Edmonton Notes for 10/25/2008

It’s really quite amazing how the Edmonton Twitter community has taken to the #yeg hashtag recently. When I started writing these notes posts, which wasn’t very long ago at all, I could look at a week’s worth of updates on two or three pages. Now I’ve got to go back about seventeen pages! Very cool stuff, I’m really happy to see this growth. Keep it up Edmonton!

Here are some Edmonton-related things I found interesting this week:

• CKUA’s fall fundraising campaign is underway! Their goal is to have 1000 new donors and raise $525,000 in total. They’re about half way there currently. The drive continues until November 2nd.
• I think the excessive idling bylaw is a waste of good intentions. I can’t imagine how it’ll ever be properly enforced. You can share your thoughts at the final public meeting, taking place on Monday night.
• The Capital City Clean Up could be turned into a year-round, city-wide program for $3.5 million. No word yet on what councillors decided to do.
• The 45-year-old Sportex building was demolished on Monday morning in order to make room for 200,000 square feet of new exhibition space.
• Edmonton Police expect to take in $15 million from photo radar tickets next year. The Journal points out that the amount is roughly equal to $20 for every man, woman, and child in the city. On Tuesday, the police wrote about 1700 speeding tickets during the second Operation 24 Hours. One man was clocked at 203 km/h on the Henday.
• The city is going to make a bid to host Expo 2017. Hosting the fair could cost as much as $2.3 billion, but would draw more than 1 million tourists to the city. The event would be a “recognized exposition” – you can learn more at Wikipedia.
• Edmonton ranked second among major Canadian cities with 3.28 homicides per 100,000 people. Winnipeg was first, Calgary third.
• Epcor has replaced nearly six kilometers of lights and decorations along Jasper Avenue with new LED lights. Also – they’re called “winter lights”, not “Christmas lights”. On November 15th, a 25-metre plus tree will be unveiled in Churchill Square.
• Finally, I’ve got to mention the manure smell and the AT Plastics explosion/fire. Both events caused quite a stir on Twitter, a topic I’ll be writing more about next week.