Andrew Knack — first-term council votes (2013–2017)¶
Original source: https://data.edmonton.ca/ (SODA API, City Clerk voting records) Retrieved: 2026-07-05
Knack was a councillor for twelve years (2013–2025), but the earlier project pulls only reached back to 2017. This clipping closes the first-term gap using Edmonton's 2013–2017 council-records datasets, so his police, budget, transit, and housing posture across the full decade is on the record rather than half of it.
Datasets and IDs (2013–2017 term)¶
Unlike the 2017–2021 and 2021–2025 terms, the 2013–2017 term has no single "with Motion Details" wide table. The votes and the motion text live in separate tables joined on motion_id, and the dates live in a third joined on meeting_id.
| Role | Dataset | Rows | Key fields |
|---|---|---|---|
| Voting record (long, one row per voter per motion) | fwq5-ux79 | 107,095 | meeting_id, item_id, motion_id, voter, vote |
| Motions (text, mover, status) | smk2-dtnx | 12,926 | motion_id, motion_mover, motion_description, motion_status |
| Meeting details (dates) | mner-asqn | 719 | meeting_id, meeting_type, meeting_date |
Companion tables not used here: the split "Motions Part 1/2/3" (qzjm-bbkp, dbxb-xrge, mcdh-rhh3), Agenda Items (y4rx-kdcn), Attendance (prdj-dgnz). The 2011–2013 term (pre-Knack) is ih46-vxeq/gp5m-pueh.
Schema, verified live (2026-07-05)¶
fwq5-ux79:voteris a display string, not a code — Knack =A. Knack - Councillor(8,245 rows). Vote values:Yes(96,260),No(1,610),Absent(8,692),Recused(506),Abstain(23),Off the Dais(4). Confirmed from a sample row before any analysis. Other 2013–2017 members: Iveson (Mayor), Anderson, Caterina, Esslinger, Gibbons, Henderson, Loken, McKeen, Nickel, Oshry, Sohi (left mid-term for federal politics, 2015), Walters, plus Banga (filled Sohi's seat). Batty/Krushell/Sloan/Mandel/Diotte/Leibovici appear with 3 votes each — carry-over rows from the 2010–2013 council.smk2-dtnx:motion_descriptioncarries embedded HTML (<BR>,<P>,<EM>, ); strip tags and unescape entities before reading.
Pull recipe¶
curl -s "https://data.edmonton.ca/resource/fwq5-ux79.json?\$limit=200000" -o voting-2013-2017-voting-record.json
curl -s "https://data.edmonton.ca/resource/smk2-dtnx.json?\$limit=50000" -o voting-2013-2017-motions.json
curl -s "https://data.edmonton.ca/resource/mner-asqn.json?\$limit=50000" -o voting-2013-2017-meeting-details.json
motion_id and motions→dates on meeting_id; filter Knack's rows; compute the per-motion Yes/No tally to isolate the non-unanimous (split) votes. Knack cast 8,203 recorded Yes/No votes in the term — 8,096 Yes, 107 No; on the 458 genuinely split motions he took the minority side 101 times.
What the first term shows — police¶
Early Knack is not the police budget's protector; on tax-levy police growth he is a repeat No. All at the 2015 operating-budget deliberations, meeting of 2014-11-26: | Motion | Knack | Tally | Outcome | |---|---|---|---| | Police 2015 op. budget +$5.183M "Growth in Policing" (tax levy) | No | 3–10 | Failed | | Police 2015 op. budget +$1.589M Transit Policing (tax levy) | No | 5–8 | Failed | | Police "Growth in Policing" 35-FTE service package, +$2.437M | No | 7–6 | Carried (Knack lost) | | Capital: two single-engine helicopters, $7.06M (MSI) | No | 3–10 | Failed | | Capital: one single-engine helicopter, $3.47M (MSI) | No | 7–6 | Carried (Knack lost) | | Amend helicopter items to require an EPC oversight report before spending (CAP 46.1 / 47.1) | Yes | 11–1 / 12–1 | Carried | The one police increase he backed early was funded off the property-tax base: 2015-04-14, 2015 EPS budget +$2.407M for 40 FTE officers from the photo-radar reserve — Knack Yes, 10–1. He is not an abolitionist; his early register is fiscal restraint on the tax levy, not principle against policing. That is the same "look at the money" costume he wears his whole career — what reverses over the decade is which way the money points: in 2014 the cost-benefit case cut against police growth, and Knack voted it; by 2023 he had built the formula that guarantees the growth and moved it himself.
First-term money he moved toward the non-police alternative¶
Two carried motions Knack personally moved in his first term point the opposite way from the escalator he later authored: - 2015-11-27 — REACH Edmonton operating budget +$1,000,000 to fund the 24/7 Integrated Crisis Response service package, ongoing, from the tax levy (Knack amended it up from a $500k version). Carried 7–5. A non-police crisis response — the very kind of program the 2021–2025 council later made beg while the police line ran on autopilot. - 2016-08-23 — "Sliding Scale Fee Proposal for Low Income Edmontonians," directing administration to design low-income subsidy (leisure-access and low-income transit passes) reaching people just above the usual cut-offs. Carried 12–1.
Housing / homelessness, transit, budget¶
- Housing / homelessness: zero non-unanimous roll-calls in 2013–2017 — the same pattern as 2021–2025, where shelter and encampment decisions are Administration-report and bylaw stories, not split council votes. Nothing to characterize from the roll-call; do not overclaim.
- Transit: pro-service and pro-access — 17 Yes to 2 No on split transit motions. The two No votes are the 2014 transit-policing increase (counted under police, above) and a 2016 LRT park-and-ride paid-parking change (9–3). He moved the low-income sliding-scale fee (above).
- Budget / tax: a moderate, not an austerity hawk. On 2013-12-02 he voted No on councillor Nickel's motion to cut the proposed 2014 budget by 1.2 points (down 1–12), and Yes on a 0.5% tax-levy reduction achieved through efficiencies (Iveson, 10–3). Across the term his budget column is mixed — 43 Yes / 15 No on split budget motions — leaning toward funding city services.
Bottom line for the arc¶
The first-term data confirms and lengthens the "the costume was put on, not born with" reading. It is not a two-point story (2018 cut → 2023 author); it is a full twelve-year hardening: 2014 — votes down police budget increases and helicopters, moves $1M into non-police crisis response; 2018 — votes for a police-budget cut; 2023 — writes and moves the funding formula (C604B) himself. Honestly scoped: the through-line is a managerial, cost-benefit register, present the whole way; what changed is the direction the ledger pointed once the political winds did.