One day after city administration said certain policies, such as environmental benchmarks, approved by the city council are leading to projects in Edmonton costing much more than comparable ones in surrounding municipalities, residents of a north side area are calling on their neighbourhood renewal to be scaled back.
“City administration is totally out of touch with what Edmontonians want,” said Janina Syrnyk, a 45-year resident of the Dunluce neighbourhood and the chairperson of the Stop the Destruction of Dunluce group.
“We are in support of the renewal, absolutely,” she said but added some of the 6,000 residents in the area just want the city to maintain what it already has, not put money it doesn’t have into expensive upgrades.
“We want the basics. We want our potholes filled. We want our sidewalks fixed. We don’t need fancy sidewalks. We don’t need the bike lanes that start somewhere and end nowhere.”
The multi-million-dollar plan for the Dunluce area, released last November, includes upgrades such as improved benches and lighting in park spaces, traffic-calming measures like curb extensions and raised crosswalks, as well as more bike lanes and multi-use paths, narrowing some roads and widening sidewalks.
“I don’t understand the reasoning for a wide sidewalk when no one’s even using the sidewalks now in our neighbourhood,” Syrnyk said.
“This is not a high-density area where we are promenading daily.”
She said it doesn’t make sense for their area, “and this is going to be happening on all the renewals, because the policy apparently has to be kept the same. But it makes no sense to spend that much money on something that’s not used.”
But if you build it, they may come, is the thought behind some of the decisions being made, according to City of Edmonton director of neighbourhoods, planning and design Ryan Kirstiuk.
“While there might be people in the neighbourhood who aren’t walking as much, by widening sidewalks, by creating calmer streets, we’re looking to provide an environment where people might now want to.”
Syrnyk said while maintenance is absolutely needed, the city is wasting tax dollars in their mature neighbourhood that is primarily low-density single family homes build in the 1970s and 1980s.
“We want to see more reasonable thinking around spending and actually taking some accountability. It seems to me that council keeps referring back to this policy and the council keeps questioning the administration, but they’re not doing anything about it.”
The policy in question is actually several.
The draft design for the neighbourhood renewal said city policies and standards such as the Complete Streets Design and Construction Standards, Safe Mobility Strategy and Winter City Strategy provide the overall direction for neighbourhood renewal designs.
Other policies also guide decisions, such as the Active Transportation Policy, the Access Design Guide intended to make city property more accessible for people of all ages and abilities, and the Climate Resilient Edmonton policy aimed at reducing the impact of urban heat island effect.
The City Plan to prioritize and enable green infrastructure, the Snow and Ice Control Policy to prioritize shared pathways for snow clearing, Vision Zero for traffic safety changes, and the Edmonton Bike Plan and Corporate Tree Management Policy are also followed.
Syrnyk said she and several others in the community have sent letters of concern to all members on city council “and no one really cares.”
“No one’s looking at the wastage of money that’s occurring. We want to make all Edmontonians aware of the millions and billions of dollars that can be saved — just to simplify the neighbourhood renewal, keep things as they are rather than widening the sidewalks, making narrower roads, removing trees and building bike lanes.”
Parking in some areas will also go away under the changes, which Syrnyk said will affect people who live in condos and townhouses in the community.
“There’s a lot of new immigrants living in there and sometimes there’s two families and of course, most condos, you just get your one parking spot. So of course they’re using the street parking and that will all be gone.”
Syrnyk claims residents expressed concerns at a town hall meeting back in November when the plan was released and she was told nothing in the plan would change.
“They have to stick to policy. All sidewalks have to be widened. All roadways have to be narrowed in certain areas. And they’ve got this policy in place, which makes no sense because it’s costing millions of dollars for no reason whatsoever.”
Ward Anirniq councillor Erin Rutherford said infrastructure in the 1970s-era neighbourhood needs to be upgraded to meet modern guidelines for sidewalks, lighting and traffic safety.
“We have to bring it up to today’s standards. That’s just a reality,” she said.
“There is intensive public engagement that happens around neighbourhood renewal as well as many of the other guiding policies that inform neighbourhood renewal, like the City Plan. So that is what is informing these changes.”
Kirstiuk said the Dunluce plan is in the development phase and city planners are working on finalizing the design of the renewal.
He said the draft released last fall came after two years of public engagement, which is just one element that influences a project. City policies and technical considerations are also taken into account.
“Those standards are based on updated modern design best practices as well as policy-driven outcomes, including creating more connected neighbourhoods, more opportunities for people to walk, bike or roll in a neighbourhood,” Kirstiuk said.
He said neighbourhood renewal, when all sidewalks and roads in an area are dug up and redone anyways, is the ideal time for the city to make such changes.
“We hear a gamut of information and we have to kind of consider that when proposing the development of that design.”
While the Stop the Destruction of Dunluce group says wider sidewalks are not needed, Kirstiuk said the aim is to provide broader connectivity in the neighbourhood.
“It creates a more comfortable environment for people to walk, roll, people with strollers, people in wheelchairs. Having a wider sidewalk is just a more comfortable and safer space for those people to move about their neighbourhood,” Kirstiuk said.
He acknowledged that sometimes comes at the cost of taking away some parking, green space and trees.
Rutherford said she has advocated for the area and got Dunluce neighbourhood renewal include in the current budget cycle because she said she heard from many in the area that roads and sidewalks were in disrepair.
The city said the final design for the area’s upgrades is expected to be complete later this year or in early 2025. Rutherford is asking for residents to be patient while city planners do that work.
“We have to give administration the opportunity to actually take that feedback and adjust and adapt the design based on that,” Rutherford said.
“But if the feedback is ‘don’t make any new sidewalks’ — that’s not a reasonable request, because that’s not what we’re doing in any neighbourhood renewal project or what has been informed by even engagement with some of the residents in Dunluce.”
A one-size-fits-all approach that strictly follows city policies doesn’t make sense, Syrnyk said, especially in light of steep tax increases.
In April, city council approved a 8.9 per cent property tax increase for 2024 alone. City administration also recommended tax levy increases of 7 per cent in 2025 and 6.4 per cent in 2026.
“There’s absolutely no reason that, when they’re saying our taxes have to go up to this high every year and again next year, that they can see spending extra millions and millions of dollars on nonsense,” Syrnyk said.
Syrnyk said she had a lengthy conversation with Rutherford this week and said the two walked away agreeing to disagree on the issue.
“But I said we’re not going to give up,” she said.
Syrnyk said many of her neighbours were unaware of the scope of the plan and her group intends to educate Dunluce residents about it.
“Common sense needs to somehow come out of this because like I said, it’s a democracy. This is our money.”
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