Hey, let's take a look at a city report.
I guarantee it will make you feel better about your job performance.
What council asked for
Here's what was supposed to happen.
Council had made a motion asking for the city to come to the inaugural infrastructure committee meeting today prepped to report on, in the last two years, how much of each type of infrastructure we've added, a historical summary of growth in those infrastructure assets, and to include the replacement costs for that infrastructure.
That Administration incorporate into the Integrated Infrastructure Services report IIS03137 an accounting of infrastructure assets acquired since the last report, including:
- the quantity and type of infrastructure added,
- the associated replacement value; and
- a historical summary of the growth in quantity of infrastructure assets owned by the City, going back as far as data allows.
Moved by Ashley Salvador
In favour (4)
Essentially, we want to know how much new stuff we're building, how much of it is being constructed, and what that will cost us to fix down the line.
We didn't get that.
How many roads are there?
Let's look at the simplest example, paved roads.
Even Councillor Ashley Salvador was perplexed here.
And just for example, you know, looking at roadways, it's increased from 36,000 “varies” to 55 million “varies,” but I don't know what that means, to be honest. Like, linear kilometres is what I'm used to.
Administration suggested that replacement value is a better metric for tackling this infrastructure question.
We typically use replacement value actually as the general comparator year over year because of the refinements that we do. We don't typically spend our efforts tracking what changes in terms of units from one year to the next, because what we're looking to is continually improve the way we're reporting our assets. So one reason why we use replacement value is it's consistent. We can always inflate it up, and year over year we can talk about what that percentage difference is, which typically represents the percentage of that portfolio, which then helps us with that growth.
Pick a column, any column
Okay. So, looking at the replacement value for our paved roadways, that's declined by $1.5 billion over the past two years.
From the 2025 Infrastructure State and Condition report. Paved Roads: $9.7 billion in 2023, $8.2 billion in 2025.
The city's grown by an entire Red Deer between 2023 and 2025, but using the best metric that administration prefers, we're to take away that our road network decreased by 15%?
Edmonton's population, 2021 to 2025.
Or should we look at the other column, where it went from 36,000 unknown units of paved roadway in 2023 to 52 million unknown, maybe different, units of paved roadway in 2025?
Only a 144,000% increase there.
Or we can just look at another part of the table, where the entire citywide collection of bike infrastructure, you know, that thing that we're 75% of the way through spending $100 million expanding?
Yeah, it's got a total replacement cost of $434,000.
What?
Why this matters
We know that sprawl is the biggest driver of tax increases in the City of Edmonton, and council wants to address that in advance of our four-year budget this fall.
That's why they requested this report eight months ago.
I've reached out to the city to clarify these points of the report.
Back when I was in elementary, my teacher (and condolences for having me in her class) would frequently say, “Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.”
Well, in my initial read-through of this report, it pretty well confirms that it's absolutely pouring outside.
And well, look at that. My pant leg is soaked in urine.
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