Coming up at council: Feb. 8-12, 2021

Here are some of the notable agenda items coming before city council for the week of Feb. 8-12:

• Proposed amendments to the Zoning Bylaw 12800 promise to "reduce barriers to business and aid in the economic development and recovery in Edmonton." The amendments include changing the conditions under which variances may be considered, enabling the development of both a secondary suite and garden suite in conjunction with semi-detached and row housing, and enabling electronic notification of rezonings and some development permits.
• An audit of the Snow and Ice Control program resulted in 12 recommendations, all of which administration has accepted with eight scheduled for implementation by the end of the year. The recommendations include improving public communication about snow clearing, implementing a formal process to monitor staff productivity, and evaluating the community sandbox program.
• Part 2 of the City Productivity and Performance Audit found that "productivity itself is not a priority measurement" for most city services and that most city services are reluctant to benchmark their performance to external organizations.

Other agenda items coming up include:

• An update from the city auditor shows that 15 of 34 outstanding recommendations are overdue, five of which are from the Edmonton Transit Service Revenue Management Audit.
• An audit of the City of Edmonton's use of cloud computing services such as the Google suite, Taleo, and MailChimp, found that the city's policies and governance framework "are aligned with best practices." The report included three minor recommendations for improvement.
• Monthly meetings of the Emergency Advisory Committee from February to August are recommended to provide COVID-19 updates.
• Policy C618 Councillors' Budget and Expenses is due for a review. The city clerk will consult with councillors and will present a summary of feedback and potential amendments in April.
• Administration recommends permanently changing the distribution of council agendas from three to 10 days before a meeting even though during the pilot "approximately two-thirds of reports were not completed in time" for the Agenda Review Committee.