Imagine you work in a warehouse packing boxes and the CEO of your company told you it was a priority that you pack the goods in recycled boxes, rather than ones made of new materials. It was established as company policy that, of course, employees are expected to follow. Now, imagine that you simply didn't do it. You still told everyone you were packing in recycled boxes, but you simply didn't change your behaviour in any way. After five years of not complying with company policy, your manager finds out.

What do you think happens then?

If you work for the City of Edmonton and report to city council, it seems that the most probable answer is nothing.

In October of 2012, the City Council passed Speed Reduction Policy C566, which states that with 67% support from the neighbourhood, a community can lower their speed limit to 40km/h.

Unfortunately, the City of Edmonton has no procedures associated with this policy - what that means is that speed limits simply cannot be reduced under this policy. The city simply does not know how to do it. And even after five years, they do not have any timelines for when they'll get there.

I've followed the guidance given in the policy and in the sporadic emails and phone calls I've received from the city over the past year (most of my communication is simply ignored). After reaching out to every home in Hazeldean, 73% are in favour with 44% of households responding.

I've had sit-down meetings with transportation staff, I've submitted documentation about my consultation and every time I only asked for a single thing: a timeline for next steps to move forward. The city is either unable or unwilling to move forward on this, and escalation to the office of my councillor has yielded neither progress, nor answers.

The City of Edmonton is incapable of summoning a modicum of humility or common sense on this file. There is no admission of failure or responsibility, quite the opposite. In city reports and in speaking, administration actively congratulates themselves for their "forward-thinking and community-minded" speed reduction policy. A policy which actively alienates engaged community members and fails to enable reduction of speed limits.

The city bureaucrats are, at best, misleading council and the public about their state of support for speed reduction. Take the memo circulated to city councillors in December of 2016 (emphasis mine)

This is a document filled with straight-up unabashed lies. It calls itself an amendment to the existing procedure but, as we'll see later, the Branch Manager of Transportation Operations confirms such a procedure does not exist.

The revised city procedure due in first quarter of 2017 turned out to be a simple flowchart devoid of details(pdf), that was not a procedure at all. The "actual procedure" will be coming "sometime in 2018".

It says information will be provided to the requester, but after being able to confirm that the information exists, all phone calls, emails and requests for that information for Hazeldean have been ignored.

Finally, the memo pats itself on the back. Great work, we've reduced the difficulty in using this policy from impossible to still impossible! Coffee break!

Certainly, I thought this was forward progress when I spoke to the Journal about it.

Oh how wrong I was.

It's council's job to hold administration accountable for this work, but this city council is not taking the initiative to ensure their direction is being followed.

When I presented this issue to Urban Planning Committee on April 5th, only Councillor Knack even questioned why this work is not proceeding. But when he was told, and surprised, that there was simply no procedure associated with this five-year-old policy, he suggested that it was a different discussion - but in the months afterward, that discussion never happened.

Gord Cebryk, the Branch Manager of Transportation Operations, repeatedly says "we're ready to move forward", but my calls and emails following the meeting trying to understand timelines or paths to move forward went completely ignored.

So what is a citizen to do when the city ignores community leaders, doesn't follow their own policies and lies to council? What does one do when council will not hold the city responsible for following council's direction?

I don't know that there's really an answer. One of the two groups needs to be removed.

What am I going to do? I'll continue to do my best, and I'll see you at the polls in October.