City doesn’t seem to be following its own rules

By Letter to the Editor on August 16, 2017.

Landscaping is a requirement of any commercial development permit, not only planted but maintained. In our semi-arid climate that means underground sprinklers. Whether plants and beauty outweigh water usage is likely difficult to assess, so let’s just continue to require landscaping since no one really wants a sterile concrete environment.

Since Box Springs Business Park is one of the newest areas, let’s focus there. From Westside Common to Costco to Kal-Tire, businesses have stepped up to the plate. Trees, shrubs and grass (although not lush and green given our high temperatures of late) mark sincere efforts to meet their obligations. Obligations that cost money. The City of Medicine Hat has not.

The grass at the Canalta Centre is less than green, less vigorous than the prairie that surrounds it. No underground irrigation, no long hoses with sprinklers attached, just a sea of dormant grass waiting for April showers.

Whether this was missed at the development permit or the contract stage is immaterial (likely the architect from Vancouver and the contractors from Calgary didn’t see it as a necessity). The city demands business do what it does not itself do.

Two different sets of rules? Apparently so.

Immanuel Moritz

Medicine Hat