Edmonton Minute: New Schools, Mandates Return, and Final Council Meetings

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

This Week In Edmonton:

• Kicking this week off, it’s the final meeting of City Council before the election. Council will meet Tuesday at 9:00 am to consider their final, 15-item agenda. Included in the agenda is a financial update as well as a major capital project update. In addition, the council will examine their ETS fare collection agreement with CUBIC. Should this meeting not conclude Tuesday, it continues Friday at 9:30 am.
  
  
• The last two committee meetings of the current Council will be on Wednesday. The Emergency Advisory Committee will meet at 9:30 am to discuss you know what (begins with "C" ends with "OVID"). Then, at 1:30 pm, there will be a City Council Public Hearing to discuss a whopping 34 zoning amendments.
  
  
• Many elective surgeries will be postponed this week in and around the Edmonton area, as hospitals are apparently struggling with an uptick in COVID-19 cases. In the Edmonton Zone, upwards of 50% of procedures will be postponed. Some non-urgent pediatric procedures will also be reduced by 30%, in order to support adult critical care, AHS CEO Verna Yiu explained.

Last Week In Edmonton:

• With the return to school, Edmonton Public School Board opened two new schools to students. Aleda Patterson Elementary opened as a K-3 on the young and growing west side of the City. Dr. Anne Anderson High School in the south will host grades 10 and 11 in 2021-2022, adding grade 12 for the 2022-2023 school year.
  
  
• Earlier in the week, City Council voted to reimplement the City's mask mandate for indoor public spaces starting last Friday. Other municipalities were considering whether to follow suit when, on Friday, the provincial government announced that masks will now be mandated province-wide. So much for being open for good!
  
  
• Lastly, Edmonton City Council passed a bylaw mandating safe passing-room for bicycles and specifying minimum distances between bikes and cars. Of course, discretion is the better part of valour when it comes to passing bicycles, but was this really necessary? Will EPS be out there with a tape measure?

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