Troy Pavlek
@troypavlek
I'm the TMZ of Edmonton City Council
FOUR NEW CASES. Half of all Dutch Elm cases in Edmonton since 2024 have been in the past 3 weeks. More proactive elm removal will be required to prevent it. And I'm hearing up to 40 trees along Whyte Ave may be proactively removed this summer.
Storms in #yeg have damaged Elms and left their branches in piles. Absolutely perfect conditions for spreading Dutch Elm disease. Meanwhile, the 10th case of DED has been discovered in the Calder neighbourhood. If it's not contained now, we may not be able to contain it - ever.
Torrential rain, choking smoke. Edmonton is currently suffering the negative outcomes of climate change. Instead of tackling this head on, the UCP is blocking renewables, doubling down on oil & gas and meddling in the curriculum indoctrinating kids to worship the cult of Oil.
Spend more, get nothing: the UCP's healthcare strategy. Hundreds of millions wasted scrapping the Edmonton hospital and superlab, blowing up AHS, privatizing then buying back lab services and importing Turkish Tylenol. And we’re left with absolutely nothing to show for it.
I tried to make a "fascist pancake" for a bit. The results, just like the UCP's record, were entirely disappointing
UCP minister Devin Dreeshen's resume includes: - campaigning for Trump - drinking on the job - mocking worker safety, before workers died - refusing to oppose separatism This is the top-notch guy Danielle Smith handpicked to ban bike lanes in Alberta
Karen Principe stopped a discussion about permitting balcony solar panels, insisting they remove references to Europe and Utah for being "colonial". She's also defended the police chief's trip to Israel, where he visited illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. Make it make sense.
We have details of just how bad a deal the privatization scheme Stephen Harper forced on Edmonton is. The private contractor is charging us so much that in just two years of running the Valley Line ourselves we can pay the entire 30-year termination fee. The waste is absurd.
Once again, privatizing public services has failed. Edmonton is taking back control of the Valley Line LRT from the private consortium with a 30-year operation contract. Privatization was forced on the city by Harper. Now, nature is healing🤗
If you're paying for parking, the city thinks you're a sucker. More population, more parking zones, more hours and yet fines and enforcement have PLUMMETED in the past decade. We don't need new parking rules. We need to enforce the ones on the books already.
Edmonton is consistently doing REALLY cool stuff behind the scenes. The new EPCOR smart grid tech they're trialing is going to enable so many more cool applications, like vehicle electrification at way mor efficient and economical startup costs. Just so cool.
No, making DST permanent is probably not anti-democratic. The referendum failed by a slim 0.2% margin, but consultations by both NDP and UCP show this is what the MOST Albertans wanted. No consultation or vote shows a preference for standard time.
Alberta is moving to permanent daylight time. No more changing the clocks. Long summer evenings. Bits of sun after work in winter. Lloydminster will finally be one time zone. Announced via Rick "Every Paragraph is One Sentence" Bell.
If you perform yard cleanup this (gorgeous) weekend, you're committing pollinator-cide. It's not time yet. The bugs and bees are still sleeping. Leave your leaves and delay yard cleanup until it warms up consistently. Don't kill the bees.
Edmonton has only one source of water: The North Sask. Danielle Smith will sell us down the river, for coal. Thankfully we have people like @corblund.bsky.social and @waternotcoalab.bsky.social putting in the time, effort and money to keep our headwaters safe, for generations. It's time to sign.
When Andrew Knack won, he was outspent six-to-one. Like a bad birthday magician, Tim Cartmell revealed how his trick was going to work. He made it obvious he wanted to buy the election, and so every additional dollar spent made people less likely to vote for him. $1.5M, gone.
LEAVE YOUR LEAVES Spring is coming, and with that: yard cleanup. But hold off If you rake too early, native bees nesting in the ground might meet an early end Wait until it's consistently above 10 °C before tidying up Learn more and get a lawn sign at leaveyourleaves.ca
I spoke with a director at the City of Edmonton about the removal of the Whyte Ave scrambles. It sort of felt like a congressional hearing, where you know the answer, but the person responding refuses to say the words. The city will not admit scrambles are safer.
Edmonton is removing all scramble crosswalks from Whyte Ave. These intersections, where all pedestrians cross at once without vehicles were designed to make our busiest pedestrian streets safer. The city is using transit as an excuse to remove them, and make it faster for cars.
There's no photo radar ticket in the mail anymore, but you're still paying. Collisions have a huge societal cost. Collisions and fatalities are up. Insurance is up. Taxes are up. The only thing killing the "cash cow" accomplished is making you less safe, and less rich.
Edmonton's water smells like a public pool. It's typical for spring. Mold and decaying plant matter that's been sitting under the snow is running off. Chloramines are created when chlorine cleans biological matter from the water, creating the smell. If it stinks, it's working.
You have questions, I have followups! Principe made the motion herself. She could have withdrawn it at any time. Instead, she forced debate and a vote, with the sole purpose of wasting council's time. With ANY prep work, this motion would never have been made.
Karen Principe made a motion so bad even she voted against it. She ran for the CPC. She ran for the UCP. Now she's stuck in a city council job she doesn't want, and it shows. Unfortunately for her constituents, it means this is the best representation they've got for a while.
Edmonton Police: OOPS! All Israel! The Chief flew to Israel to meet with police leaders there, a decision panned across the board. Except for noted thin-blue-line enthusiast Councillor Mike Elliott, for whom the thin blue line remains stronger than ever.
Landlord tears 💦: the best evidence that housing is getting more affordable And Edmonton's got lots. 3 years after legalizing a wide variety of housing types city-wide, landlords are nervous about having to compete with each other and offer rental incentives. In short: what we're doing is working
Been a couple years since I've taken an Uber, but this is actually a REALLY nice feature 👍
Farkas says it's an unfair equalization that Calgary pays more education property taxes than Edmonton He didn't do the math. Calgary has $457B of assessment to Edmonton's $220B. The Leg will get $1.2B in YYC prop taxes this year, then return $2.2B in funding YYC school boards.
