Edmonton Minute: Neverending Meetings, COVID Restrictions, and Police Tactics And Funding Debated

Edmonton Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Edmonton politics

This Week In Edmonton:

• City Hall begins the week on Monday, with an Executive Committee meeting at 9:30 am to discuss a 14 item agenda, including the Revised Community Energy Transition Strategy, the 2022 Transit Fee Schedule (fares are going up, surprise!) and the Edmonton Economic Action Plan.
  
  
• On Tuesday at 9:00 am, there will be an Agenda Review Committee meeting, followed at 1:30 pm by a continuation of *last week's* Council Meeting. We knew a 54 item agenda was too much to get through in one day, but even we didn't anticipate the meeting running into this week! [Editor: Maybe a sign that the government is too big?]
  
  
• On Wednesday at 9:30 am there will be a Community and Public Services Committee meeting that will discuss Seniors Centres and a Public School Pool cost-sharing agreement, amongst other things. This will be followed at 5:30 pm by a Non-Regular City Council meeting to discuss 2019-2020 Annual Reports and 2021 work plans for several boards. Lastly on Friday at 3:00 pm, there will be an Audit Committee meeting, to discuss nine different reports - some are longer than others, but we'll let you know if we find anything interesting.

Last Week In Edmonton:

• A number of businesses in Edmonton, and around the Province, said they will be defying new health restrictions imposed after Alberta moved back to a form of Step 1. Restaurants, in particular, have been hard hit financially, and many restaurant owners feel like they're left with an impossible decision to either stay open or follow the rules and go bankrupt.
  
  
• It was revealed that the increase in crime at transit stations and shelters that we've reported on recently is mostly caused by 18 chronic offenders who are known to Police and have had 964 police incidents between them since January 2019. We're not saying lock 'em up and throw away the key, but after roughly 50 incidents each in just two years, clearly, the City's current approach isn't working.
  
  
• Finally, the President of the Edmonton Police Association took strong issue with the contents of a 59-page report released by the Community Safety and Well Being Task Force. The President said that the report paints EPS as "a group of unwitting racists who should be fired in the name of diversity", and accused the Task Force of being biased themselves.

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