyond, right? Is it, should it be police? Is that where we should be putting our funding? Should we take some of that funding away and put it toward other agencies and other services, you know, who may be better-equipped to handle people who are in a mental-health crisis or an addictions crisis? So I suppose the more things change, the more they stay the same would be the high-level takeaway…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Of the survey.

Stephanie:
Mm-hmm. And what did the survey say about how people are feeling about, you know, public safety in Edmonton?

Mack:
So in the Leger survey, 40% of people said they feel community safety has declined over the past two years. About 43% said stayed the same, and only 11% said it has improved. And then on those sort of day-to-day feelings about how safe they are, 56% of people say they feel about the same as before, 36% said, you know, they feel a little less safe. And so the top things that people cited as potential safety risks or the perceived safety risks were of course, drug use, overdose, addictions, those things, at about 44%, and then repeat offenders or a lack of consequences at 36%, which is really interesting to me that one is so high from a general public response, suggests to me that probably they are internalizing a lot of the messaging that has been coming from the city and the police and other authorities about bail reform and things…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Like that. 'Cause I don't think the average person interacts with repeat offenders on a day-to-day basis. Like, obviously if you're downtown, you're gonna run into folks who are using drugs or whatever. That one's very visible. But repeat offenders is a little bit interesting. And then the third one at the same percentage was homelessness or lack of housing. So those are the top three perceived, areas of safety risk.

Stephanie:
I also agree that the whole repeat offenders/lack of consequences thing is a very interesting outcome of this survey. But what makes me wonder, I mean, like I live by White Ave, obviously lots of unhoused folks that are clearly struggling and also, you know, crime and disorder. And even just something like, you know, a bunch of trash, a bunch of junk is just, like, strewn across a sidewalk, right? And then I can, I can imagine maybe what they mean by this is, like, they walk past the same alley every day, and there's always some, garbage or there's always people sheltering there, or there's always some sketchy thing going on, and that's what they mean by no consequences, is that, like, there are these problem spots where it always seems to just attract, quote-unquote crime, disorder, vulnerable folks. But, you're so right. It's like how do you know that…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
You know, a certain person Like, it's not like you're going up to them and saying, "So what's your criminal record?"

Mack:
Right. I mean, you might see the same people again.

Stephanie:
True.

Mack:
Like, I have this experience downtown. I'll see the same folks again and again, but that doesn't mean that they've done anything wrong. They probably…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Are just unhoused or, you know, might be dealing with addictions and are You don't have a place to go to safely use it, right? Doesn't mean they're a repeat offender necessarily. But if you do…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
See the same people over and over and you don't stop to think about it, I can understand how you might say, "Well, there's no consequence 'cause that guy's on the street all the time." Yeah.

Stephanie:
Yeah. How did the survey say that people are feeling about the police themselves?

Mack:
Mm, like we said earlier, it's kind of mixed, right? So about half of people, 56%, said they're confident in the police service. But, you know, as you would expect, that confidence is quite a bit lower from some specific groups, right? And so they, you know, called out, 2SLGBTQI+ residents in this, survey results quite a lot, as well as Indigenous folks, quite a bit. Another big category was about, folks dealing with disability. You know, among all of those groups, confidence in EPS is lower than it is in the broader population.

Stephanie:
Hmm. All right, so again, we're coming up to the budget. What are people saying now about the police budget in Edmonton?

Mack:
Okay, so of the general population respondents to the survey, 37% argued that the police are underfunded, 22% said the funding is about right, and 17% said they're overfunded. So that's pretty broadly equal, I guess. Like, it's not a runaway for one or the other. Right? You know, a little bit more folks say that they are underfunded than, you know, overfunded. But that underfunded perception has declined quite a bit. So it, you know, it would In 2022, it was over half of people, 54%, thought the police didn't get enough money. Now it's only 37%. So, you know, that's kind of interesting that change has happened over the last few years.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Again, like what I said, that four years ago, the, you know, general perception of police, maybe that's just my own, like, what I would what I was seeing at the time was so much in the defund the police, you know, realm. Just to see that now fewer people think that the police need more money, that is very shocking.

Mack:
Yeah. There could be lots of reasons for that, right? I mean, we haven't had a discussion about police funding in a few years now because of the last funding formula that was approved.

Stephanie:
Right.

Mack:
It sort of makes those conversations, you know, really quiet or in the background. There has been improvements in some of the metrics that the police track around safety. And they have, you know, have changed the way they talk about some of those things, and I think all of those factors and probably several others have, you know, perhaps contributed to that. And then the other part of the survey that we talked about is people wanna see social service response that isn't police, and that increased this time. So more people think that, you know, responding to people who are in a mental-health crisis should be someone other than the police, and so it kinda logically follows that, well, those folks are gonna need funding. So maybe we don't need to give more funding to the police. We need to give more funding to these other things, right? One of the things they did, which I thought was pretty interesting is, on the question of funding, it's not just should they have more or less, it's also if we gave them more, what should they do with it? And so they ask, you know, with a hypothetical $100, what should it go toward? And the things that people cited mostly were emergency response and crime prevention, followed by investigations and patrol. And since 2022, you know, when they've asked this question over time, the average that people have allocated toward, emergency response, investigations, and patrol, it's gone down over time. The only one that has gone up, the thing that people wanna see more of is crime prevention, which I think is pretty interesting.

Stephanie:
Hmm. This is very interesting. So what do you think the police are gonna do with this information? Do you think they're gonna ask for more money, Mack?

Mack:
Oh, I mean, undoubtedly, right? There's gonna be…

Stephanie:
What?

Mack:
All kinds of arguments about inflation and population growth and other pressures. You know, the folks, again, in the survey that said they wanna see their funding increased, more of them said they wanna see a visible presence, better response times, and address homelessness, but fewer of them, compared to 2022, said hire more officers. So I don't think this, the police are gonna take the results of this engagement survey and trumpet that. Like, there's not like, "See? More people want us to have more officers." they want In a way, the way I'm reading these numbers and the metrics is like, people are asking for the police to be more efficient with the money they have, right? If we're not asking to increase the number of officers, but we are asking for increased presence, it's like, do something different with the funding you've already got rather than just get more officers on the street, right? But yes, to answer your question, police are gonna ask for more money. That's how they work. That's how it works.

Stephanie:
I'm shocked.

Mack:
So I thought this was interesting. It's one of the agency reports that we're gonna get related to budget as we head into There's gonna be a lot more that is gonna get fed into the hole for your budget process, but police here with an initial bit of information that will help, in theory, them shape their operating budget asks. Okay, on the topic of budget, but not operational budget and not the upcoming one, we are in spring 2026, which means it's time for budget adjustments and Council this week approved several amendments to the 2023-2026 capital budget. We can talk about some of those. It was about $75 million, increase to that budget. There were some new profiles. There's always some project scope changes. You know, things cost a bit more than we anticipated in some areas, less in others. Sometimes the funding sources change, you know, all those kinds of things. That's why we do these adjustments in the fall and the spring, is 'cause we get new information, we have to adjust for it. All of those capital, budget amendments passed, but the one that I wanted to talk about that I thought was particularly interesting, Stephanie, was the project to expand the SouthEast Transit Garage. So we talked with, Kerry Haughton-MacDonald a little bit about this and some of our other guests on recent episodes or episodes of Taproot Exchange, our members-only live stream when we've been talking about transit. And this garage has been an interesting question, right? What are we gonna do with this SouthEast Garage? Because we wanna increase service hours for transit, we wanna make buses more frequent. In order to do that, buses need to live somewhere, they need a home for maintenance, which means we need a garage. The interesting thing about this discussion, I thought, was it's like, "Okay, we need a garage, but how big should it be?" And it's one of those It's kinda like if you buy a house. It's like, should you buy the one with five rooms? 'Cause now you gotta buy five beds, you gotta fill it with furniture. Are you gonna use that fifth room all the time? That's sort of the nature of the discussion I felt around this, the SouthEast Garage.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I am, I This garage literally lives rent-free in my head, because it really is key to increasing and, like, making transit better, is that we don't have room for the buses, so we need a garage and, administration proposed shrinking it way down and then, well, what we learned this week is that, they've kinda worked together and put together a medium option, isn't that right?

Mack:
Yeah, so this garage has been kinda up and down, right? The original design was quite a large, capacity garage, I think it was for, you know, about 430 buses, and then, earlier this year, administration said, "You know, if we're gonna stick within the budget, we're gonna have to make this smaller." And so this revised baseline design has been 255 to 290 buses. At the time, Council asked administration to identify some options for how we could have a greater capacity in this garage, knowing that we do want to increase capacity in the bus fleet, and as we said, those buses all need a place to go. So they did that, and administration came back with a few different options. Now, the options were private in this meeting, so we don't know the details exactly about what they were, but we do have some information about two of the options, right? So one of them was to go basically back to that 430 buses, the original capacity, just make it the largest one. That's not the option that Council chose to go with. What they did is they approved, in a very close vote, seven to six, and we'll come back to some of the folks on either side, the one that's been described as option three, which is kinda like the middle ground one, it's the balanced one. So it will increase capacity of the garage to 330 to 380 buses, and then the other reason they decided to do this is because, we don't know the details, but it will optimize the federal funding, the grant that is expected from the federal government, and the requirement of the federal funding is that the facility be a net zero facility, and so in order to… … meet those obligations with the, with that, federal grant. This option three, with a larger capacity than what administration revised it down to, but not as big as it was originally envisioned, whereas the other option here is what they decided to go with. And administration did say that, you know, building this garage at this larger size with the grant will cost less than building a, you know, lower standard building, but without the federal grant, right? And so that's kinda the math that was done here in this, you know, private attachment, which is like, we wanna get the federal funding, we gotta do it this way, and that's gonna give us the best value for this project.

Stephanie:
Well, yeah. I guess (sighs) it's, it is technically the one in the middle of the road, but I don't wanna hear no one complaining in 15 years, if any of them are still on council, which like In all likelihood probably not. But I don't wanna hear anyone complaining about transit capacity in 15 years when there's not those extra 50, 60 buses. I'm mostly joking, but, well, yeah. I guess that makes sense based on…

Mack:
Well…

Stephanie:
The financial situation they're in.

Mack:
We also don't know what kind of buses there'll be, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
So, this garage, in theory, with this option, will support both diesel buses and, in the future, electric buses. So if we are gonna be expanding the fleet and we're gonna add electric buses, in theory, this garage will support both of them. They do have a comparative analysis, which was made public, that you can see with other garages around the country. And sometimes, you know, they're very specific. You know, they're built specifically for electric buses or specifically for, CNG, natural gas buses, or diesel. So, this one, ideally, is a bit more future-proof.

Stephanie:
So, what was the tenor of the conversation around this at, the city council meeting this week?

Mack:
Well, I think it really came down to, are we tying our hands for the future? I think that was really the gist of the debate. So Coun. Stevenson moved the amendment and, you know, framed it as a bit of a balance, like we said, kinda increases our capacity in the medium term here. It's a little bit of future-proofing for the system, and it's not too expensive, right? So the big concern from some of the councillors on the no side of this was that in order to fund this, we're using debt room, and are we at risk of running out of debt, essentially, is the, is the conversation. Coun. Joanne Wright, for example, said she supports, you know, the broader capital package, but didn't think this is the right time to be adding funding for the garage. And, you know, her concern basically is that, like, future councils, whether she's on it or not, might not have as much debt capacity to fund things that might be needed elsewhere. So, that was the big one. Coun. Rutherford, I think, had the most interesting, argument against this. She was one of the folks who voted on the sixth side opposed. And that's essentially that we might not be able to afford the buses to fill this garage. You know, back to what I was saying about the furniture, you know, she's worried that, like, we're building this additional capacity over what administration recommended, you know, 380 buses as opposed to 290, but can we afford that many buses? And, you know, if we're gonna do that, then we're committing to this larger southeast garage, and that means maybe we're limiting our options elsewhere. And she talked about potentially the need for, you know, future transit infrastructure in other parts of the city, like in the, in the northwest. So, I thought that was a pretty interesting, argument to make.

Stephanie:
Mm. Yeah, I get that because, those buses ain't cheap, especially when you get the, like, electric ones. It would be, like, almost funny in a way for this garage to be built and then just to sit empty. Oh God, the columnists would have a field day with that.

Mack:
You know, I get her point about, like, can we afford it? But we know we need it.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
I think the latest city report we saw said we need 250 buses over the next four years just to replace the oldest ones in the fleet, right? And then there's growth buses on top of that, right? So, and if we wanna increase frequency, that's even more buses. So, the need is here. Whether or not we can afford to buy all of those buses remains to be seen. And largely might, maybe it's out of our control, right? It might depend on what the federal government has up its sleeve in future budgets, what kind of, you know, funding might be available to municipalities for this kinda stuff. What we do know this week, Stephanie, is that, the Edmonton Transit Riders Association, we spoke with them previously, they were advocating for the southeast garage to be included in the budget. It's gonna be in the budget. They'll be happy.

Stephanie:
Not going to the full capacity, but hey, maybe you get, you get what you get.

Mack:
Yeah. Okay, so that was our update on the Southeast Transit Garage. Again, that was part of an overall, set of amendments that came forward around the capital budget adjustment. Anything else catch your eye, Stephanie?

Stephanie:
Yeah, actually. So in the document there's just a couple lines about the Korman Block, which is a building, a historic building in the Chinatown Quarters area. It's not a official designated building, but it is on the inventory. And the city requested $600,000 to demolish it. And it made me sad because years ago, it might've even been before I was working at Taproot, this building was listed for sale, for affordable housing. It's this really cool, kinda square brick building, and it's right on the armature, which is that, like, pedestrian street that the city built in the quarters. It's one of the community revitalization levy projects. And in theory, it's this, like, lovely pedestrian street. And then in reality, in the years since it's been built, it still is continuing to just be surrounded by empty surface parking lots. And it's really a shame because the whole point of the CRL is to put something interesting in that encourages development to spur up around it. And one of the only buildings that was actually on it was this historic building, the Korman Block. I remember speaking to Anne Stevenson a few years ago, and she's like, she was so happy and excited that… … you know, this was a great opportunity. It's, like, the perfect thing. You're in this neighborhood that deals with a lot of low-income folks, and then putting affordable housing there, perfect opportunity. However, it is falling into disrepair. One of the things they mentioned was, like, unauthorized occupants. We can kind of understand what that means. There's a bunch of flooding. I think the roof was caving in, and so they're gonna have to demolish it, and it's just, it just, it's just really sad.

Mack:
This is an argument for faster action, right? Perhaps if we'd been able to do something with that space years ago…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
It wouldn't have fallen into the state that it's in now, where it's become a safety hazard.

Stephanie:
Yeah, exactly. So just rest in peace to the Korman block. It's very sad. And now, I mean, it's not like the building was contributing that much to that area anyways, if it was just falling into disrepair, but yeah, just sucks, you know?

Mack:
Well, it'll be demolished, and we'll have another empty lot, right? Which also won't contribute anything to that area, so…

Stephanie:
(sighs)…

Mack:
Disappointing, as you say. All right, well, that's kind of a sad note to end on, Stephanie. I feel like we need to move to something happier to close this episode. What have you got?

Stephanie:
Yeah, well, this week, I officially chose my office at city hall.

Mack:
Ooh.

Stephanie:
And I'm planning to record the podcast there, you know, get out of the house and kind of have, like, a fun little, at least one day of the week. And I'm, I love to decorate as, video viewers will know. You're in my house right now. You can see all the stuff behind me. But I want to, like, really deck out my new office. And also it's funny because, I, basically, there's only, as far as I know, three or maybe four now, including Taproot, only four outlets there, where there's, like, there's, like, maybe 10 offices.

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
And only three or four are occupied. It's very sad. And I'm occupying the former 630 CHED office, which is funny because I used to work for 630 CHED. But anyways, I got one with windows.

Mack:
Ooh.

Stephanie:
I was very excited about that. Gonna have natural light. So obviously, I'm gonna have my bus stop sign in the back.

Mack:
Absolutely. Yep.

Stephanie:
I might bring my Garfields, my Garfield collection.

Mack:
Oh, yeah?

Stephanie:
But what I wanna ask the listeners is if you have anything that you would like me to display in the back of my, of my office, please send it in. Somehow get it to us. As long as it's appropriate. Ideally city-themed but if you have any, like, I don't know, anything you want to send in, send it my way, and you'll see it in the back of the Speaking Municipally recording. I just think it'd be fun.

Mack:
That is fun.

Stephanie:
Send in fan mail…

Mack:
If you're a Speaking Municipally listener…

Stephanie:
To all my fans.

Mack:
You can contribute to the decorating. I love it. And…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
If you're a city councillor listening to this, I guess you're on notice now that Stephanie will be able to track you down a whole lot easier.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I will. I will be in the office, and I will be coming to more council meetings, and you'll see me tapping away up in the, up in the media, area.

Mack:
Amazing. Well, as you said, four out of 10 offices. I mean, the need for paying attention to what's happening all around our city, but especially at city hall, is greater than ever before. So awesome that you're able to be there and doing that for Taproot.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I'm excited.

Mack:
Well, that's a much happier note to end this episode on. So we look forward to seeing you recording from city hall in the future. If you enjoyed this episode, send it to a friend, give us a like, give us a rating in your podcast app of choice. We would really appreciate that so more people can find out, find out about and benefit from Stephanie's great work.

Stephanie:
Thanks.

Mack:
We'll be back next week with another episode. Until then, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're Speaking Municipally.