Coming Up: Sept 9
Council meets on Monday and Committee of the Whole meets Wednesday. On the agenda this week:
Prescription to Get Active
Recycling
Council Pay
Following is some information and my take on the most interesting agenda items. I’d encourage you to checkout the agenda packages here.
Please note: this is a personal website. All opinions and mistakes expressed here belong to me and me along, not to Council or City Administration.
perscription to get active
Prescription to Get Active is a non-profit initiative that makes it easier for healthcare providers to get patients referred to physical activity. It is recommended that Council approve membership. If this happens, then clinicians and those offering counselling services would be able to “prescribe” physical activity to patients. These patients would receive short term free access to Eastlink Centre.
I’ll likely be supporting this. Helping residents who need a bit of extra motivation to try our facilities in order for them to get healthy is a no-brainer in my opinion. This initiative is also likely to benefit the City financially: in other communities, ~25% of patients end up purchasing a membership after their prescribed free access expires.
recycling
Alberta is moving towards Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for recycling. You can learn more here.
The short of it: currently, municipal rate payers pay for recycling through their property taxes or through service fees (in Grande Prairie, it is tacked onto your Aquatera bill). The provincial government is shifting the burden, requiring the companies that manufacture packaging and other waste to fund recycling programs in the province. The rationale behind this: producers are more able than consumers to respond to make decisions that will lead to less waste. Additionally, EPR already exists in all other provinces. This means that the cost of running recycling programs is built into many national prices, but none of the extra money consumers pay comes back to Alberta.
Now that the province is moving towards EPR, the City has three primary choices:
Opt-out and make no changes
Opt-in by handing all recycling programs over to Circular Materials, a non-profit formed by producers to meet their EPR obligations. If the City did this, there would no longer be any cost to our residents for recycling. However, the City would also have no control over the programs. Circular Materials could reduce the frequency of curbside materials and not provide support for the recycling of materials that aren’t picked up at the curb.
Opt-in by having Aquatera continue to operate recycling programs, but start receiving funding from the provincial EPR program. This funding would likely not cover the full cost of recycling, so bills could be reduced by not entirely eliminated. However, the City would retain control over the service levels.
In my opinion, opting-out is not a real option. Our residents will be paying for the costs of EPR every time they buy something that includes recyclable waste. I would hate to see our residents not get any of that money back.
So should the City opt-in by handing over the programs or opt-in by continuing to have them delivered by Aquatera? I’m still thinking through this, so would love to hear your thoughts. However, I think (for now) it likely makes sense to continue with Aquatera. I don’t know how Circular Materials will operate its programs and what service levels it will deliver. With so many unknowns, I worry about giving up all control. So it probably makes sense to keep Aquatera for now, then re-evaluate in a few years when Circular Materials is fully stood up in Alberta and we can see what its offerings look like.
council pay
Something awkward: provincial legislation requires Council to set its own compensation. Which has some obvious problems.
To minimize these problems, Council has two long standing practices:
Towards the end of each term, Council reviews compensation and directs change. But these changes don’t take part until AFTER the next election. This means that if residents feel Councillors are being unreasonable and unfair, residents have an opportunity to vote Councillors out prior to any member of Council benefitting from the changes.
Council doesn’t lead the review process. Instead, it appoints a Council Remuneration Committee made up of private residents to make recommendations. No Councillors participate in this Committee.
At Wednesday’s Council Committee of the Whole, the Remuneration Committee’s report will be received and discussed. You can read it here.
Full disclosure: I have not had time to review it in depth yet. So I don’t know where I stand yet. But a few general thoughts as I consider Council salary:
Council salary needs to be fair to taxpayers. It shouldn’t be higher than it needs to be to attract good people to run for Council.
Council salary also needs to be fair to Councillors. The role of Council is not compatible with a full time job. That means that if we want quality people who are not independently wealthy or retired to run, we need to pay a salary that fairly makes up for lost income from other work.
I don’t like politicians setting their own salary. So I HEAVILY defer to the Remuneration Review Committee. Council needs to have very good and easily articulated reason to not follow any recommendations it makes.
Looking briefly at the Remuneration Review Report, my understanding is that the Committee chose to focus on the Mayor’s salary and find an appropriate number for it based on what other Alberta midsized cities are paying their Mayors. Then to set the Council salary at 55% of the Mayor’s salary based on Councillors being expected to work 55% of the hours the Mayor works. Based on this, the Committee is recommending that the Mayor receive a salary of $133,012 in 2025 and Councillors receive $73,157, and that over the next Council term these increase with the Consumer Price Index each year.
In creating these salaries, these are the comparatives the Committee found most relevant:
Based on the comparatives, I don’t find the recommendations from the Committee as being unreasonable. But I still have a number of questions about their report, including why they chose Airdrie, Medicine Hat and Red Deer as the main comparators. I look forward to that conversation.
Additionally, one thing not mentioned in the report: Councillors with children.
This job is hard when you have kids, especially when it come to managing all the evening and weekend commitments. And I think that shows in how few parents of young kids are willing to run for Council. Last election, I was the second youngest candidate despite being well above our community’s median age. I believe the youngest candidate was also above the median age. And I’m pretty sure I had the youngest children of all candidates: my youngest is now ten.
When we don’t have people in their 20s and 30s on Council, and when all Council parents have older kids, I don’t think Council is a true reflection of our young community. I think we need to do a better job of encouraging younger folks to run. Looking at policies for children might be a good way to do this.
Some Councils have implemented parental leave for Councillors who have a new baby. Some also provide childcare, especially when Council is meeting in the evening. I’d love to explore these options.
Worth noting: when I got elected, my youngest was 3. I have experienced first hand how challenging this job is with young kids. So I get why so few parents of young ones are willing to run. At the same time, next election, my youngest will be 11 and my oldest 13. If I run again (and that is a big “if”), I won’t require childcare. So if any changes get made, they will have absolutely no benefit to myself as an individual. However, I think they could have benefit to all residents if they lead to us getting more quality people to run for Council.
That’s what is on our agenda this week. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
You can comment below. Or, you can contact me at dbressey@cityofgp.com or 780-402-4166. I'm happy to talk online or over the phone. I'm also always willing to setup a time to meet for coffee.
We also always have great conversation in the GP Round Table group on Facebook.
After Council meeting, you will be able to find highlights posted by the City here.
Thanks for reading!
-Dylan