Edmonton Notes for 6/7/2009

Travel has put a wrinkle in these posts for the last few weeks – all should be back to normal soon! Here are some Edmonton notes for this week:

• The new dEdmonton website has launched! It looks great. Canada’s Halloween Festival runs October 19-31.
• The City is hosting a public hearing on the Municipal Development Plan and the Transportation Master Plan on Tuesday, June 23rd from 9:30am until 9:30pm at City Hall. These are the City’s two primary plans for achieving the vision.
• Edmonton and Calgary are officially the only two Canadian cities in the running for EXPO 2017. Here’s a great backgrounder with some analysis from The Journal. The Sun’s Diotte wrote of Calgary’s bid: “Sneaky. Sleazy. Self-centred. Conniving. Outrageous. Boorish.”
• Police Chief Mike Boyd says citizens may soon be able to use the EPS website to find crime statistics for a specific neighbourhood over time. Could be very cool and useful, depending on how it is implemented.
• Your guide to living local in June from Original Fare and Keep Edmonton Original.
• The third EcoVision Annual Report was released recently.
• Edmonton Transit and the University of Alberta are testing smart cards, with a technology they are calling “ETSBlue”. The demo project starts this month and runs until August.
• More than 15,000 people made use of the Edmonton Food Bank in March, an increase of 70% over last year. There have been similar increases at food banks across the country.
• Couple of upcoming events I’m looking forward to: Pecha Kucha 4, BarCampEdmonton2.
• Sharon has a great list of June events in Edmonton. Don’t miss it!