One of the key jobs of the EFCL is to negotiate on behalf of its member community leagues.
For some reason this seems to be the season for wheeling and dealing, as we’re hard at it on three fronts.
So far negotiations are going very well with the City of Edmonton. We’re right on track with developing a new EFCL/City of Edmonton Partnership Agreement, which defines how we work together on community league and neighborhood development matters.
The EFCL brought forward a number of suggestions amendments to the existing agreement, which is due to expire at the end of June. They focused on two areas – sharing of information – including community league executive contact information - and improving the working relationship between the EFCL and departments other than community services – namely planning and development, transportation and streets and asset management and public works.
Community Services staff, with which we have a great relationship, have been most helpful throughout these discussions and we’re hoping to have a new deal to announce by the end of next month.
This will soon be followed by negotiations to develop a new Tripartite License Agreement, which is the legal foundation that governs how community leagues can use the land they have under license with the city and the facilities that are built on that land. The EFCL has outlined a number of issues it wants to have addressed, such as clarification of the ownership of all facilities built by the leagues. The city has asked staff at the Mediation and Restorative Justice Centre to facilitate the discussions, which are due to get underway in June.
Somewhat less successful are the EFCL’s talks with the provincial department of Culture and Community Spirit. Like many other non-profit organizations, we we’re most disappointed to see the demise of the Wild Rose Foundation, which a number of leagues had used to access grants for capital projects. We’re also quite concerned about the expected pressure on the Community Initiatives Program (CIP), which the EFCL and many of its member leagues have used and plan to continue to use for financial assistance (including all of the leagues taking part in the EFCL’s infrastructure assessment.
The EFCL has expressed its concerns in a letter to Minister Blackett and has offered to meet to discuss the matter in more detail. We have not received a response. We are also working with the Edmonton Chamber of Voluntary Organizations (ECVO), which is attempting to pull together a joint position from Edmonton’s non-profit community.
Somewhere in the middle (on the scale of success) is our discussion with the Edmonton Public School Board representatives on community schools. In a recent meeting we suggested that the school board consider a campaign to promote neighborhood schools, as they seem to be ignored in all of the effort to promote specialized programs of various sorts. The whole idea of the school being the focus of the community and a great place for children and their families to make friends and feel good about neighborhood appears to us to have waned considerably and we thought it was time to turn that around.
EPSB Chair Bev Esslinger and Vice-Chair Catherine Ripley thought the idea had merit and said they would look into it. However, they noted that the pressure will continue to mount on older schools with declining populations, as many more could find themselves on the chopping block in the next few years.
So for those keeping score, it’s fair to say we’re starting to connect on the negotiation front.
But most of the pitches are still to come.