Don’t “reimagine” the Edmonton we love.

The City of Edmonton is asking you to “reimagine” our city with lower quality services. All at higher costs. 

What a word, ‘reimagine’.

You shouldn’t have to ‘reimagine’ the city you love—the city you just made a year of sacrifices for—as anything less than the city you were promised. 

Edmonton services work because of the people who make them work. 

It’s shocking that the City could be so shortsighted.

The upkeep of parks where children play, the maintenance of the roads we drive on, the rec centres our families visit, all of that will decrease in quality and increase in price if council moves forward.

Edmonton has experimented in the past with privatized services and it ended in failure. Privatized swimming pools were brought back in house due to poor service and weak safety standards.  Commercial trash collection resulted in overflowing bins and unsanitary conditions. Everytime Edmonton tries to privatize civic services, it ends in failure. 

We helped keep our community safe over the past year. Losing the value of what we love in your city shouldn’t be the reward. 

We’re CUPE Local 30. We make sure our water is safe to drink and our kids are safe when they play at rec centres. We take care of our roads. We clean and maintain our parks. And we’re good at it. Proudly. 

The City of Edmonton is using “reimagine” as code for privatization. Council budget negotiations are flirting with selling these services to private corporations for little more than short-term gain. 

You will lose quality and pay more for it. We will lose our jobs. 

Together, we need to tell City Council that this direction isn’t just wrong—it needs to be ‘reimagined’. 

Together, we can win.