Speaking Municipally

Mack:
I like big bins. This week, council delayed a public hearing as it had questions about its duty to consult with indigenous nations.

Stephanie:
Plus, council reduced the parking requirement at daycares and discussed how to stop illegal dumping at apartment buildings.

Mack:
Hi, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're…

Both:
Speaking Municipally.

Mack:
Welcome back to Speaking Municipally, episode 362. I hope you're finishing the title of this week's episode in your head.

Stephanie:
Yep.

Mack:
I saw you dancing, Stephanie. Yeah.

Stephanie:
Mm-hmm.

Mack:
And you were having fun recently, not on the pod. You did the trivia night that we talked about recently. How'd it all go?

Stephanie:
Oh, it was so fun. Thank you so much to everyone who came out. It was a really good time. It was super well-attended and very warm in there, but that's okay. And, I made a couple of mistakes in the tallying up of the numbers, but everyone was very gracious, because it was my first time hosting all by myself. And, there was a two-way tie for first place, and my tie-breaking question, they both were pretty close, but not quite. So, the winners were the team, Big Bike Lobby, BBL.

Mack:
Nice.

Stephanie:
And, yeah. It was just great. So thank you guys for coming out. I hope to host another one, and I'm going to make it even harder.

Mack:
Yeah, absolutely. Do you think that, the people who won or tied were Taprooters? Did that help? Did that knowledge help them?

Stephanie:
Yes, they 100% were. I know this because I've, like, spoken to them before and I know they are. And then they got The prize were the little felted radishes that Karen makes.

Mack:
Oh, yes.

Stephanie:
And they were all so excited, they pinned them right on their shirts. So thanks, you guys.

Mack:
Those are lovely.

Stephanie:
Thanks for the support.

Mack:
Nice. Can you share your tie-breaking question?

Stephanie:
Ooh, yeah. Well, the I needed something, like, really specific and nerdy, I thought, for the tie-breaking question so that it would be, like, a good tie-breaking question.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
But then everyone there was so smart and informed and engaged that I was like, "I don't think it's hard enough," and I was pretty much right. My question was, what day did the Valley Line Southeast LRT open? And I remember it because I have, like, a little button up here somewhere that says, like, "I rode the first-"…

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
Valley Line train on November fourth, 2023." That was the day, and both of them got, the November right. But one team accidentally said it was in 2024, not 2023…

Mack:
Ah.

Stephanie:
So the other 2023 one.

Mack:
It doesn't feel like it's been that long, I suppose. I would never remember a specific day like that. I'd totally have to look that up, you know? I might get the general time of year right, but the specific day? That's a good question.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Okay. And you're gonna do some more trivia in the future, so stay tuned for that. Stephanie's becoming the trivia master.

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
We have one other thing before we start the show we wanted to bring up. We are approaching, of course, Canada's 159th birthday on July first. And I don't know, Stephanie, it feels like a bit of a different one this year. There's a lot going on. We're having…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
A referendum about a referendum. Debates about immigration. We just, I feel like, got past the stage where you were unsure if somebody was waving a Canada flag if that was a good thing or a bad thing. So in light of all of that, we're doing some reporting as we get to Canada Day next week, and we'd love to know from Taproot readers, listeners, and viewers what this year's Canada Day means to you. So we'll have a link in the show notes to a very short survey. If you wanna take a few minutes to fill that out, let us know what it means to you. We might use your response in an upcoming Taproot story. All right, we have an ad for you.

Stephanie:
This episode is brought to you by Edmonton Opera. The 2026/2027 season features the Barber of Seville in November and The Magic Flute in February. The Opera Duo Package gets you a bit of a deal on both of these operas, setting you up for a couple of great evenings to look forward to. Here's Artistic Director Joel Ivany with more on that.

Joel Ivany:
You get to come out to the Jubilee, to hear something magical. So like you said, it can be a wonderful kinda date night, where perhaps you have dinner before, you have a drink afterwards, and you talk about what you saw. So it's a great chance to kind of hit that kinda cultural moment that perhaps you've missed for a while or you're interested in experiencing.

Stephanie:
Your Opera Duo subscription also gives you the option to add on the ever-popular Opera al Fresco in August at the University of Alberta Botanical Garden. Subscribe today at edmontonopera.com.

Mack:
Well done with the tongue-twister on that one. Okay. I see that Rossdale was at council this week…

Stephanie:
Yep.

Mack:
Rezoning or questions about the zone, rezoning application down in the Rossdale neighborhood. But it wasn't all about rezoning, actually, it sounds like. The conversation veered into indigenous consultation. What happened at council this week, Stephanie?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so council was discussing a rezoning application that sort of formalizes what's already planned in the Rossdale neighborhood through the, like, eight million different documents they have down there, but you know, the area redevelopment plan, like, the transportation plan, all of this stuff. A few weeks ago, a few months ago, we talked about how city council was debating, you know, developing the parking lot that is used for Riverhawks games.

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
This is connected to that.

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
So this is just the next step in that process. It is to change the zone, from a direct control zone that it is right now to a new special area zone, which is, it's kinda complicated, but basically, it's like for this particular neighborhood, we need to have a specific Rossdale medium density or Rossdale high density zone, if that makes sense. The parcels that they were talking about include that gravel lot that the Riverhawks use, but it also extended north to surround the Arts Hub Artona building, which, was kind of new, and I thought that was interesting. So, you know, to get a little bit, like, nerding in the weeds right now, when you're at a public As a city councillor, you are only allowed to determine whether a rezoning application would result in a zone that is appropriate for the land. You are legally required to only think of that. So that's why sometimes you'll hear councillors, you know, they start to ask questions about, "Will this be affordable housing?"

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
"Can the market support this type of housing? Will it be rentals?" And legal will stop them because that's not what they're legally allowed to do. Or other examples, like…

Mack:
They can clarify what's in the zone and what's…

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
Allowed under a specific zone, but not about that specific project, just whether or not…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
The zone that they are applying for is appropriate for that space.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Yeah, it's like a very narrow set of questions that they're allowed to ask about. And what kind of came up as an issue at this meeting was the question of Indigenous engagement, because of course, as we all know, the Rossdale neighborhood is deeply historical. Pre-colonization it was, like, a meeting place for, you know, so long for Indigenous groups, and then it was also, you know, the location of several forts, and now it's moved into another iteration of, like, an important part of our city. It's right in the heart of the river valley. And the question that a lot of the councillors had was, were Indigenous groups consulted on this? And again, it was hard for administration to kinda talk about it because of these rules that, about the public hearing.

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
And administration said that they sent two or three emails to, you know, the different groups, and they have received no response, and several of the councillors said, "That does not mean that they were engaged." Just because they did not send a response at all does not mean that they are like, "Oh, that's perfectly fine with it." You know, of course, like, maybe they just are sick of dealing with the city and don't want to engage, like, and the, and the relationship needs to be built. I'm not saying that's what's happening because we don't know because they didn't engage, but, that was kind of the tenor of the conversation that the councillors were having was, "It doesn't actually seem like we've fulfilled our engagement duties."

Mack:
So administration said it sent emails to the governments of Treaty 6, 7, and 8, as well as the local Metis government and Lac Ste. Anne Metis Community Association, and said they sent them twice since November but did not receive any feedback. It just feels like probably someone at the city has a relationship with folks with these organizations. Like, could we not have picked up the phone and made a phone call? Like, I'm a bit shocked that they would think…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
"Well, we sent two emails and we're good."

Stephanie:
And they were very clear to say that those two emails were specifically in relation to the rezoning of this piece of land, whereas the entire River Crossing Redevelopment Plan is still ongoing conversations, but…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Just related to this specific rezoning, they didn't receive. Maybe an analogy is if, like, I wanna go talk to my neighbor, so I go and knock on the door once, no answer. I go and knock again. It doesn't mean that, like, I've engaged them. They weren't home, and they didn't answer.

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
You know what I mean? Like, it You have to maybe try a little harder to try to talk to them. But then also at the same time, again, I don't know, but maybe the Treaty 8, First Nation is like, "I don't care what you do. Leave me alone." I don't know. Like, that's the thing, is we just don't know.

Mack:
I suppose that's possible, but, you know I think in this case, because of what you said, the historical nature and the strong…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Indigenous connections to this part of our city, it makes sense to put a little bit more effort into the engagement process than we would normally otherwise do. In a normal situation where there aren't some of these other factors to consider, if nobody replies, okay, well, how hard are we gonna work to go and try to get a response from somebody, right? I think that is a fair thing to think about, and having a standard of practice for that makes sense. But in a situation like this, when we are in a city that has made commitments to truth and reconciliation, and we have an Indigenous framework and all those other things, feels like we could put in a little bit more effort to do that. So what did council feel about this? What did they say?

Stephanie:
So they decided to postpone the decision to a future public hearing because, kind of coincidentally, there's actually a report going to Urban Planning Committee next week, on July 2nd to talk about Indigenous engagement within the North Saskatchewan River area redevelopment, area, and they wanted to, like, be able to have that discussion and talk about, you know, these new, this maybe a new approach to Indigenous engagement before moving forward on this thing. However, I will say, though, again, nothing is gonna change at the next public hearing because all they're going to be doing at a public hearing is saying, "Is this an appropriate land use for this piece of land?" And the city pointed out is that, actually, the change from DC to this new special area zone is not that much of a change. It's more of, like, a kind of procedural thing. So what can be built there right now, right now, if the city wanted to, they could dig up that land and build, like, a, I think a six-story tower on part of it, a little taller on another part. That's not changing.

Mack:
I hear what you're saying, but let me just play devil's advocate for a minute. So yes, we can only make a decision based on the appropriateness of the zone, but what is the point of having public engagement for a rezoning application in the first place if it is not going to be considered a factor in the appropriateness of that zone, right? Like, if we have the application come forward and it checks a lot of technical boxes, but then we hear from everyone in the community that this would be horrible, surely that should factor into the decision that council, the question that is before our council at a public hearing, right? And so…

Stephanie:
Right.

Mack:
I think they need to have… … some indication about whether or not the affected groups in this case feel one way or the other, or indifferent. You know, they didn't…

Stephanie:
For sure.

Mack:
That's a factor that can go into their decision about this rezoning application. Sounds like what they need though is a separate meeting, that is not a public hearing, to sort of debate this topic of whether they should engage or how much they should engage. Or I think I saw you, in your notes, say whether they have a legal duty to engage.

Stephanie:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so that was another, thing that got brought up in the public hearing, and, you know, you hear this sometimes, the legal duty to consult, and this is with the Crown governments. Now, I'm a, again, I'm a municipal government girlie. This is not my forte, but, there are certain projects and initiatives and whatnot, in certain areas that the federal and provincial government have a legal duty to consult with, Indigenous groups on. Do they always do that? No.

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
But, you know, there's another question here about whether the city has a legal duty to consult with Indigenous groups, and this report that I mentioned that's going to Urban Planning Committee next week says, quote, "Both the federal and provincial levels of government are the Crown and therefore subject to the Section 35 requirements of the Canadian Constitution. The courts have confirmed that municipalities are not considered the Crown for the purposes of a Section 35 consultation requirement. This applies to both public and private lands in the River Valley. However, the city has established its own framework for Indigenous engagement rooted in City Council's proactive policy commitments to reconciliation and the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as articulated in the City Plan and the Indigenous Framework." So essentially what they're saying is we don't have a legal duty to consult, but, like, we as a city have said that we do want to consult with Indigenous people and we should, but there's no legal duty as there is with the provincial and federal governments.

Mack:
Yeah, I think that's really interesting. If you read, the very clear legal language around Section 35, then yes, no legal requirement on the municipal governments. But my understanding, I'm not a lawyer, is that the duty flows, right? It applies from it flows from the Crown, applies to the federal and provincial governments. Municipal governments are simply a creation of the provincial governments, and so it would seem to me that it should flow down to municipal governments as well. Now, I believe the courts and the federal government have basically determined that this isn't settled law. It's kind of unclear about whether or not municipalities have a, flow through legal duty under Section 35. But like you said, and like this report says, we've made other commitments. And we have, our own framework for Indigenous engagement and we have policies and things like that we've already committed to that suggest to me that we should be, regularly engaging with these folks on particularly projects that affect them.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Also, I just wanna be clear that when I talk about all of these, like, reasons why council and administration is acting a certain way, it may sound like I'm defending them, I'm not necessarily taking a stance either way though. I'm just trying to explain this, like, imperfect bureaucratic system that all of this is existing in…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
'cause I can, I'm, like, a very big rules and policy person, and I can get a bit myopic, and I really love, like, explaining this stuff, but I also wanna be clear that I'm not saying, like, "Don't listen to anyone."

Mack:
Sure. Yeah. Of course. So you said this is going to have this report on July 2nd at Urban Planning Committee, and then this rezoning is gonna be pushed to July 6th. What did Mayor Knack say about that?

Stephanie:
You know, he said that people were using the public hearing to address a separate issue around governance about who should be allowed to build in the Rossdale area, and, you know what, they actually didn't even get to hearing from the speakers in opposition.

Mack:
Really?

Stephanie:
Which, yeah, they decided to postpone it before they got to speakers in opposition, which honestly I maybe think that was not a good move. Because they were really angry and they actually, some of them got escorted out by security, and I think that if they would've just let them have their voice heard, like, "That's what's important. That's what we're talking about here."

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
But then Knack was like, "All of you here, I really want you to mark in your calendar July 2nd and come back and have your voice heard, because that will be the actual topic of discussion." And, you know, the speakers there, some of them were quite upset that this was being proposed, but yeah, so they're, he really wanted people to come back for the July 2nd conversation.

Mack:
It's kind of amusing, right? I know he's very well-intentioned here, but, "Make sure you put this in your calendar," ignoring the fact that we just rescheduled the one that was in the calendar for this meeting…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
And it might have already been rescheduled from a previous Like, sometimes you wanna go and speak at something at council, you gotta come back three or four times by the time it actually gets on the agenda, so a bit rich. But yes, I hope that they do hear from the right people, the people they need to hear from, as part of this conversation.

Stephanie:
Yeah, totally.

Mack:
Well, like council, we've spent a lot of time talking about the engagement of it all, but the actual rezoning application here, you said to go from a direct control zone to a special areas zone. What would that have actually changed? Or what would be the result of this rezoning application if approved?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so the documents that are going to go to the public hearing say that the new zones would allow for a built form that is similar to what is currently allowed, with the exception of special setback requirements. So the rezoning would allow for buildings of up to 15 stories on the northwest portion of the site, which is an increase from the current limit of 12 stories, and a larger footprint would be permitted, and then the current zoning allows for up to seven stories on the, kinda like East and South portions nearer to the Riverhawks, field, which is not set to change. And then another thing is that it kinda adds in between the This is, like, the special areas zone part, is that between all of these, developments, they wanna have, like, pedestrian alleys, which I think is just, like, paths that cars can't go down, and they have individual unit entrances onto them, so just, like, fun little urban planning stuff.

Mack:
Interesting. Okay, so not dramatically different from…

Stephanie:
No.

Mack:
From what's there now.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
And so this is not really a question of, "Oh my god. This is a really big change. How could you not engage with anyone?" It almost seems like they wanted to litigate, the lack of engagement or the approach to engagement more broadly, right? Which I guess is where we're at. So we will look for that report on July 2nd and then this rezoning application on July 6th, right before council goes on its break.

Stephanie:
I wanted to say one more thing before we wrap this topic up. As we know, like, when there's the question of land sales and development and stuff, administration has to be pretty hush-hush to, like, protect bargaining power. But one thing that they hinted at, or at least th-this is what I got from the hint, is that they would, that they really wanna partner with, First Nations partners to potentially build something. And I think we've seen that in other cities…

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
Where, you know, it's land kind of returned to these nations. And, you know, that would be a great economic development thing for these nations. And also, you know, they can then have, like, obviously, way more of a say in developing the land. But again, they were kind of like, "We can't really say anything yet."

Mack:
We can't talk about that yet, but stay tuned. Yeah, okay.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Exactly.

Mack:
Well, we will. All right, next up we wanna talk about that very Edmonton thing, parking, this time, in the context of day cares. So also at public hearing this week, council made a decision about this. So what's the context here, Stephanie, and what did they decide?

Stephanie:
So council voted on Tuesday to reduce the required amount of pick-up and drop-off spaces for day cares. And, you know, city staff said that it removes regulatory barriers for those setting up small-scale day cares. They're kind of the ones more in neighborhoods, not, like, bigger facilities in, like, a strip mall. This is more for neighborhood ones. And they did this because, they did an analysis of the first year after the updated zoning bylaw and found that, on average, fewer than half of on-site parking spaces were used during the peak periods. And they also found that 17% of trips to and from childcare facilities were made by walking or cycling, which I thought was interesting. So the current requirement is two spaces for the first ten kids and one space for every additional ten kids, and then the new requirement is one space for every ten kids. So it just reduces it by a bit. And then they also, now allow a 50% reduction to the on-site parking requirement if unrestricted street parking is available. So if there's, like, tons of street parking around, because they were finding that parents just used the street parking anyways, because it's more convenient than having to, like, go around and park and back in, whereas I mean, I love using street parking. I will usually use it rather than Find a parking lot. So yeah.

Mack:
Okay, when I saw this, one of the things I was curious about is, parking minimums, which we eliminated in Edmonton. But my understanding is that there are some of these specific requirements that were kept, such as minimum number of spaces for day cares. Is that, is that your understanding as well, Stephanie? Like, we're not changing parking minimums here across the board. This is a very specific thing to…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Daycare regulations.

Stephanie:
Yeah, exactly. It's just really specific to the day cares, and, like, especially kinda smaller scale ones in neighborhoods, not necessarily like the ones in strip malls, like I said.

Mack:
Okay, well, I have a little bit of experience with day cares, although not those little ones in a neighborhood, mostly in and around a school or large buildings and stuff like that. You mentioned the 17% surprised you. In what way? Like high or low?

Stephanie:
Both. And here's why. So I live in a central neighborhood, and, I see, if I ever go for my afternoon walk around 3:30, I see, like, moms and dads picking…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Their kids up from school and walking, and it's lovely. However, at the same time, my family mostly lives in more suburban areas, and I've gone with my sister to pick up my nephew from daycare. And, like, it's one of these kinda day home places where it's at right in the middle of a neighborhood, and though it is a short drive away, it is still a drive. And, like, we pulled up, and there was cars everywhere, and it was very, like, crowded. And it was in midwinter, so there was wind rose, so it was, like, very tough to get around. But the thing is that it was because of the suburban style of development. She wouldn't have really been able to walk or bike there, also 'cause it was winter. So my experience with picking up my nephew from daycare, is like, it would be insane for anyone to try to walk and bike and do this. However, at the same time, my experience being a central neighborhood girlie is like, "Why would anyone ever wanna have to drive to daycare?" And, like, ideally, in an ideal world, you could just walk, you know, even if you lived in the suburbs, right?

Mack:
You could.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
But people don't walk when they live in the suburbs.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
This the thing that surprised me about this number, is that 17% seems kinda high. You know?

Stephanie:
Yeah, that's what, that's what I mean.

Mack:
I mean, like, I feel like the number of people that drive, I can't remember off the top of my head what those numbers are for Edmonton, but it's a, it's a large number. It's a high percentage…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Of people who that's their mechanism of travel. And it's just not practical. You're not gonna take your kid to daycare, walk there, and then walk home and get in your car and go to work. You're gonna do that all as part of one contiguous trip, right? And you're gonna drive. So I was a bit surprised by that number. I don't see this, 50% of peak times being empty. To me, in the, in my limited experience, you know, in more central areas, those spots are always full of people at drop-off and pick-up right? It's a bit surprising to me that they found fewer than half… … were used. Like, I would have thought those would be fully maximally utilized, you know. And they're even for a short period of time. It doesn't take long to drop your kid off into the daycare and then out. But, you know, there's a lot of people at those daycares sometimes. I guess if they're really small, maybe that, maybe that is the case. So I feel like this is a good decision for council to have made. We don't need to have more parking than is necessary. If the actual evidence is that we don't need all of these spots, then we shouldn't require them. Not necessarily, in my opinion, because we wanna make it easier for people to set up small scale daycares. I think, look around the city. We have way too many small-scale daycares, a little bit of the gold rush that has happened as a result of daycare subsidies. But just because we don't want more people to be driving, and we want to encourage modes of transportation other than the vehicle. Part of that is making it better to be a cyclist or a transit user or a pedestrian, make those experiences great. And part of it is to stop making it so much easier and quicker and convenient to be a driver in a vehicle. And one less space per 10 kids, that's, my read of this. There's really not much of a change. But anything…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Makes a little bit of an impact.

Stephanie:
Yeah, and it also only beat, like, new ones that happen, in the future, so it's gonna be a really small change.

Mack:
I feel like we should just, before we close on this, say that we understand that everybody's family situation is different.

Stephanie:
-huh.

Mack:
And some kids, it's much more challenging. And there's lots of reasons you might wanna use the car versus another mode of transportation. So please don't misinterpret the comments as…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
You know, passing a judgment on how you choose to get to daycare. Although, if you could bike or walk, I'm a little bit passing judgment. That's just the reality of it. But I understand, I understand that, you know, people have other factors to consider. But it's hard when you're on city council to think of everybody's individual little experiences. You have to try to make the best decision for the city as a whole. And so sometimes when they make decisions like that, you know, like this, I think that's what they're going for, right? What would be best across the board here to try to build the city that we're trying to build?

Stephanie:
Yeah, have the most benefit for the most amount of people. So I mentioned, you know, something I see living in a central area is families walking home from school. Another thing that I see living in a central area is a lot of illegal dumping at the condos and apartments in the area. And that's something that was brought up this week at city council, or more specifically, at utility committee.

Mack:
Illegal dumping, okay. When, this brings up lots of memories for me. The Edmontonian was a upstart digital publication in our city a while back. And Jeff Samsonow was the, editor, publisher there. And I remember they used to They did a series about couches. You know, people had left couches on the side of the road all around the city. Nobody knows why or what happened to those things. But that was really interesting. It was such a unique Edmonton thing. That's kinda what I think of when I hear, "Illegal dumping." But This is really, what, more about people putting their waste in dumpsters that don't belong to them. Is that what this is about?

Stephanie:
Ugh, well, that's the thing, is that I feel like there's several problems here that everyone's trying to fix. And we'll see if it's, you know, effective. The city administration put forward this report about illegal dumping and ways to stop it. And some measures that city staff are considering include more free Eco Station days. So, Eco Station days, free Eco Station days are when you can go and drop stuff off for free, 'cause normally you have to pay like a small fee to dispose of, for example, a couch. I did that a few years ago.

Mack:
Yeah, depending on what the item is, yup.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Some stuff you don't have to. And they're saying we should have, more of them, and we should spread them out and have some on weekdays, because on the weekends, the lines are really long.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
A public awareness campaign about illegal dumping.

Mack:
Yeah, well…

Stephanie:
Which…

Mack:
If you wanna buy some ads on Taproot to help people understand Where not to dump illegally…

Stephanie:
Do you really think that Taproot Yeah, do you think Taproot members are regularly dumping illegally?

Mack:
I don't. But I'm sure they could be great ambassadors for this…

Stephanie:
True.

Mack:
Public awareness campaign. So City of Edmonton…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
We'll take your ads, yup.

Stephanie:
Education for condo or apartment managers, such as tips about putting bins further away from the street, or site monitoring tools. I think that means cameras.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
That can check, license plates. Higher fines, and then a large item pickup program, which I think would be essentially, like, you illegal dump on the right day, that they…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Come and take it away for free.

Mack:
Interesting.

Stephanie:
And like big bin item-based system.

Mack:
Like we do for Christmas trees, right? There's specific…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Times where you can leave your trees out and the city will pick it up. But if you don't do it within those windows, you're on your own.

Stephanie:
So the committee said, "Nice, we love it." This was just, a report to be received for information, that we're, they're telling council that they were doing this. But one thing that they did want to pass was, that administration, as part of the waste utility rate filing for 2027, they incorporate some options to mitigate the financial impact of illegal dumping on multifamily housing providers, condo associations, and residents. So, when there's a couch or a mattress or something dumped in the back alley and someone has to pay to get it removed, figure out a way to work in some sort of financial, payback for that.

Mack:
Interesting.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Which, you know, some buildings might be able to do already if, you know, they do have cameras or some ability to see, you know, who left that there. But there's other areas where that's much more challenging. So I look forward to seeing what administration might come up with as part of this 2027 waste utility rate filing report. You mentioned earlier that they're trying to solve, like, a few different problems. What are, what are the problems you see here?

Stephanie:
Well, so I think that there's kind of three separate issues here with waste in general. The first is residents not sorting correctly. You know, throwing, glass in the garbage or putting plastic in the compost, and that's just, you know, in the kitchen in the house. That's, where that comes from. The second problem is this, like, capital I illegal dumping, where you leave something like a couch or a mattress beside the dumpster.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
And that's, you know, someone has to drive up and dump it there, and it's a very intentional thing to dump this there. And then the third issue, which is something that I experience living in a central area that's, you know, a bit on the rougher side, or there's some folks living rough around, people will just discard their belongings in garbage cans. Now, in my experience, composting is really difficult, because I, you know, put my eggshells and my food scraps in there all week and then go outside to dump it, and I open up the compost bin and someone has just discarded a bunch of, like, clothing and glass and maybe drug paraphernalia into my compost bin. And of course…

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
If it's, contaminated at all, that whole bin goes to the dump instead of to the compost, and it And every time I'm like, "Why did I have this in my kitchen all week if this is going to if there's no point?" And that Now, all of these three things are kind of difficult to fix. I don't know. I don'I don't know what the fix are for any of these things.

Mack:
Well, I'm not sure that a public awareness campaign really is gonna make all that much of a difference, but I do think there are some things that could happen. And I guess education, awareness is never a bad thing. Like, the more people that know about these things, the better. I think about my experience downtown in a high-rise feels like a lot of the problems you described are solved if you have the bins inside, locked away in the parkade. That's where ours are, so we don't have a problem of people putting things in the bins that shouldn't be in there. On the organics, we almost have the opposite problem. When I go at the end of the week to empty out my coffee grinds and eggshells and vegetable clippings and stuff, it's empty. Like, I don't know if enough of my neighbors in the building are actually composting. Like, it's really like, nobody seems to use the green bins that we have, which is really interesting.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
But, you know, getting stuff left there in the bins can be solved by making those bins harder to access, for one thing. Not always feasible, depending on the construction of the building and where it is. Another thing that I think can be really effective though, and I'm, you know, excited to hear about the idea of perhaps doing some big bin events just for this do those kinds of special pickups. I think this can be really successful. So, my own personal experience here is that on 104th Street downtown, all of the buildings, the residential buildings, got together in August of 2020, which feels like it's not the right time, because all I remember is pandemic, but the email proves it. It was back in August of 2020, and they organized a bin. So the residents all, you know, all the neighboring buildings paid for a 310 dump to bring a big bin. They left it on 104th Street for two or three days. You had to pay a small fee, 25 bucks as a resident, and you could go and take things and leave it in the bin. So people got rid of couches. We got rid of our old couch that way, or a mattress, or those kinds of things. You could take them down, leave them in the big bin, pay the fee to your condo association. Now all of that's taken away, and it solves a whole bunch of problems, right? Uncertainty about what you do with these things, if you don't have a vehicle or you don't wanna have to go and rent a truck, probably you know, it's a higher likelihood, I think, if you live in a multi-residential building, somewhere like that you just have never been to, one of the city facilities. You might not know what it's like to go to an Eco Centre, right? And so these big bin events can just make it a lot easier. I think if you make it easier for people to dispose of their waste properly, they will. So, I would like to see more of these big bin events. If the city can do something to work with, you know, housing providers, condo associations, that kinda thing, to make those feasible, that sounds to me like a great way to mitigate some of these challenges that they highlighted with this illegal dumping report.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I think that there are plenty of people that would do the right thing if it was, like, one centimeter easier, and if they can make it a little bit easier, then yeah, go ahead and do it.

Mack:
Just one other thing I wanna say about, you know, the Eco Centres. Every time I've been to one of those, the EcoStations, the staff are so friendly and lovely, and like…

Stephanie:
I was thinking that.

Mack:
They decorate it at Christmastime, you know? It'it's actually a really good experience.

Stephanie:
Yeah, maybe that's what they need to do, is make it an even better experience, and then everyone will be like, "Yay, let's go to the EcoStation," 'cause I love going to the EcoStation. They're so nice.

Mack:
They're very nice. I mean, sometimes the lines are crazy, but if you avoid those peak times and go at other times it's a wonderful experience.

Stephanie:
Yeah, it's great.

Mack:
Okay, well, hopefully you had a wonderful experience listening to this, podcast. We are rapidly approaching the summer break. City Council will be on break for about a month. We take a short publishing break, but not for a few weeks. We've still got a few more episodes to go, so we hope you'll join us wherever you get your podcasts, whether you're listening or watching, and, leave us a rating, a review, a comment if you can. That would really help spread the word so that other people also get to experience, the work that we do every week on Speaking Municipally. We'll be back next week. Until then, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're…

Both:
Speaking Municipally.