Data modelling might one day help the city decide what types and when new civic facilities should be built.
Several members of city council met with staff Tuesday to get their first look at the data-driven model developed to attempt to forecast what the priority and timeline for new city-owned facilities should be.
Council is holding off on public and stakeholder consultations on the new data model. Instead, it plans to digest the information given to them on Tuesday – much of it in a confidential report – and meet again in several weeks.
The full report provided to council was kept confidential, with copies of the slide presentation being provided to the public in attendance.
“I’m also anxious about what the politics of this are,” said Mayor Nolan Crouse, who predicted that council would almost immediately start to be targeted with lobbying efforts to move forward various special interest groups’ preferred projects.
To develop the model, several assumptions had to be used. For example, Monique St. Louis, director of Build St. Albert, said 1.6 per cent per year population growth rate was used.
It also includes an assumption that city facilities are currently at capacity – not under capacity or over-subscribed in any way – something city ice users or culture fans might disagree with as they ask for more space in the community.
Tinkering with the model means that different levels of service can be selected, and data from other communities has been included for comparison.
The facility prioritization model as demonstrated to council deals with everything from the need for a new fire department or public works buildings to predicting needs for more arenas, libraries and other cultural and recreational infrastructure.
Two maps that were developed using the model and shared publicly used different levels of services. One, titled “maintain service levels,” showed planning should start for items such as an indoor ice surface, more tennis courts and clubhouses within three years, while other city facilities such as a police detachment, new park and ride station and fire station should be planned within 10 years.
The second model, titled “leader in botanical arts infrastructure,” set facilities considered part of St. Albert’s botanical arts brand at a higher level. That resulted in new museums, a new library, art gallery, performing arts theatres, compost yards and other items being placed into that three-year outlook.
Council wasn’t comfortable with a staff recommendation to use the latter map to start discussions with the community.
Council made references to the confidential report, and from that report Crouse identified a particular challenge.
“There must be 15 items that we have to start working on in 2016,” Crouse said.
Staff noted council shouldn’t feel pressured to get moving on decisions right away.
City manager Patrick Draper suggested council should have a conversation about its principles and philosophies when it comes to desired levels of service for the provision of city facilities.
“Obviously we can't say yes to everything in 2016,” Draper said.
In a separate interview, Monique St. Louis, director of Build St. Albert, said the model is about providing council some analytics with which to make decisions.
“I think the power of the model is it can be adjusted whichever way council chooses,” she said, noting they can decide to focus on certain types of infrastructure or different levels of service.
The facility prioritization model was one part of the meeting. The first part of the meeting addressed potential plans for the lands in the west extreme of the city currently referred to as the “Employment Lands.”
There are three concepts that will be used to spark discussion – a light industrial and office park, a business and commercial area with entertainment uses or a knowledge-based industries and research park.
The meeting was advertised as a committee of the whole meeting and no agenda was posted online ahead of the session. An agenda and unofficial minutes were posted online afterwards.
The meeting was opened to the public after a council vote earlier this month, though council still moved to a private session for some items.
Council narrowly voted to keep some parts of Tuesday’s meeting in public. While Coun. Sheena Hughes had successfully moved to have it in public at a recent council meeting, Crouse asked for the doors to be closed to the public for the whole meeting.
A majority vote declined to make the whole meeting private, but the public was asked to leave during part of the discussion around the employment lands and a whole second topic of discussion. That topic, which was not shared with the public at the meeting, appears on the minutes as a presentation on “Centre of Innovation in Citizen Delivery.”
While trying to convince the present councillors to vote in favour of going in camera for the whole meeting, Crouse raised concerns about potentially discussing schools, arenas, an expansion at Servus Place for a fitness centre in public before talking to those stakeholders.
