Week in Review - April 8, 2016
April 08, 2016
With almost 20 Mayors and Deputy Mayors in attendance, Edmonton played host to a week-long poverty reduction summit. The Tamarack Institute’s Cities Reducing Poverty: When Mayors Lead conference brought together municipal leaders to share their vision and plans to combat poverty in all corners of the country. Mayor Iveson highlighted our city’s work in creating the End Poverty Edmonton strategy, which aims to eliminate poverty within a generation. An inspiring and worthwhile goal, especially when you acknowledge the social and human costs of having over 100,000 Edmontonians living in poverty today.
Tuesday’s City Council meeting featured discussion and approval of the City’s Program and Service Level Review. Mayor Iveson has been a vocal champion of this work which will involve an in-depth review of the effectiveness and efficiency of over 30 programs and 200 services run by the City of Edmonton. This review will undoubtedly find new and better ways of delivering some services, and may even lead to cessation of certain programs that are no longer justified against other priorities. When the review is wrapped, Council’s hope is that the services the City delivers still reflect Edmonton’s priorities of today and that these services are delivered as effectively as possible.
Churchill Square was packed on Wednesday as fans came out to wish one last farewell to a behemoth of a building that meant so much to many: Rexall Place, formally Skyreach Centre and Northlands Coliseum. Over 100 alumni players from the Edmonton Oilers were in attendance to sign autographs and help say goodbye to a place where many memories were made. Mayor Iveson, along with Ryan Smyth (#94) and Mark Messier (#11), shared some of their most cherished memories during the event, all with an eye to the future opening of the new downtown arena this upcoming fall.
While on the topic of sports, Edmonton will soon be the only Canadian city this year to host the FISE World Series. This international extreme sporting competition will feature popular action events like: skateboard, BMX, mountain bike, wakeboard, inline skate, and more! The announcement took place this Thursday, with BMXers in Churchill Square performing some of their signature tricks to the assembled crowd. Being selected as a host city shows Edmonton continues to be a city of choice for international sporting events. Come check out the free event this September 16-18, 2016 in William Hawrelak Park.
(Photo credit: Paul Swanson)
(Photo credit: Paul Swanson)
Also to note this week, the Transportation Committee agenda for April 13 came out and features a report on a proposed transit service review and reallocation plan. The plan intends to reallocate current transit services from under-performing routes to other routes that will better serve Edmonton’s transit users. To hear Mayor Iveson’s initial thoughts on this proposal, listen to his comments to local media.
That wraps up another week here at the Mayor’s Office. Make sure to check out our Twitter feed (@YEGMayorOffice) for updates, like next week when the Mayor helps unveil a new project promoting Indigenous art on Tuesday. Have a wonderful weekend!
For More Information
Mayor Don Iveson
2nd Floor, City Hall
1 Sir Winston Churchill Square
Edmonton, AB
T5J 2R7
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