Zoning Bylaw Renewal Update (June 2023)

Late in May I wrote a post to detail the engagement that has taken place on the Zoning Bylaw Renewal for the last 5 years as well as the engagement that will be taking place up to and including the Public Hearing on October 16th. You can read that post here. Please take some time to read through the previous post before continuing on with this post as I won’t repost the same information here.

I want to provide a few updates since that post so that everyone has the latest information. On June 15th, I held a special virtual Community Conversation on the Zoning Bylaw Renewal with some of the team creating the new bylaw. This conversation included a thorough presentation from our City staff which will serve as a good starting point if you haven’t been involved in this process yet. After the presentation, we spent about an hour answering as many questions as possible. You can watch that entire video here. As I mention in the video, I’m hosting a follow-up virtual session from approximately 12:05pm - 1:05pm on Tuesday, June 27th specifically to answer the questions that weren’t covered in the previous video. If you want to send me questions in advance, please email me at andrew.knack@edmonton.ca or call me at (780) 496-8122.

I also want to encourage you to watch to our Urban Planning Committee meeting from June 20th. It was a 12 hour day where 76 speakers registered to speak. Separating out the representatives from the development industry, there was a fairly equal split of those who were interested in additional engagement beyond the next 4 months and those who feel that we need to move forward. Although I’m not currently a member of the committee, I was able to listen to the meeting in the morning and then I was able to participate by asking questions of speakers and our City Administration for the remainder of the meeting. I need to give Councillor Keren Tang a quick shoutout for doing a phenomenal job chairing that meeting. I know that might sound like an odd thing to recognize but having sat through long meetings over the years, I know that chairing a meeting like that is not easy and yet, Councillor Tang ensured everyone had the opportunity to speak while keeping everyone on schedule while treating each other with respect.

All of our meetings are live-streamed on YouTube so if you would like to watch or listen to it, click here to be taken to the YouTube feed. I realize that is a long meeting to watch or listen to but I also know more people are getting involved in this process so it is worth reviewing the whole meeting to hear the diversity of perspectives.

While I hope you can watch or listen to the whole meeting, I want to highlight a few key points that I spoke to at the end of the meeting.

First, I want to thank every person who took the time to speak at the meeting. While there were a range of perspectives, it is clear everyone that spoke is passionate about how our city will continue to evolve. There were also some first time speakers and I know it can seem daunting but their comments were not ones we usually hear when discussing land use. I really appreciated hearing from those who have been involved for years and from those who have been involved in the city but not at City Hall.

The challenge when dealing with an issue where a number of speakers have divergent views is that regardless of the decision made, I know some will feel like council didn’t listen because there wasn’t an extension approved for more public engagement and others will feel heard because they didn’t want to see a delay. There’s no winning in a scenario like that because either way, someone leaves disappointed.

I believe Councillor Erin Rutherford’s motion was a great way forward. She moved a motion to create a process for councillors to submit written questions by July 30th so that our City Administration can provide full responses in advance of the Public Hearing. This will mimic our budget process which allows for a thorough question and answer process before the meeting instead of trying to spend hours and hours asking detailed verbal questions and getting verbal responses which will be hard to follow along with. Thanks to Councillor Rutherford for making this excellent motion.

Part of why I felt comfortable with that approach is based on the feedback we received from groups like the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues (EFCL). This organization is no stranger to council meetings. Over the decades they have been very vocal on behalf of all community leagues and residents across the city. In my time serving on council, they have not been shy about asking City Council to extend engagement on different projects in the city.

In fact, about two years ago, they identified the need to extend the public engagement for the Zoning Bylaw Renewal as they felt not enough had been done to try to get people involved in the process. That request did not come exclusively from the EFCL, it came from many community members. That request was approved and in April 2022, there was another year of engagement added to this important project.

This time around, the EFCL was supportive of the engagement approach that had been taken and did not believe that additional engagement was needed. Along with all the different ways the City has tried to engage people (ex: pamphlets in the 2022 tax notices to every household, radio ads, virtual and in-person engagement sessions, and much more), they were able to share information with at least 23,000 people which includes specific correspondence with every community league so they could share that information with all residents. Many community leagues did take that information and shared it directly with residents in the community.

There was also great feedback from both the University of Alberta Students Union and the Macewan Students Association. They talked about how 92% of students said that cost of living is a massive barrier. While Edmonton is the most affordable major city in Canada, affordability is still a major concern for younger Edmontonians who are worried about being able to ever buy their own home. Zoning alone cannot solve the issue of affordability alone but it absolutely plays a role and we don’t have to look much further than Toronto and Vancouver which have had some of the most restrictive Zoning Bylaws in North American. Toronto has recently overhauled their Zoning Bylaw and Vancouver has just started working on a complete overhaul of their own Zoning Bylaw.

As I noted in my closing comments in the June 20th meeting, I realize that the majority of the individual residents who were asking for more engagement came from Glenora. That’s clearly something I need to work on because while I have been regularly trying to engage residents in the community since being elected to serve them in 2021 (ex: door-knocking in the community since the election, hosting a community-specific meeting on February 23rd, coming to community events, etc.), it clearly wasn’t enough to get people involved in the process.

I appreciate there were 4 communities added to the ward I represent in 2021: Glenora, Grovenor, McQueen, and North Glenora. While I started talking about this years ago, and even clearly stated the need to approve a new Zoning Bylaw in my 2021 campaign platform, I understand that there are a lot of specific questions that people have about the proposed Zoning Bylaw even if they generally support higher density in our current communities.

So my commitment to all communities in the ward, not just Glenora, is that I’m ready and willing to continue to connect with you to get your feedback on the specific proposals in the draft bylaw. I’ve been out doing walks in the community with residents, attending group meetings, writing about it, and more. But we can try different options. Do you want to have a workshop with some neighbours? Let’s schedule a time. Do you have specific questions that haven’t been asked in the engagement over the last few years? Please send those to me and I can ask those as part of the motion referenced above.

We still have about 4 months before the Public Hearing and for those who are unfamiliar with that process, a Public Hearing is also another chance for people to register to speak and share their feedback and propose changes to the bylaw being presented. Over the years, we have made amendments to proposals during the Public Hearing based on community feedback. There have been times we have referred the proposals back to do more work so there is no requirement for council to approve the final bylaw if we feel there needs to be more work.

I’m more than happy to work with any person, community, or group over the next 4 months (and beyond) on this critical topic. Even if a new Zoning Bylaw is approved in October, there will continue adjustments made over the years. That’s why the engagement doesn’t end after the approval of a new bylaw.