To recap quickly, the city was just days away from letting a water and sewer infrastructure contract for Colborne St. that would also have included widening it. In effect this would have turning a residential street into a secondary arterial road through the heart of an historic neighbourhood, offering a handy alternative route to motorists bogged down on Adelaide and Richmond to the east and west respectively.

The badly needed water and sewer construction will go ahead; the road work, which also included bicycle lanes and a total parking ban, will not. This after the city’s chief administrative office, Jeff Fielding, attended an angry protest meeting Tuesday night and stunned the crowd by halting the secondary project.

“I think we’ve disappointed you,” he said moments before his announcement. “We let your councillor down. There are options. Cycling is important, but there are other ways to accommodate it, more innovative and creative ideas than the one that’s on the table.”

In the bigger picture, what’s about to be put on the table are some innovative and creative ideas about talkin’ to the people. Some of them come from Edmonton which has in place a very detailed and structured way of dealing with contentious community issues.

Its principle is stated clearly on the Alberta capital’s website: “The City of Edmonton is committed to involving the people affected by the decisions it makes. We seek diverse opinions, experiences and information so that a wide spectrum of information is available to decision makers.”

The Edmonton policy requires that all community involvement define:  Why the public is being involved; what the public can expect; how the public will be involved; how they will be advised of the outcome of the issue; and how they evaluate the process they took part in. There’s a lot more; you can read for yourself the entire Edmonton process here.

That little bit alone would have meant a huge difference for Colborne St. where the city disguised its intentions under a general heading of a traffic calming discussion, ran a notice in its cluttered and boring Community Living ad in a Saturday edition of The London Free Press and delivered notices to affected residents during the Christmas rush. That was about it.

So kudos to Mr. Fielding on one count. But on another, not so much. Before we go looking at Edmonton or Edinburgh or Ecum Secum for that matter, why aren’t we asking Londoners what they expect in the way of communications from the city.

After all, as one person at Tuesday night’s meeting shouted so crudely but accurately: “You. Work. For. Us.” City employees ought to have that on their T-shirts.

I asked Rosemary Cooke, one of the organizers of Tuesday night, what she thought the city should be doing. She admitted her “brain was tired” in the euphoria of the big win by the people, but I think what she wrote me in an email is clear enough:

“You cannot put an ad in the corner of The Free Press, asking people to attend some general public meetings to discuss 'traffic calming' and use that as a method of collecting opinion. The city has to get information, extremely specific and detailed information, right into people's mailboxes – and treat major issues like this just as they would property tax information.  That reaches us, so should this have. 

“Direct communication to each individual household, spelling out in every possible detail the impact and changes planned for their particular street or neighborhood. 

“And however that comes, if by actual mail, it must look like 'real' and important municipal mail. So that there is no possibility whatever of it being considered junk mail. Serious and official looking envelope, style etc. So people will open it, read it and pay attention to it. And it should be blasted then also in the press, and there should be repeat, and I repeat, multiple and many announcements and notices.

“And it can't, when it is communicated, almost be a fait accompli, such as this one almost was.”

So that’s one person’s view. Let’s hear yours. It’s time to get a dialogue going to let city officials know, once and for all, that civic communications is a two-way street and it starts with us, we the people.