Homelessness, rising property taxes major matters for Edmonton's mayor in 2024

Any year is busy for a mayor, and 2024 was no different for Edmonton's elected head of local government amid several hot-button topics.

Amarjeet Sohi looked back on the calendar year that's soon coming to a close with CTV News Edmonton, detailing recent challenges he and city council faced – typical year-end matters such as property taxes and finances – plus ongoing questions and efforts surrounding homelessness.

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Next year's local elections also came into the spotlight this year, with the province introducing new rules that allows municipal political parties in Alberta's two biggest cities, bans the use of electronic tabulators and gives the provincial cabinet the ability to remove councillors.

And: will Sohi seek re-election in 2025?

Finances

After four days of discussion early this month, Edmonton city council approved a 6.1-per-cent property tax increase for 2025 as part of budget talks. Earlier this year, there had been suggestions the increase could be as much as a whopping 13 per cent.

Sohi told CTV News Edmonton his council inherited several challenges when they were elected in 2021, including what he calls the underfunding of services, lack of investment in core services and failure to budget properly for labour negotiations – all of which have led to the need to increase taxes now to "avoid increases in the future."

Sohi said early this month Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has told him she is seriously considering reinstating the Grant in Lieu of Property Tax, which was eliminated by the province in 2019 and which he says has cost the city $80 million since.

If the province reinstates the grant in its spring budget, Edmonton homeowners could see the increase lowered to 5.4 per cent.

• City council approves 6.1% tax increase for 2025

"If the province pays (retroactively) on the property taxes that they owe us, we can completely eliminate the deficit in our rainy day fund and divert those resources to build more infrastructure and/or repair the existing infrastructure that we have," Sohi said. "I'm very optimistic that we'll be able to bring taxes down further."

Sohi said he understands that hiking property taxes will siphon money away from residents during a challenging economic time, but that if the city doesn't invest in core services such as transit, recreation centres and libraries, then those services are "diminished and limited" and "add to the affordability crisis."

"Those services make living affordable for Edmontonians, so that's a balance that we try to create, but unfortunately, those services were underfunded," Sohi said.

He says transit use has increased 24 per cent from last year, that rec centres "are bursting at the seams," and that several facilities such as pools and libraries have increased the number of hours and days of operation.

"All those amenities allow families to access those programs, take their kids to the library, take their kids to recreational facilities, as well as keeping them affordable, really impacts people's day-to-day costs. Having access to public transit reduces somebody's cost by significant amount of money if they have to rely on private transportation to move around. So, always a balance that we have tried to create, and that's where we'll continue to focus over the next year.

Homelessness

A navigation hub set up at the start of 2024 by the Alberta government to help homeless people in Edmonton access services is a "positive step," but Sohi says more needs to be done to address the core issues of houselessness, chiefly the housing itself.

"We all know that encampments are the symptoms of lack of investment in housing," Sohi said. "The more homes we can build, the less encampments we would have. Unfortunately, houselessness has grown not only in Edmonton, but every other major municipality in Canada and the U.S. has seen a spike in houselessness.

"In Edmonton's case, we have seen rapid population growth. With that growth also comes issues around poverty, issues around lack of support systems, people falling through the cracks and then ending up houseless. We have intersecting issues of mental health, addictions and houselessness that are impacting people's quality of life."

Sohi lists off several immediate needs on the city's housing front: detox facilities, recovery beds and treatment facilities, 1,700 additional supportive housing units and 3,500 affordable housing units.

"The navigation centre has been good ... but those (housing) services are lacking. That's what people fall back into, into houselessness."

• Premier dismisses criticism of homeless navigation centre

The centre, which is located in an Edmonton Hope Mission facility, provides meals, showers, a safe place to sleep, and connects the homeless with health care, addictions treatment, and income and housing support.

Sohi said he hopes Dale McFee, the Edmonton police chief who is leaving the position next year to take a high-level civil service post as the province's deputy minister of the executive council and head of the Alberta Public Service, will be to identify gaps and "be the voice of Edmontonians based on his experience and amplify the work that we have been doing with the provincial government, (and communicate) that (because of) lack of investments in the social infrastructure, unless we tackle those root causes, we can't really build a safer city for everyone."

"We will always continue to invest in symptoms," Sohi said. "Our police budget has gone up considerably. We are investing more in transit police officers, crisis diversion teams, derelict property management.

"We are doing a lot on managing the symptoms, but we cannot really make a difference in a meaningful way until we tackle those root causes, and that's why the role of the provincial and federal government is critical."

Next year's municipal election

Sohi said he hasn't yet decided whether he will seek a second term as mayor.

He said he will be talking with his family about his future during the holiday break, saying he's "mindful of the changes" the provincial government has introduced to Alberta municipal politics with the Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, or Bill 20, which took effect at the end of October.

The bill made sweeping changes, including allowing Premier Danielle Smith's cabinet to initiate ousting locally elected officials by ordering a recall vote and to overturn bylaws that go against provincial policy.

The legislation allows local political parties and slates on the ballot beginning in 2025, but only in the province’s two largest cities, Edmonton and Calgary.

It also once again allows corporate and union donations in local elections, reversing a ban brought in under the Alberta NDP.

The bill passed debate in the legislature earlier this year and largely came into effect at the end of October, a little more than a year before the next municipal elections.

• New legislation 'changes the nature of politics'

Sohi said the legislation enables parties to spend almost three times what an independent candidate can spend and lets them better organize and build a more cohesive approach than separate independent candidates can, calling it "a huge advantage that they have created deliberately because they want political parties to be to be successful, because their plan is to implement them, introduce them into other municipalities after Edmonton and Calgary."

"They have really tilted the playing field in favour of political parties and created a huge amount of disadvantage for independent candidates," said Sohi, who entered politics in 2007 as a city councillor before jumping to federal politics as a Liberal MP and cabinet minister from 2015-19 then becoming Edmonton's 36th mayor in 2021. "That will go into my decision making as well."

Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver said in October the changes will boost transparency, accountability and trust in local elections.

"(They) are good for municipalities, good for voters, good for Albertans," he said.

McIver has long contended that corporate and union donations are already influencing municipal elections and the new rules enforce needed boundaries.

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Jeremy Thompson and The Canadian Press