It’s a heavy agenda this week. After reviewing it, I’m curious if we have time to get through all the presentations and discussions - Our procedure bylaw states that we’ll adjourn the meeting at the 7-hour mark, even if we haven’t covered everything.
Agenda highlights
Municipal Naming Policy
This is a continuation of our discussion about the new policy governing how municipal assets - streets, parks, buildings, etc. - are named or renamed. At this meeting, we have the opportunity to recommend to Council that we approve the updated policy, which will “reflect the City’s diverse history, culture, languages and values… [through an] an equitable, inclusive, transparent, and comprehensive process… reflect[ing] the City’s goal of establishing a welcoming, diverse, and inclusive community as expressed in the Diversity and Inclusion Declaration”.
Some of the priorities within this policy reflect learnings that have occurred in the time since our original policy was developed. Specifically, it proposes that commemorative names (so, names of people) would only be used in rare situations. It also clarifies the process for removing a name, which requires an application - Although not a part of this discussion specifically, I suspect the Grandin name will be the most significant in terms of number of assets to be slated for name replacement:
-Grandin neighbourhood
-Grandin Lane
-Grandin Place
-Grandin Road
-Grandin Ecopond
-Grandin Nature Park
-Grandin Ravine
-Grandin Clubhouse
One of my questions to staff is is whether our existing naming list will be paused while a vetting process in line with our new policy is applied. For example, my great-uncle is on this list - but his name did not go through the new vetting process and I’m not sure if his name would still qualify under the rare circumstances allowed through this new policy. A second question is what motion would be required to skip to step 46b of the renaming process, so that we do not waste a committee’s time evaluating whether the Grandin name specifically should be removed based on the policy criteria.
10-Year RMR Plan
This is our regular review of the plan to repair, maintain, and replace (RMR) municipal assets, including roads, bridges, buildings, public works equipment, fire services equipment, utilities infrastructure, etc. The only concern I have about the plan as it stands is that our Community Capital Grant Program, which “provides capital grant funding for not-for-profit community groups to support the growth and repair, maintenance, and replacement of their capital assets” has been capped at $250,000/year for 10 years, which no changes planned without Council direction. I will likely make a motion to increase this envelope - or have the policy updated so it updates based on economic factors - unless I hear a compelling reason why this isn’t required.
Waste Minimization Strategy
Admin completed a waste composition study last year and the resulting report is being presented at our meeting. The short story is that we’re - as a community - doing a mediocre job of separating our recycling and compost from waste; About 29% of the weight going into garbage bins was compostable, 8% could have gone to the recycling depot or have been donated, and 5% could have gone in the recycling stream. In our compost bins, there was also about a 21% contaminate rate, mostly due to soil/sod/garbage, but this appears to mostly be coming from isolated households. For multi-dwelling properties (condos, etc.), most don’t have recycling/compost options.
Admin also looked at the use of the Mike Mitchell Recycling Depot, including determining who uses it. Through this evaluation, we found out that about 14% of users were not utility rate-payers, which means those of us who are have been subsidizing their use of this facility. There was also significant illegal dumping at this site,
Based on this knowledge, and in line with the Council priority related to our changing environment, Administration is recommending that we:
Develop a project proposal for 2024 to require “cards” to access the Mike Mitchell Recycling depot, to ensure that only ratepayers are accessing the facility. From my experience, this is very standard. My family owns property in one of the counties and this is what is used to access their waste disposal sites.
Require that multi-dwelling developments (condos, row houses, etc.) separate waste, organic and recycling by Q1, 2024. This is fairly standard in many municipalities.
In addition to learning more about these recommendations, one of my questions for Admin will be finding out why we haven’t issued fines to “households [that] deliberately contaminate the organics cart every waste collection day”. I’m also curious about why there is no recommendation to require that households separate their compost & recycling - When I visited Halifax for a conference back in 2018, that was already standard there.
This is a brief and incomplete 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. Members of the public can register to speak if they have information to present to council. Full agenda packages can be found on the stalbert.ca website.
