Snow clearing efforts and infill debate: Edmonton mayor discusses recent hot topics

Edmonton Mayor Andrew Knack discusses the city's snow clearing efforts and shares his insight on topics of infill and new patio fees.

Will snow clearing efforts be better in Edmonton?

That’s one of many topics being brought up by Edmontonians lately. Like most areas across Alberta, Edmonton has seen between 15 to 30 cm of snow hit the ground since Tuesday night.

After a couple weeks of warm conditions, this latest dump has many wondering how long it’s going to take the city to clear the snow, after some of the obstacles with services on Edmonton roads earlier this year.

“In a major snowfall event, the city will always bring in contractors but typically they come in once the snow has stopped,” said Edmonton Mayor Andrew Knack on CTV Your Morning Edmonton on Wednesday.

“This time, contractors were here right at the beginning, supplementing the work of our city crews, so they’ve been working 24/7 since the first snowflake fell. They were putting down traction material and were using contracted resources to make sure we could get to as many roads.”

The last heavy snowfall hit Edmonton on Christmas Eve causing many complaints about the city’s snow clearing efforts, which Knack had previously blamed on the city’s budget as a major constraint. Now, he says he’s confident that city services and contractors will be able to meet timelines when it comes to clearing roads.

“The city always has the ability to tap into what’s called our ‘Financial Stabilization Reserve.’ It’s essentially our ‘Snowy Day Fund,’ that allows us to scale up when we need to. We’re not going to sacrifice the service standards for the budget.”

Infill homes was another hot button issue brought up at city council Tuesday. Council ended up rejecting the idea of making eight-plexes illegal in residential neighbourhoods.

“We did hear pretty consistent feedback during the discussions on how big some of these buildings are and the massing of the buildings. There were some changes made back in July that dealt with how long a building can go down the yard,” said Knack.

City council made another change to the requirements for infill yesterday, by reducing the height of the building to be more in line as the previous maximum.

“Our previous maximum was about 8.9 metres. Now it’s 9.5 metres, so an extra two feet is all we’re talking about.”

Although infill is a controversial topic between residents and the city, the mayor believes it’s better to move on to deal with other issues with the upcoming four year budget announcement.

“We’ve got other priorities related to things like safety and security. We need to make those changes and respond to the feedback. That’s why I made a motion to speed up that conversation on infill,” added Knack. “It was supposed to be held in February of next year.”

“We’re going to make these decisions, make these changes and then make sure we’re moving on to the other issues that Edmontonians are asking us to now focus on.”