Edmonton city council is pulling the plug on a number of long-standing public committees, but Mayor Andrew Knack insists the city is not turning its back on its commitments to marginalized groups.<\/p>\n
Knack characterized the move Thursday as part of council\u2019s overhaul of city operations to fit its four strategic priorities. The committees wrapping up their work on April 30 are the anti-racism advisory committee, the Edmonton Historical Board, Edmonton Salutes Committee, the Edmonton Transit Service Advisory Board, Energy Transition Climate Resilience Committee and the Women\u2019s Advisory Voice of Edmonton committee. The City of Edmonton Youth Council will be ceasing to meet after Aug. 31.<\/p>\n
\u201cCouncil set our strategic priorities earlier this year,\u201d\u00a0said Knack.\u00a0\u201cWith that we\u2019re going through the entire organization and setting up different ways of doing things.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to continue to hear from those voices, it\u2019s just about doing it in a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knack added the change is not a budget decision and the city isn\u2019t saving much money by dissolving the seven committees.<\/p>\n
Councillors who previously sat on the retiring committees will be reaching out to the membership about the next steps, which Knack said would be approached on a case-by-case basis.<\/p>\n
He said there was no set timeline for how a new framework for each group would be established.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has to look different for each group,\u201d said Knack. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be continued work, it\u2019s just going to look different than what we\u2019ve had before\u2014 but ideally in a way that allows for more voices to speak up more regularly about the good and the bad and the things we need to work on.<\/p>\n
\u201cI worry we\u2019ve been a bit complacent of just saying, \u2018We\u2019ve engaged\u2019 because we have this one group. Meanwhile there\u2019s 10 other organizations representing those voices as well. How do you make sure they\u2019re included?\u201d<\/p>\n
Council will make the decision official at its April 28 meeting.<\/p>\n
Knack said the decades-old committee structure was limiting who could give feedback to the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs someone who sat on the youth council for eight years, that structure has been in place for almost as long as I\u2019ve been alive,\u201d he said. \u201cIs setting up a council committee the right way to bring in youth voices? Or do we work with groups like the Edmonton Student Alliance or the student senate of the public school board to make sure you\u2019re hearing from as many youth voices as possible?<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of these systems have been in place for decades and it is time that we look at modernizing all of our systems and reimagining how we do this work.\u201d<\/p>\n
There will still be five active committees \u2014 the Accessibility Advisory Committee, the Community Services Advisory Board, the Edmonton Combative Sports Commission, the Edmonton Design Committee and the Naming Committee. Knack said the work of those five committees would continue, as it \u201cmade sense\u201d for those boards to continue using the current system.<\/p>\n
Acknowledging many of the decommissioned committees represented marginalized groups, Knack insisted the city is not walking away from its diversity commitments, but needed to modernize how the city communicates with stakeholders.<\/p>\n
\u201cEdmonton firmly supports diversity, equity and inclusion,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s too critical to what we do. My plan is to continue to hear from these voices. I\u2019d much rather set up a system that we can get many more voices involved in our discussions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to stop the city forcing everyone to come to us. How do we make sure we\u2019re connecting with different community groups more regularly?\u201d<\/p>\n
ebowling@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don\u2019t miss the news you need to know \u2014 add EdmontonJournal.com<\/a> and EdmontonSun.com<\/a> to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.<\/a><\/p>\n You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Edmonton Journal<\/a> | The Edmonton Sun.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Edmonton city council is pulling the plug on a number of long-standing public committees, but Mayor Andrew Knack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3561,52,528,9079,9081,9080],"class_list":{"0":"post-17764","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-andrew-knack","9":"tag-edmonton","10":"tag-edmonton-city-council","11":"tag-marginalized-groups","12":"tag-the-city","13":"tag-youth-council"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}