Fixing the City of Edmonton Budget w⧸Jason Bale ｜ A Critical Compass Clip
Episode Stats
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166.69363
Summary
In this episode, I sit down with Edmonton City Councillor Jason Kenney to discuss his plans for his first term in office and what he wants to see happen in the coming years. We discuss his vision for the future of the city of Edmonton, what he hopes for the next council, and how he plans to get things done.
Transcript
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let's predict the future here and we'll say that you get elected for your ward you're
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edmonton city councilor how do you how do you envision your first term going what are some of
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the uh like what are you some of your main points that you want to uh that you want to see uh at
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least being discussed uh when you get the opportunity to put in front of council sure
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so the first issue that's going to be on the next council's um docket is the budget we're
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going to have about five weeks or so from election time to budget and i think two or three of those
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weeks are going to be spent training so there's not going to be a lot of time to make any meaningful
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change and that's why the outgoing council does the first year budget for the incoming council
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it's a long-standing tradition i don't have a problem with that practice what i do have a
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problem with is that they're giving us a 6.8 tax increase next year and the the next council only
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has five weeks really two weeks to to kind of address it so i'm going through that budget now
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i'm well i've been going through it for a while and i'd like to see a zero in the first year i don't
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know if we'll get there but um i'm gonna have to count on whoever else is elected to maybe bring
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forward some some better optimization of where we're spending money and other ways to kind of reduce
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that so but zero percent is my target whether or not we get there i think it's a different story but
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that's in an ideal world that's that's what i get and then the next year after that is about setting
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the tone and setting up for the the four-year budget and and that one i i think that uh it's
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going to be interesting because it's the first one where we're doing zero-based budgeting and we build
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it from the ground up of okay what's important yep throw that in throw that in so i'm hoping we
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get to see a line-by-line analysis of every budget of every department um that was actually one of
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the things i had as another event tonight and um that was one of the things that came up and they
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said well i don't think a line-by-line budget is practical for council to look at and i said you know
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what that's my problem not yours so if i'm asking for a line-by-line budget you give it to me you
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don't think it's going to work let me fail yeah right and so but but don't try and prevent me from
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getting that information so so yeah let you determine what uh what what is relevant what's
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not yeah and you know what maybe i'm wrong maybe i look at the line-by-line budget and i'm like
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wow there's so many things here which is part of the problem really but yeah i'm sure that's line
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i'm sure that's a rabbit hole where you start looking and we're like well this is a big item
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that's a big item that's a small item what does this even mean what's this code under that like
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i i feel like when there's so much happening a lot can be the accountability gets watered down
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when there's so many little things happening it all adds up so and then how do you make a
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determination on like well okay this is twenty thousand dollars spent on this well oh it's only
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twenty thousand it's not into the millions so it's kind of like forgotten about but you have
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a hundred of these twenty thousand dollar spends and that's gonna have a larger impact so at least
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um pro like asking for the information asking for that clarity asking for that transparency that's
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that's a huge thing and i don't think there's enough of that so