Last week + Regular Council Meeting September 3, 2019
Last week
Outside Agencies Operating Grant meetings: Most of Council met with all the community organizations that receive the Outside Agency Grant (SAIF, Victim Services, Senior’s Association, CIVC, Bereavement Fellowship, SAHS, Family Resource Centre…) and, in most cases, other grants awarded from the city or province. With provincial sources of funding expected to change this fall, it was a good opportunity to touch base with all groups to see how we can work together to ensure quality services for our residents.
Agenda Committee: As I’m Deputy Mayor for the next couple months, I started attending our weekly Agenda Committee meetings - I’ll be chairing the meeting on September 9, and will be attending events on behalf of the Mayor over the next 8 weeks.
Governance workshop: Most of Council attended a workshop to review our governance model. We’ll likely see recommendations or Council motions regarding our model/schedule at our annual organizational meeting in October.
Agenda highlights
Smoking bylaw
Back in May, after public consultation, Council directed Administration to prepare a bylaw that would increase restrictions on smoking/vaping in public places. If the bylaw passes on Tuesday, smoking/vaping will be banned in parks and on trails within parks, and "the setback distance from doorways <will be> changed from 5... to 10 metres, while leaving the current setback distance of 5 metres from windows and air intakes intact". (Traditional pipe ceremonies are exempt.)
This map gives a good visual of how this could affect commercial areas like downtown St. Albert, effectively restricting smoking to parking lots:
This is the presentation that we'll see on Tuesday, which includes quite a few maps like the one above: https://stalbert.ca.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=25386&GUID=7D18A271-9159-45CC-AD2E-B4A4FAF0439A
AUMA Director Endorsement
Unless something completely unexpected happens Tuesday afternoon, we’ll be “endors<ing> Mayor Cathy Heron for the position of AUMA Director of cities up to 500,000 for the year 2019-2020”. We’re lucky to have such strong representation in this municipal advocacy organization.
In-camera
We’ll be discussing a land matter, affordable housing options, and an update about expropriation.
This is a brief high-level overview of our meetings, with my personal comments sprinkled in - In no way are my opinions representative of the official direction of council or the City of St. Albert. Please let me know of any typos or errors. As always, I also encourage everyone who is able to tune in the the live-stream of the meeting (3pm here) or attend in-person (3rd floor of St. Albert Place, hang a right getting out of the elevator). You can also register to speak if you have information to present to council. Full agenda packages can be found on the stalbert.ca website.
