Oct. 21 marks two years since our current mayor and city council were elected. As we approach the mid-point in the term, we spoke with the mayor about how the first half went and asked how you feel about city council's performance. See the poll results below.

Edmonton Sun: What are some of the accomplishments you think have marked the first half of your mandate?

Don Iveson: We've made huge strides in evolving the urban character of the city. It's a long, long journey, I mean we're setting it up for a generation but betting this idea that LRT is going to be the DNA of growth for the city, making it our top infrastructure priority and successfully going to Ottawa and the province to fund the Valley Line and focusing on our new transit review, for example, to look at how we can support that with bus service, and maintaining a focus on the long-term build-out of the complete LRT system. And then thinking about how that supports the creation of renewed town centres in places like Mill Woods, which was designed around having LRT but is getting it 40 years later.

We really confirmed that direction and with the federal government transit fund announcements and all three of the major parties agreeing to fund transit nationally, the prospect of actually completing our LRT system, albeit over 10 or 20 years to build it out, we can imagine how that would come together and support those new options for housing through infill.

We've retained a focus on that in spite of different push back, different concerns, opportunities for the city to improve.

ES: What areas are you disappointed in or see room for improvement in the next few years?

DI: We have on the one hand made huge strides in our region with our neighbours, strengthening relationships, coming together around the capital region board table.

That's a huge psychological shift for our region but we're not quite where I was hoping we'd be at this point in terms of getting into some cost- and revenue-sharing arrangements that help all boats rise in the tide.

I was hoping we'd have a strategy for joint economic development. It's taking longer than I was hoping it would but it's still in progress.

ES: Taxation and infrastructure spending seem to counter-balance - the more you want to fix with roads, it has to be balanced by taxation. How do you see that balance now, trying to be fiscally responsible while avoiding the emails about potholes?

DI: While the annual tax levy discussion every year is very, very important and we take delivering the lowest possible tax increase very seriously, and you saw us reduce it this last year when we were able to on account of the economic situation, the most fiscally responsible things to do are to look after your assets and then obviously, of course, to make sure that on those assets you're running cost-effective services.

I think we are going to have to review our service levels from a value for money point of view in the coming years in order to scrub the budget further and I think our council's up for that.

You need to have sufficient resources to maintain your assets. Otherwise, if you fall behind, then someone's going to have to come back and spend a whole bunch more money to fix them or your city falls apart. And we saw the fiscal irresponsibility of overly low tax increases, unrealistically low tax increases in the '90s and the way those were achieved was by cutting back on fixing infrastructure.

It's kind of like changing the oil on your car and we didn't change the oil on the city through the '90s and early 2000s and we blew up the engine. So we've had to replace it, we've had to go back, it cost money, but we've learned from that and we're future-proofing ourselves with this neighbourhood renewal program which is very expensive.

ES: No one expected the slump in oil prices. The public sector is reacting differently than the private sector though.

DI: You want to invest more in infrastructure when costs are low. You absolutely want to take advantage of that downswing and you also want to keep people working.

People are still moving to Edmonton and the community's still growing. It's not growing at the breakneck speed it was for the last several years but it's still growing, it still needs infrastructure and snow falls regardless of the price of oil, so what am I supposed to do, lay off 10 per cent of the people who drive plows? Now the pressure on their wages may be less in the next few years because we won't be competing with the oil patch for truck drivers, for example. But those things lag.

We understand completely that, for some families, this is a difficult time if they've been laid off because of their exposure. And that's where we rely on the other governments to have social safety nets with EI and so on and so forth to support people through that, to expect the city to stop dealing with growth and providing services when the demand for all for all of that is not directly linked to the price of oil is an oversimplification.

ES: What improvements or additions do you want to see in the second half of your mandate?

DI: Now that we're moving into a three-year budget cycle for our operations, I think that gives us an opportunity to look a little more strategically at our fiscal plan and to think about making investments in year one that save money in year three.

I also think that gives us the opportunity to look at service level reviews.

One of the things that is going to remain a big focus for me in the next year or two is delivering a city charter that gives fairness to Edmonton and I suppose Calgary for some of these big city loads that we carry on behalf of the province.

ES: The problem seems to be the chances of the province extending their budget to meet social needs in a slumping economy is less while the need is higher.

DI: They run the risk of making the same mistake as what we made. What we stopped doing was the preventative maintenance on our roads and then some years later our roads fell apart. Our province stopped doing the same preventative maintenance on human beings 20 years ago and now our social infrastructure in our inner city in terms of vulnerable populations is in about the same condition as our roads are in. I think it's a reasonable analogy. So just like we had to bite the bullet to fix our roads, the province will have to bite the bullet and in the long term actually, they will save money.

ES: There’s been a lot of negative news around large city projects that have to do with transit and transportation. How much has that hurt the public engagement that the city is trying to get in the transit review?

DI: There’s no doubt that some people have serious questions about the city’s ability to deliver projects based on what is ultimately a coincidence that we had three different transportation projects go wonky on us this year. The two bridges were, I think it’s actually an example of project management working, albeit under sub-optimal circumstances.

The city actually did a good job of protecting the city’s interests and creating a system of incentives and disincentives to get what we want on time and quality is non-negotiable.

Every single one of our projects is on budget or under budget, so all of the problems that we’ve had with the Metro Line notwithstanding, it is $90 million under budget.

That doesn’t make up for a minute for the fact that it was more than a year delayed, which we all remain frustrated by.

There’s no doubt that the city has some things to learn about how we structure contracts for major procurements like this.

ES: Do you see support for city project management coming back as the projects come online and we see those savings?

DI: I think council's had to be patient and do two things: One, remember the big picture; we're not going to stop building LRT because we've had the problems with the software contractor on the Thales line. What we're going to do is we're going to stay committed to what our citizens have told us they want, what I feel is a strong mandate I have and our council has, which is to drive towards completion of the LRT system.

We take very seriously the opportunity to learn from things that go awry and we can't promise that there aren't going to be issues in the future. You try and put a billion or two billion dollars a year worth of infrastructure in the ground, you're going to occasionally have issues. The question is how do you learn from them?

That will remain our focus and time will tell if the public is reassured that we've learned sufficiently from these issues. But I feel like we're taking that task very seriously.

david.lazzarino@sunmedia.ca

@SUNDaveLazz

Online poll results:

1: How would you grade city council’s performance over the last two years?

A 2%

B 9%

C 24%

D 31%

F 34%

2: How would you grade Mayor Don Iveson’s performance over the last two years?

A 6%

B 11%

C 15%

D 25%

F 43%

3: If an election were held today, would you vote for your city councillor?

Yes 15%

I'm not sure 20%

No 65%

4: If an election were held today, would you vote for Don Iveson?

Yes 16%

I'm not sure 8%

No 76%

5: Please rank the following issues from most to least important (total answers 576)

1 Policing/Fire

2 Roads/construction

3 Taxes/budgeting

4 Council performance

5 Transit

6 Snow removal

7 Parks/Recreation5

8 Access to city services

9 Poverty reduction/homelessness

10 Arts

6: Which area do you feel council has had the most success in?

Other Option 32%

Arts 16%

Policing/fire 11%

Snow removal 9%

Roads/Construction 8%

Access to city services 8%

Parks/Recreation 7%

Transit 3%

Taxes/Budgeting 3%

Council performance 2%

Poverty reduction/homelessness 1%

7: Which area do you feel council needs the most improvement in?

Taxes/Budgeting 33%

Roads/Construction 23%

Council performance 10%

Other Option 10%

Transit 8%

Snow removal 5%

Policing/fire 4%

Poverty reduction/homelessness 3%

Access to city services 2%

Parks/Recreation 1%

Arts 1%

8: How do you feel about the property tax burden for homeowners?

Too high 83 %

Unsure 13 %

Too low 4 %

9: Do you support increased taxation powers for the city?

Yes 10%

Unsure 5%

No 85%

On the final question, we gave readers the chance to submit their own answer on issues they feel council needs to address over the next two years.

The big ones are Taxes (80 mentions), Roads (50), Overspending (42), Transit pro- and anti- (29), LRT, both positive and negative (29), City budget (24), Policingécrime (16), Infill (16), Snow removal (14), Transportation (12), Traffic (11)