Review of council's first year shows gaps between intentions and actions
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One year into their term, members of Edmonton's city council have shown themselves to have a lot of ambition but perhaps not the statecraft to achieve their goals, Taproot's city hall observers suggest.
Agenda management has been a challenge for this council, with many meetings going overtime and a lot of time spent on procedural back-and-forth. That is a reflection of a desire for change on a council with a new mayor and eight of 12 councillors who are rookies, said Speaking Municipally co-host Troy Pavlek on Episode 195 of Taproot's podcast on civic affairs.
"This is a new council with big dreams, (that) wants to get things done, and they are pushing for it, perhaps pushing past their limits," he said.
Maybe so, but there's a difference between activity and effectiveness, countered co-host Mack Male.
"I feel like ... the hallway conversations that previous councils seemed to have aren't happening with this council. So when things get brought forward to committee or to a council meeting, they haven't been developed. They don't have buy-in from their colleagues; there's no sense of whether something's going to move forward or not. It feels very much like many of the new councillors are trying to individually push these things forward without realizing that you need seven votes to get it done."
In a series of tweets posted in response to Male's remarks, Coun. Andrew Knack argued there's value in debating ideas in public. "Municipal governance can be messy but that often means it's working exactly as it was designed," he said.
The 2023-2026 budget process that begins on Oct. 31 may be an opportunity to get past the re-litigation of previously settled matters and move on to new decisions.
That said, by approving a police funding formula for 2023, council has already significantly eaten into the money it has for other operational spending, Male noted. A series of decisions has resulted in the tax-funded portion of the Edmonton Police Service budget rising from $385 million in 2022 to $414 million in 2023, before even taking into account any increases that will result from the negotiation of a contract with the Edmonton Police Association.
"The majority of this council (had) indicated that they want to freeze or cut the Edmonton Police Service budget," Pavlek said, referring to the candidates' answers to a question about police funding on the Taproot Survey during the 2021 election campaign. "I would say if we were grading their first-year performance on this file, it would not be aces."
