Edmonton Notes for 6/19/2011

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

• Dr. Philip Baker finally resigned from his post as Dean of Medicine, though he is currently scheduled to stay on as a professor. Isn’t that kind of like a cheating student withdrawing from a class but staying on as a student?
• Standard & Poor’s has reaffirmed its AA+ credit rating for the City of Edmonton. Apparently they missed that report on consultant spending! But seriously, this is a good thing for Edmonton, just one level below the highest possible rating that S&P awards.
• The City was one of many Edmonton winners at the 20th annual Emerald Awards this week.
• The Edmonton Public School Board eliminated 345 jobs this week as it approved next year’s budget. Of the cuts, 229 are teaching positions and 116 are non-teaching jobs. The proposed budget for the Edmonton Catholic School Board calls for 97 teaching positions to be eliminated.
• I hope to be writing more about this soon, but the City and IBM released the Smarter Cities report on Friday. The IBM team says that the City should empower citizens by sharing more traffic safety information through social media, among other recommendations.
• We need to get city planners and school boards working together, says Deborah McKoy from the Centre for Cities and Schools at the University of California in Berkeley. She was invited to Edmonton by the Mayor’s Task Force on Sustainable Communities.
• Apparently sewer fees may be going up next year, by roughly $85 to cover a proposed rate hike.
• Starting Monday, the City will be rehabilitating 97 Street from Yellowhead Trail to 135 Avenue, so expect major delays in that area.
• Edmonton’s new police chief Rod Knecht says Edmonton is a safe place to live, despite our shockingly high murder rate. Though he did assign 16 more officers to the homicide section.
• First let me say that I think the Africa Connect event that took place this weekend at the Edmonton Expo Centre is a great idea. But to find out that only 3000 people attended, and that that was double the number of attendees the City expected? I think the City needs to aim higher.
• There have been a number of “hacks” at technology companies lately, and Edmonton’s own BioWare has not escaped unscathed.
• Nine Edmontonians were inducted into the Hall of Fame at the 60th Annual Salute to Excellence Awards this week, including Gene Dub, the architect behind the iconic City Hall.
• I’d love to see some coffee shops, newspaper stands, and other businesses in our LRT stations!
• For more headlines from the past week, check out theedmontonian.com.
• Here’s the latest edition of The Unknown Studio.
• I hope you’ll come to #yegimprov on Monday night, a special social media edition of Improvaganza!
• The co-founder of the Creative Cities Summit, Peter Kageyama, will be at Latitude 53 on Tuesday evening.
• On Wednesday evening at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Spacing Magazine is hosting a panel discussion to help celebrate its first national issue.
• The Works Art & Design Festival gets underway on Thursday.
• The next edition of Latitude 53’s Summer Rooftop Patio Series takes place Thursday evening.
• The Edmonton Jazz Festival kicks off on Friday afternoon!
• Friday night is going to be a busy one! I hope you’ll stop by to check out What The Truck?! from 4pm to 8pm at Beaver Hills House Park. YEG Girl Geek Dinners is also hosting Season 2 Episode 1 that night. And the Eskimos are playing their first game at home, against the Calgary Stampeders.
• M.A.D.E. in Edmonton is hosting the 10th annual street furniture competition on Saturday!
• The John Janzen Nature Centre is celebrating its grand reopening on Saturday from 11am to 4pm.
• Also coming up on Saturday is Can’t Stop the Serenity 2011 at Zeidler Hall.
• The Montreal Impact are in town on Sunday night to take on FC Edmonton at Foote Field.
• For more upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.

It has been wet here lately! For the City Market that meant a big drop in the number of visitors, to about 4500.

Some of the art that was on display at Africa Connect.