Under the act, information can be withheld from the public if it risks the exposure of \u201cplans relating to the management of personnel or the administration of a public body that have not yet been implemented.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knack said keeping the discussion in-camera was important for city employees\u2019 mental well being, so people don\u2019t hear councillors potentially questioning the future of their employment.<\/p>\n
Among its peers in Calgary, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Toronto, Edmonton spends the least per-person, per-ward. On Dec. 12, committee directed administration to review ward and council office budgets, as well as look at the potential for carrying office budgets from previous years. Under the existing rules, items purchased must be received by the office within the same year.<\/p>\n
![\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/acad86e7fd57ffcee4e78f41beb0233c.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
A chart comparing how Edmonton compares to a selection of other large Canadian cities which use the ward system \u2013 Vancouver does not use a ward system, hence its absence from the chart.<\/p>\n
Knack said from his prior experience as a councillor, having just two employees is not enough to keep up with the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs someone who used to serve as a city councillor, having two people there is hard,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to stay on top of all of the issues, on the correspondence and connecting with residents. So I can easily make an argument for my council colleagues to have additional resources to help deal with the massive population increase they\u2019ve seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knack added increasing ward and office budgets is cheaper and favorable to the alternative option to handle the city\u2019s population growth \u2014 which would entail adding more councillors. He estimated that would require several million dollars worth of renovations to city hall for office space for new councillors.<\/p>\n
Councillors are given the freedom to set up their offices as they see fit within the budget. The funds are intended to help councillors run their office, represent the city at major events and maintain lines of communication with constituents. Ward budgets are divided into two pools \u2014 a ward budget which is subdivided between the 12 councillor offices, and the common budget which allocates $11,278 to cover petty expenses such as furnishings for all 12 wards.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have, over my entire time on council, made very minimal adjustments to the ward council budgets,\u201d said Knack. \u201cThat has been done to try and make sure we\u2019re finding every available way to maximized the existing dollars to connect with as many people as possible. But you do hit a tipping point.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if you were to add additional resources to the office of the city councillors, they\u2019ll still be much less than every other major city.\u201d<\/p>\n
These budgets don\u2019t cover larger office costs, such as office renovations. Those are handled under the integrated infrastructure services department.<\/p>\n
ebowling@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don\u2019t miss the news you need to know \u2014 add EdmontonJournal.com<\/a> and EdmontonSun.com<\/a> to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.<\/a><\/p>\n You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Edmonton Journal<\/a> | The Edmonton Sun.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City councillors may have new office budgets as part of Edmonton\u2019s next four-year budget \u2014 but exactly how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[99354,49,48,195433,163328,23752,209991,209989,209990],"class_list":{"0":"post-536818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-andrew-knack","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-city-councillor","12":"tag-councillors","13":"tag-edmonton","14":"tag-office-budgets","15":"tag-office-expenses","16":"tag-ward-budget"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}