[johnnyboy]

You have all convinced me, all employees work from home forever. Downtown doesn't need office workers at all.

God, the hypocritical self-righteousness from some on here is exhausting. It's clear none of you are small biz owners who have tried to make a go of it DT. You all want restaurants, hardware stores, an Ikea. You all want people taking the LRT. But heaven forbid that city of Edm workers contribute to that. Their feelings might be hurt. Might as well spend tax dollars to entice people to one off events. Yes, that will REALLY help that retail business!

Based on the push to work from home, there is no need at all for DT revitalization. Full stop. You can't have it both ways.

And having a select anecdote or two of a friend of a friend who chooses to live DT even if they don't work DT is a great example of UCP math. 'Someone told me, eh?!'

Yeah, the tremendous growth of the suburbs really supports the word salad y'all continue to spit out. I will now go back to my car, my nice suburban house and avoid the core altogether. If it's not good enough for City of Edmonton employees, then it's certainly not good enough for hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Edmontonians who have been told to support DT.

And the fact the province, the UCP, wants to assist in DT revitalization by having workers return to office in Edmonton, a place where they know they have no love - the fact THEY have taken the lead here is beyond ironic. The city and Mayor Knack and all of council look like utter fools in this particular situation.

There's so much to laugh at here, but stating that the UCP "wants to assist in DT revitalization by having workers return to office" is quite the hoot...

 

[whattheheck]

I don't need you to believe me; you're clearly not pragmatic. I despise the UCP. But I will acknowledge when they do something that's good for the DT. I think Knack is an ok Mayor, but on the DT work issue, he is 100% off base. His arguments are weak and hypocritical.

It's ok to critisize your leaders; even the ones you believe in. That's how we ensure accountability in our democracy. Blind faith is never a good thing.

 

[Wax]

Even if the government wanted to RTO, could it?
I thought that union agreements ensured that it would remain hybrid. Am I wrong?

 

[johnnyboy]

I don't need you to believe me; you're clearly not pragmatic. I despise the UCP. But I will acknowledge when they do something that's good for the DT. I think Knack is an ok Mayor, but on the DT work issue, he is 100% off base. His arguments are weak and hypocritical.

It's ok to critisize your leaders; even the ones you believe in. That's how we ensure accountability in our democracy. Blind faith is never a good thing.

Well we seem to agree on two things: Knack is just okay, and the UCP are despicable.

But the real hypocrisy here is from the Chamber of Commerce, the DRC, and the business owners who scream for forced RTO. To most of them, "downtown" revitalization just means "daytime" revitalization. They only care about the core between 9 to 5 because they want a captive audience to fill their parking lots and buy their lunches. They don't actually give a shit about downtown after 6, when they drive back to their nice suburban houses to live their actual lives. You can't accuse Knack and 2500 hybrid workers of ruining downtown when the business community itself treats the core like a temporary cash cow instead of a real neighbourhood.

 

[Oilguy]

Well we seem to agree two things: Knack is just okay, and the UCP are despicable.

But the real hypocrisy here is from the Chamber of Commerce, the DRC, and the business owners who scream for forced RTO. To most of them, "downtown" revitalization just means "daytime" revitalization. They only care about the core between 9 to 5 because they want a captive audience to fill their parking lots and buy their lunches. They don't actually give a shit about downtown after 6, which is exactly when they pack up their cars and drive back to the suburbs to live their actual lives. You can't accuse Knack and 2500 hybrid workers of ruining downtown when the business community itself treats the core like a temporary cash cow instead of a real neighbourhood.

That is just not true, we care about full time downtown being a place to live and work. We have employees who live there and bring lots of people in from out of town and want it to be a place for them too.

 

[kcantor]

Well we seem to agree on two things: Knack is just okay, and the UCP are despicable.

But the real hypocrisy here is from the Chamber of Commerce, the DRC, and the business owners who scream for forced RTO. To most of them, "downtown" revitalization just means "daytime" revitalization. They only care about the core between 9 to 5 because they want a captive audience to fill their parking lots and buy their lunches. They don't actually give a shit about downtown after 6, when they drive back to their nice suburban houses to live their actual lives. You can't accuse Knack and 2500 hybrid workers of ruining downtown when the business community itself treats the core like a temporary cash cow instead of a real neighbourhood.

I think all this shows is that you spent little or no time actually involved with the Chamber of Commerce, the DRC or the business owners you so readily slag.

 

[kcantor]

So our Mayor thinks the city needs help from the private sector in order to fund new firehalls along with everything else.

Isn’t that called property taxes?

Edmonton Journal ePaper

Edmonton Journal ePaper offers current issues of Edmonton Journal ePaper.

epaper.edmontonjournal.com

 

[David A]

So our Mayor thinks the city needs help from the private sector in order to fund new firehalls along with everything else.

Isn’t that called property taxes?

Edmonton Journal ePaper

Edmonton Journal ePaper offers current issues of Edmonton Journal ePaper.

epaper.edmontonjournal.com

Yes and if the city hadn't blown the budget on that rec centre, perhaps that would have helped too.

 

[policyenthusiast]

So our Mayor thinks the city needs help from the private sector in order to fund new firehalls along with everything else.

Isn’t that called property taxes?

Edmonton Journal ePaper

Edmonton Journal ePaper offers current issues of Edmonton Journal ePaper.

epaper.edmontonjournal.com

Offsite levies, generally.

 

[David A]

Whatever the heck it is called there is a limited ability or desire for others to fund the City's capital over runs. The well is not endless so they need to make more of an effort to reign in costs.

 

[kcantor]

Offsite levies, generally.

Except there’s a pretty big disconnect in that off site levies have been collected from each of the areas identified as needing a new station (Big Lake (west Edmonton)Riverview (west/southwest Edmonton)Wedgewood (west Edmonton)Chappelle (southwest Edmonton)Cumberland (northwest Edmonton)Horse Hills (northeast Edmonton)) and the size and service areas for each of those stations. As the service areas are much bigger than the neighborhoods themselves, the station sizes and costs (compounded by city standards and requirements for new stations) are greater than the offsite levies that were collected. The developers paid their share in full up front. Property taxes is the only avenue for the city to collect additional monies. It’s no different than how the city paid for all of the other stations and upgrades it has completed in existing neighborhoods.