[Yeggy]

Not to stick up for him but i have pretty good anecdotes that they are not in consistently 3 days a week, not even close.

Oil, fair. The fact remains if more workers would of fixed dt, all the problems dt wouldn't of existed at the hight of dt employment. Yet they still do.

The city has gotten bigger, so the problem has increased, as well as some drug issues we havnt seen since the crack days of the 80’s which Canada largely escaped compared to areas like the USA.

 

[Kosy123]

View attachment 737851

I'm always going to have schadenfreude on that situation. Everyone kept talking about a change election, only for absolutely nothing to happen with $1 million down the drain.

That $1 million would've gone further and been more effective as a Westrich gofundme for a new midrise downtown

 

[johnnyboy]

Not to stick up for him but i have pretty good anecdotes that they are not in consistently 3 days a week, not even close.

Anecdotally, I know several GoA departments that are still 100% remote and will continue to be despite the government's mandate. I also know several other GoA portfolios that have quietly maintained 3x/week hybrid. AHS is similar - with departments in Edmonton (and Calgary) that continue to be fully remote or 2x/week. The downtown post-secondary institutions are similar. And how many employees at Telus are fully remote?

If the City were still completely remote, I could see some rationale for it. But asking them to go from 3 to 5 days - at a cost of $5mil+ - meh, I'll pass. Spend that money on more TPOs, street sweeping / garbage clean-up, or new residential grant funding, etc. etc. instead.

 

[TAS]

AGAIN, what's the point of living DT, if there's no need to work DT?

I know several people who live downtown or in Wihkwentowin who don't work downtown or who are retired and wanted to live centrally. Work had nothing to do with their choice to live dt.

I worked in Sherwood Park for a couple of years after moving downtown. It's just outside of work I found myself downtown a lot for various things of interest and it just made more sense to move there.

 

[TAS]

Not to stick up for him but i have pretty good anecdotes that they are not in consistently 3 days a week, not even close.

And some are in 4 or 5 times a week.

 

[Kosy123]

Anecdotally, I know several GoA departments that are still 100% remote and will continue to be despite the government's mandate. I also know several other GoA portfolios that have quietly maintained 3x/week hybrid. AHS is similar - with departments in Edmonton (and Calgary) that continue to be fully remote or 2x/week. The downtown post-secondary institutions are similar. And how many employees at Telus are fully remote?

If the City were still completely remote, I could see some rationale for it. But asking them to go from 3 to 5 days - at a cost of $5mil+ - meh, I'll pass. Spend that money on more TPOs, street sweeping / garbage clean-up, or new residential grant funding, etc. etc. instead.

RTO helps somewhat for a boost to daytime vibrancy and retail attraction but it's not a silver bullet, and my fear is it once again locks us down to not putting as much effort on after-work/weekend vibrancy to chase RTO. I mean we kinda see it with how we don't have a ton of places (besides Fawkes and ID Donair, love those guys) that are open past 6 PM. I honestly think you'd get more ROI on trying to convince the provincial government to relocate some of their non-downtown staff to downtown.

Putting on my political hat, it also makes very little sense for the current council or mayor to burn precious political capital on a decision like this too.

 

[kcantor]

^^^
I'm not sure the "at a cost of $5mil+" is a verifiable statement even if it originated with the city. Furthermore, even if it was a "real" number, $5mil equals is less than 23,000 per day based on a 220 day work year which to me seems a pretty inexpensive cost to increase the number of city employees working downtown by 40%.. Assuming roughly 4,000 of the city's roughly 12,000 employees actually work downtown, taking it from 12,000 employee days per week to 20,000 employee days per week would cost the city roughly $14 per day per employee. When the average downtown employee is probably earning something in the range of $450 per workday, including benefits, it's not a material sum and it's probably more than covered in increased transit revenues and business taxes and property taxes flowing from their being downtown. Besides, some of them may well choose to relocate downtown...