More jobs, more housing: This is what St. Albert city council will focus on advocating for this year.
Council at their Sept. 17 meeting approved a list of eight priority areas that require collaboration or funding from other levels of government or outside bodies.
“Advocacy is only one part of a successful project,” an explainer on the city’s website reads. “Advocacy is sometimes needed at various points of a project’s lifecycle, not just at the beginning. Projects are monitored, and advocacy can resume at any point if it becomes necessary to keep the project moving forward.”
Recent successes on this front include splitting the cost of the Ray Gibbon Drive twinning with the province, and the completion of an Uncontested Annexation Agreement with Sturgeon County.
The city will work on all eight of the advocacy priorities in the background, but two will surface more often in messaging and in meetings:
- Servicing that future economic engine, the Lakeview Business District in the city’s southwest, and;
- Using mixed-market housing development to drive down the number of people who spend more than 30 per cent of their income on shelter.
Mayor Cathy Heron said in a news release the priorities act to guide relationships with senior levels of government to get results for St. Albert.
The list is tuned each year to make sure it’s reflective of the “most-up-to-date needs of St. Albert.”
Council’s other six top advocacy priorities focus on community well-being and fiscal health.
Youth transitional housing
Support services, integration with the community and stable housing together led to “improved long-term outcomes” for young people, according to the explainer. This priority focuses on finding capital and operational funding to support the development of transitional housing options for youth.
Councillors touched on this item at a committee meeting earlier this month when they advanced a project aimed at creating new transitional shelter beds for underhoused individuals aged 15 to 22.
Presenting Phase 2 of the youth transitional housing feasibility study, Elizabeth Wilkie, director of Community Services, said the file touches multiple areas of responsibility and levels of government.
“The scope of the work is constantly changing,” Wilkie said. “What’s contributing to why these young people or anyone is experiencing houselessness is changing. Which programs and funding sources are available is changing constantly.”
Keep it local
Local decision-making: The bread and butter of any maker of decisions, locally. This priority speaks to the position that municipal governments should be able to address the “needs and priorities” in their own backyards “without undue interference from other orders of government," the city document reads.
So, the city will advocate “(l)ocal governments have the appropriate tools and supports from other orders of government to continue to enable local decisions and foster community prosperity.”
Keep it safe
St. Albert will advocate for “optimal policing services” to help keep the city one of Alberta’s safest.
“This may also include that other orders of government engage with the city regarding any future contemplation of policing models or standards," according to the explainer.
Keep it solvent
This priority calls on senior levels of government to provide “adequate, stable, predictable sources of funding," to remove uncertainty from budget cycles, the city document says,
“This includes exploring alternative revenue sharing, financing mechanisms, and associated policies and initiatives.”
Keep it moving
The city prioritizes infrastructure funding. St. Albert will advocate for transportation and infrastructure investments within the city which in turn “stimulate enhanced connectivity and community growth locally, and across the region and province.”
Just keep it
St. Albert will also advocate the province to help it help charities. The goal would be convincing Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) to adopt a “more equitable” gaming model with a distribution of funds that “improves the long-term sustainability of eligible St. Albert charities," according to the list posted online.
The city also highlights a pair of future call-ups on the roster of the 2024 St. Albert ‘A’ Priorities: “EMS (emergency medical services) contract with AHS (Alberta Health Services)” and “Communities Amenities Site,” both of which fall under Community Well-Being.
