The Pulse: March 8, 2021

It's time to dive deeper into the issues raised so far in our People's Agenda project.

We invite you to join us on March 11 at noon for the first of eight weekly listening sessions to further uncover what is important to you as we head towards the municipal election on Oct. 18.

Thursday's event will tackle this question: Will our taxes be well-spent? Please register in advance so we know how many people to expect.

This is a question we synthesized from some of the responses to our People's Agenda question.

Learn more about the sessions and our future plans for this project.

• The city plans to bring back temporary shared streets this summer, it announced over the weekend. "The lane closures and shared streets were set up particularly in high-density neighbourhoods as a way for vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists to share the roads and safely spread out as more people got outside over the spring and summer months," explained Global News.
• The province reported the largest number of COVID-19 variant cases in a single day on Sunday.
• Campaign For a Smoke-Free Alberta is asking city council to not overturn its ban on shisha lounges, due to its concerns about secondhand smoke impacts. The city is currently looking into the possibility of restoring lounges, and a report is expected back by the end of April.
• Alberta camping reservations opened last week, and it looks like it's going to be a busy season. "There were more than 17,000 active user sessions on Reserve.albertaparks.ca when reservations began [Thursday] morning, between 9 and 10 a.m., which is more than four times higher than the same time period on opening day of last year," Alberta Environment and Parks told CBC News.
• "Dozens of Edmontonians gathered to protest a proposed location for a new crematorium in north-central Edmonton on Saturday," reported Global News. Residents are worried about smoke from Trinity Funeral Home affecting their neighbourhood.
• Renowned limnologist David Schindler died on March 4, at the age of 80. He was a professor of ecology at the University of Alberta since 1989.
• GraceLife Church held another service on Sunday, despite COVID-19 restrictions. Jailed pastor James Coates joined by phone, with the church's associate pastor leading the service.

In Episode 119 of our weekly podcast on municipal politics, hosts Troy Pavlek and Mack Male are joined by City of Edmonton tax experts Cate Watt and Anton Szabo to discuss two tax-related reports considered by city council's executive committee recently.

One of those was about the potential for collecting property tax in a different way, based on either location or land-use rather than market price. The idea is that if homes in certain geographic or less dense parts of the city cost more to service, they could be taxed accordingly.

Watt and Szabo told the committee that while more research is needed, using tax as an incentive or disincentive is not something they'd encourage as it could have unintended effects.

"If you build an ultra-dense property and you get an even better tax rate as a consequence then that property is going to become more desirable and the market value of that property is going to increase commensurately as well," said Watt.

The other report was about the potential for using community revitalization levies to help build LRT. That's not likely to happen as CRLs have fallen out of favour in Alberta.

Photo of Edmonton by Dave Cournoyer on Flickr

• The Canadian Mental Health Association Alberta Division is hosting a virtual workplace mental health conference on March 9-10.
• Check out Trade Ahead: Western Canada Speaker Series on March 11, as Canada West Foundation explores trade infrastructure in the year ahead, and what businesses can do.
• iMedia Social Media Conference is running virtually on March 11-12.
• The Alberta Cleantech Investment Summit is on March 11, where an Alberta cleantech company will be selected to receive $140,000 in seed funding.
• The University of Alberta's Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Student Society is hosting its second annual Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Symposium on March 12-13.

Thanks to Carrie Malin for sharing her photo with us!