https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCfr4E04owM
I wanted to share with you my most recent YouTube video about a new policy designed to curb urban sprawl in Edmonton. This may sound boring but changing the way we grow (more in than more out) can have an enormous impact on our climate goals, keeping taxes down, and building a more exciting, vibrant, welcoming city for everyone.
It is called substantial completion. Basically slowing sprawl until we are completed the neighbourhoods currently underway. It still needs strengthening in my opinion, but I think we are heading in the right direction.
Learn more about curbing urban sprawl via Substantial Completion from my colleague Councillor Ashley Salvador:
https://www.ashleysalvador.com/post/guiding-growth-for-complete-communities
Learn more about Zoning Bylaw Renewal from her as well:
https://www.ashleysalvador.com/post/revamping-the-rulebook-zoning-bylaw-renewal
Learn about the public engagement process from my colleague Councillor Hamilton:
https://www.sarahhamilton.ca/post/zone-on-dig-in-sort-out
If you want to see lower taxes, if you want to see a more sustainable city – not just environmentally, but economically – a city that’s more exciting, that’s more vibrant, that has more things to do, that has better services, you’ll be excited to learn about how Edmonton plans to change the way we grow, curb urban sprawl and build in and not out. In city speak, substantial completion.
For too long Edmonton has grown out and out and out without the population density or tax revenue to sustain the enormous costs of service that comes with low-density suburban growth. This means higher carbon emissions, more cars, more interchanges, more bridges, more school closures more debt, fewer services, and much higher taxes.
Every time we put a new house out in the suburbs in a new wetland and not in the core of our city where we have the services, we have the schools, we have the roads, we have the libraries, we have the amenities, we know that that house will lose the taxpayer money. It will never generate enough taxes to pay for itself. These changes will take decades, but the best time to start is now.
Learn more at michaeljanz.ca/housing
Analysis shows that there are approximately 75,000 undeveloped low density lots throughout the developing area which will provide sufficient supply through to the 1.5 million population horizon. Substantial completion will also ensure medium and high density developments are finished in the developing area which will help ensure there are homes available at a range of price points.
Implementing The City Plan, including the substantial completion standard to manage growth, will be more cost effective for Edmontonians, reducing the tax levy requirement by an anticipated eight percent in the long term compared with our current business-as-usual approach.
The proposed Edmonton City Budget will be released on Monday (November 2nd, 2026) via edmonton.ca/budget
As City Council heads towards our budget debates later this fall, we get another opportunity to show how serious we are about our economic resilience and our commitment to keeping taxes reasonable while we serve Edmontonians. I’ve thought long and hard about this and I’m happy to share my plan to keep Edmonton on a sound fiscal path.
New data from the City administration highlights that there are almost no shelters and an incredibly limited amount of affordable housing in the region outside of Edmonton. While the capital region has a combined population of close to 1.5 million, the 1.1 million Edmonton taxpayers are covering the region's costs.
I have put in a request to have Nakba Day recognized as a protocol item under Council Recognition this coming May:
Nakba Day is commemorated annually on May 15. It marks the beginning of the destruction of the Palestinian homeland, and the mass displacement in 1948 of the majority of the Palestinian population. Nakba means ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic and is the word used by Palestinians and others to refer to this historic moment.