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Municipal Politics

kcantor said:
It’s probably not so much the cost of the courses per se but the lost time. My guess is a mere 1.5% reduction in productivity due to staff being away on coursework would more than make up for the projected deficit we’re looking at.
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I think working in a culture where you invest in your people and create a more psychologically safe workplace has value in attracting and retaining top talent as well as leading to better productivity.

The city has had issues in terms of its workplace culture so these initiatives, which as noted many companies offer, might be important. They've had reported issues of bullying and more that have been made public. The better the work environment, the better the productivity has been my experience.

Many city workers also must deal with a diverse public and so training like DEI can be valuable in that regard, too.

Investing in mental health training programs have value, too. I actually took a program that was attended by several people from Edmonton Transit. The stories of verbal/emotional abuse they had to endure from the public they were serving was awful - if you can equip people with skills and tactics to better cope with that, it could translate into less stress leaves and time off.
 
TAS said:
I think working in a culture where you invest in your people and create a more psychologically safe workplace has value in attracting and retaining top talent as well as leading to better productivity.

The city has had issues in terms of its workplace culture so these initiatives, which as noted many companies offer, might be important. They've had reported issues of bullying and more that have been made public. The better the work environment, the better the productivity has been my experience.

Many city workers also must deal with a diverse public and so training like DEI can be valuable in that regard, too.

Investing in mental health training programs have value, too. I actually took a program that was attended by several people from Edmonton Transit. The stories of verbal/emotional abuse they had to endure from the public they were serving was awful - if you can equip people with skills and tactics to better cope with that, it could translate into less stress leaves and time off.
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Totally agree but there definitely is a cost. I also used to cut grass during university for the city. We were on the job on day one. Now, you have to do a week or two of in class training. So to Ken’s point, this comes at a cost.

The sad part is, one person told me the cost of long term disability premiums have tripled in about 10 years. So not only are you pouring more resources into training to create a healthier work environment, but you’re not necessarily getting the results. They have to turn it around some how
 
edm13 said:
Totally agree but there definitely is a cost. I also used to cut grass during university for the city. We were on the job on day one. Now, you have to do a week or two of in class training. So to Ken’s point, this comes at a cost.

The sad part is, one person told me the cost of long term disability premiums have tripled in about 10 years. So not only are you pouring more resources into training to create a healthier work environment, but you’re not necessarily getting the results. They have to turn it around some how
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There's a cost to providing training (or maybe it's an investment), but lost productivity from mental leaves, more absenteeism, and higher turnover has arguably more cost - not to mention the potential loss of skill and experience. So many things can impact productivity at work - financial debt and the anxiety and depression that can accompany it is a huge one.

Screenshot_20240815_185428_Samsung Internet.jpg
 
BASE said:
Agreed on if there are pieces the city is currently spending on that are provincial responsibility then make those cuts right off the top. It's certainly a nice to have but doing more harm than good at this point in terms of what it is costing existing Edmontonians or how the city of Edmonton is viewed for affordability in the metro area (Cities, towns, & counties are competing for residents and businesses after all).

Regarding infrastructure deficits if this is the case I think they need to show that very clearly and make a distinct multi year shift away from building new infrastructure into investing in what we currently have.

The increases are so big and flying way above what we are seeing with inflation currently, I just don't think they can be accepted as there is no clear plan to bring them under control. The cuts will need to be painful and ideally most would agree we wouldn't want to see them. Some ideas that need to be considered in my opinion (no expert on the subject but believe in at least making suggestions):

Blatchford - Get out of the business, stop spending on it and sell what can be sold unless they can clearly indicate this is a revenue generator
Fees - Need to look at increasing fees for services like transit (fuel was specifically mentioned as a cost pressure in the article), rec centers and other public facility user fees should also be increased.
Facility Closures - Take a analysis of your worst performing or oldest leisure facility and/or library and make the difficult call to close it. Will have some unhappy folks and doesn't seem fair to pick one but looked at the rec centres the city has and noticed Eastglen leisure centre is a older looking facility and quite close to the newer Commonwealth rec centre. Not a popular thing when considering they are currently building a new rec facility out west but need to deal with the current reality.
Partnerships - We saw the recently announced Booster Juice deal with Terwillegar rec center. Where else can more ad revenue come in (i.e. Edmonton conference center).
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Agree with most of this. However, I'd keep Blatchford going as-is, and I'd throw a conniption fit if one of our facility closures occur in the central neighborhoods (e.g. Oliver Pool, Milner Library, AGA, etc).

They could delay the Yellowhead/66 St interchange and the Metro Line extension, although remember that such infrastructure spending is shared by the provincial and federal governments.

They could delay the river crossing projects (High Level Bridge, Low Level Bridge, Dawson Bridge, etc) but for how much longer?

The Touch The Water and the Rossdale Transportation Network projects can be delayed, and it's high time the City sold the Power Plant to a competent developer for a fair price (looking at you, Beljan).

The $100M bike network can be partially delayed but not put on hold entirely.

The neighborhood renewal projects can be put on hold.

I'm on the fence with the Jasper Ave renewal project but leaning towards a delay. Other road projects not started yet can be delayed.

They need to step up with the Exhibition land sales.
 
Greenspace said:
^There are a lot of services that are not core to running our City. For example, there's a plethora of social service that we do because the province doesn't. So I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but some would argue that's not our responsibility and you can't make the province do it. The province is shortchanging us in many ways, but I've seen no evidence of this Council looking at ways to save money at all. It's all the province's fault.

If this keeps up we will loose all competitive advantage to many other markets. And the tax burden will continue to shift to residential from non if we don't try to attract more business from going to the region.
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You say the city hasn't done anything to control costs. But this is one area that the city has cut a lot of funding.

List of city cuts to social services in the last few years:
1) Cut the CIOG operating grant that many small non-profits depend on for operational dollars (rent, accounting, etc.) by 75%
2) Ended funding for the Bissell/Boyle drop in space
3) Dismantled the City Social Worker program including the community social workers, domestic violence DART team, and city wide social workers focused. The City Social Workers had been part of Edmonton's city governance since the 70s, long before the province started short changing the city.
4) Eliminated funding for Outreach/Overdose teams in the inner-city
5) Disbanded End Poverty Edmonton (not personally opposed, was not an effective agency)

You can say that these aren't in the City's mandate, but most of these are work that had existed for decades. You cannot say the City has not been cutting programs. At the end of the day the increases in cost are not in the periphery but in core services: Policing and infrastructure. Unless we legitimately look at cuts in those areas we will remain stuck.
 
Policing and transit are the 2 biggest buckets. That’s where we gotta see big changes.

Policing is tough with how political it’s gotten. But as someone with family and friends in the force…they should have cuts. They’re paid insanely well (yes their jobs are hard. So are many others. There as less deaths in policing than many other jobs). And they have CUSHY facilities and benefits. They overuse equipment and have unnecessary gear. There’s little accountability.

Transit I think is about aligning investments to increase ridership. Our sprawl has made transit so inefficient, it’s crazy. We gotta look at how to move the average riders per bus per hour from 12 to 20. We gotta get LRT usage way up. We need to be building 400mil rec centres on the DOORSTEP of transit. Not a 35min walk away (gotta be one of councils biggest failure to date on Lewis farms). We need LRT stops near high schools. We need apartments to stop being built in a purely car dependent manner. We need transit to be safe and should have 0 tolerance for disorder and drug use.

If we can boost transit revenues by tens of millions, that’ll help a lot. And cutting police spending by tens of millions is needed to imo.
 
I'm assuming the city will be getting $38 million from the province for Northlands demolition or should hold off until they do. And that $38 million covers off almost 13% of what they are looking to make up.

I would not stop the $100 million active transportation spending - get the network as far along as fast as we can. This project helps city save money.
 
LRT stops close to the following high schools.
J. Percy Page/Holy Trinity
WP Wagner
Harry Ainlay/Louis St. Laurent
Victoria Composite
Vimy Ridge

When the Valley Line West is done, JP/St. FX will be added.
My apologies for any mistakes or omissions.
 
thommyjo said:
If we can boost transit revenues by tens of millions, that’ll help a lot. And cutting police spending by tens of millions is needed to imo.
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The city will be looking at fare gates this fall as a way, in part, to boost utilization and revenue. But it will cost to get it done.
 
The province I'm sure is enjoying seeing 'progressive' city councils scrambling as it's a valuable talking point in their political agenda.

Good on Sohi for keeping the various examples of the province downloading onto the city front and centre. Unfortunately, the province is not feeling much heat to act.

 
TAS said:
At yesterday's council committee meeting businesses along SPR and others impacted by lrt construction were asking for compensation.

During meeting, a rep from art gallery on 106 st and 102 Ave requesting compensation noted the road near the gallery has been torn up and patched up something like 3 times in the last year and was critical of the city for that waste. However when Coun. Paquette followed up with admin on that it was shared that it was Epcor or Atco (I can't remember) who was responsible for that and no costs were spent by the city for that work.

City has its own spending issues, but it tends to also get blamed for things it has nothing to do with.
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Well, EPCOR is owned by the City of Edmonton, so it is probably not unreasonable to expect better coordination and its efficiency (or inefficiency) impacts the city financially. If it is Atco, that is a different story.
 
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