St. Albert Minute: Issue 118

St. Albert Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of St. Albert politics

📅 This Week In St. Albert: 📅

• There are no Council or Committee meetings this week. The next meeting, of the Standing Committee of the Whole, takes place on July 7th at 9:30 am.
  
  
• Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams has announced a new minister's council to explore ways of financing municipal infrastructure without raising taxes, and St. Albert Mayor Scott Olivieri will take part through the Alberta Mid-Sized Cities Mayor's Caucus. Williams announced the council on June 23rd, saying Alberta cannot keep relying on tax revenue alone to close what he called an infrastructure gap that is dragging on productivity and quality of life. The council will bring together Edmonton, Calgary, the Rural Municipalities Association and the mid-sized cities caucus, and is expected to report recommendations to the Government before the end of the year. Olivieri said Council has long argued that municipalities need stable and predictable funding from other levels of government and welcomed the chance to take part. 
  
  
• Near-record rainfall on June 21st overwhelmed St. Albert's sewer system, flooding homes and businesses and prompting a weekend ban on all non-essential water use that was not lifted until the afternoon of June 22nd. About 104 millimeters of rain fell on the Edmonton region between Saturday and Monday, more than the area would normally see in an entire month, and the City logged roughly a dozen flooded basements while six of its lift stations struggled to keep up. As another weekend of heavy rain approached, downtown business owners pressed the City for stronger action. Some said the City's messaging amounted to telling residents to "hang in there" and asked why it could not do more to mitigate the problem before the next storm. City spokesperson Cory Sinclair said the City is taking proactive steps but cautioned that the ground is already saturated and stormwater ponds have reduced capacity, and advised residents to improve drainage, use sandbags around window wells, and limit water use.
  
  
• Volunteers from the St. Albert Multicultural Heritage Society gathered to explore launching a Heritage Days festival in 2027. The organizing committee so far includes people with roots in more than a dozen countries. Organizers say a heritage festival would showcase the city's diversity and draw visitors, framing it as a community asset. The idea grew out of informal conversations between volunteers earlier this year.
  
  
• The City of St. Albert is consulting residents on how to add "missing middle" housing to its established neighbourhoods and gathering feedback on a set of proposed zoning changes. The work is tied to the federal Housing Affordability Fund, under which St. Albert signed an agreement in 2025 for up to $11.8 million. Senior Planner Craig Walker said the City has mostly single detached homes and a mature apartment market but little in between, and that the goal is to make duplexes, semi-detached homes, and townhouses easier to build. Among the changes under consideration are reduced minimum lot widths for single detached and semi-detached homes, allowing apartment buildings along St. Albert Trail, and a new higher-density mixed-use district near future rapid transit that could reach 10 to 15 storeys. Building heights, lot coverage, and setbacks for existing home types would stay the same, and Walker stressed that the City is not looking to follow Edmonton, where blanket rezoning has allowed eight-unit buildings. 

🚨 This Week’s Action Item: 🚨

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