Council tensions emerge as fall budget adjustment begins

Political aspirations for the coming 2025 election are surfacing both inside and outside City Hall as council's work on the fall budget adjustment gets underway, the co-hosts of Episode 285 of Speaking Municipally said.

As council prepares for the adjustment, the draft budget that city administration has created proposes an 8.1% increase in property taxes. But host Troy Pavlek and recurring guest host Stephanie Swensrude discussed how there are no obvious cuts to shrink that number.

"Because this is an (operating) budget adjustment, there are no big projects here. There's no active transportation network, there's no new LRT station — it's just little adjustments," Swensrude said. "The budget is already lean, and I feel like there's not much to cut."

Swensrude added that operations money for transit, snow and ice clearing, and the police are all done deals.

Pavlek, meanwhile, said cutting city services can seem more appealing as an idea until one sees that it can mean icy staircases or grassy medians in reality.

"I don't think there's a lot of cases where Edmontonians actually want to see their services reduced," Pavlek said. "They all like to think it's a bunch of bureaucrats typing into computers, but most Edmonton services are things that actually impact you, day-to-day."

Tempers flared during a Nov. 13 meeting about the budget.

Coun. Tim Cartmell created a motion against omnibus motions, which Mayor Amarjeet Sohi has used in recent years to reach consensus before meetings on multiple budget points rather than debate them one by one at council meetings.

In response to Cartmell's motion, as well as to Cartmell's comments introducing it, where he suggested factions of council have sometimes created the omnibus lists without his input, Coun. Michael Janz said proposals at council can suffer from "ego-temptation" and noted omnibus motions can put the "we ahead of me."

Coun. Andrew Knack, meanwhile, raised a point of order to discourage councillors from applying motivations on other councillors.

At another point in the meeting, Cartmell called past exchanges on budgets "vindictive" and hypothesized that some of council could end up "running the behind-the-scenes agenda" without him on the forthcoming budget adjustment.

To this, Coun. Aaron Paquette objected, Cartmell retorted, and the two argued until Coun. Erin Rutherford, the chair, put an end to it.

"My ruling right now is a warning," Rutherford said. "It won't be a warning if there's another one."

Pavlek said the exchange is an example of how the budget deliberations could see "campaigning in council chambers."

Speaking of campaigning, the hosts updated listeners about who has declared they're running in the 2025 election. One is Chris Nielsen, a former Alberta New Democratic Party MLA. Another is former councillor Tony Caterina, who's aiming for mayor, along with former MLA Peter Sandu. Others who have declared their intentions to run for council include Fidel Ammar, Jason Bale, Giselle General, Tammy Griffin, Kate Moffat, and Jon Morgan.

Pavlek said this momentum might be ahead of schedule compared to prior elections, and wondered if the option to run as part of a party due to the Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendments Act (formerly known as Bill 20) might be playing a role.

The Nov. 15 episode of Taproot's civic affairs podcast also covers council's Stampede spending, the hire of a permanent city manager, Taproot's Nov. 27 event about housing, a newsroom update from Taproot managing editor Tim Querengesser, and more. Find all the ways to listen to and subscribe to Speaking Municipally, which comes out most Fridays, right here.