City Notebook: Wind could be jet fuel to rural tax base
By Collin Gallant on September 15, 2018.
There are few things that keep rural government leaders up at night like the issues of linear assessment and the dim outlook for conventional gas exploration. Ditto for those ranchers whose surface rights are on life support while well abandonment is underway. That’s especially been the case in southeast Alberta ten years after natural gas prices began tumbling and seemingly haven’t stopped. Early this year, the City of Medicine Hat began shutting in its fields near Leader, Sask. News of receiverships among smaller junior oil and gas companies are trickling in to the assessment offices throughout Alberta. While there’s still a strong stream of skepticism out there about renewable energy development, investment and its impact on consumer prices, the math seems to working in the favour of rural municipalities. Consider this, the Capital Power wind farm south of Bow Island broke ground this week after a decade of economic developers advertising and anxiously awaiting big investment in the sector. The details of access and lease agreements with landowners are just about as secret as secret can get. The tax figure, however, that’s being kicked about for the 58-turbine field is about $2 million per year. Now, consider that the operational budget of the County of Forty Mile (with about 3,600 residents in the huge region), is about $10 million. That it represents a 20 per cent increase in potential revenue from a single facility. That’s more than enough to bring stabilize the tax base against bankruptcy of Manyberries oil field operator LGX Oil and Gas… and then some. It could also lead to some sort of reduction for existing taxpayers when the new powerplant is fully taxable in 2019. Stampede There’s a double dose of solemnity at the Medicine Hat Stampede grounds this week after the loss of not only Bob Porter, the former MP and Stampede Board’s president in 1978 and 1979, but also George Willcocks, who chronicled the organization’s history in the mid-1990s. Both men were big boosters of the local volunteer board and the area in general. Willcocks, a former publisher of the News, is remembered elsewhere in this edition. A public service for Porter is scheduled for Sunday at the Cypress Centre. A look ahead City council will meet on Monday to discuss a new strategy to market small portions of excess land in the city’s land bank and the unplanned replacement of a generator this summer at the city’s power plant. 100 years ago The Boston Red Sox were World Series champions after defeating the Chicago Cubs in fives games, two of which features Sox sensation Babe Ruth on the mound, the News reported this week in 1918. The Alberta Fuel Controller toured industries in Medicine Hat as well as the Swan Coal Mine, located in today’s Echodale Regional Park, declaring its produce of the same quality of Drumheller’s mines. The reputation of Alberta’s coal had suffered due to a publicity campaign by mineowners in other provinces, said controller, Stirling, but it was helping to win the war. Despite poor growing conditions, Alberta’s wheat harvest was predicted to total 10 million bushels. Bowell-area farmer, R.S. Further managed to take 800 bushels off 60 acres, providing “further evidence that the banana belt is not altogether hopeless.” A British trade journal announced a revolutionary process to produce potash had been discovered by cement manufacturers who recovering the fertilizer from blast furnaces. Citing a shortage of feed, a surplus of horses and great want in Europe, officials in Ottawa met with packing house owners to devise an export scheme. The Canadian Government also formalized the process to determine Thanksgiving Day — on a Monday, and earlier October. That was the recent convention, but previously, it had been held on a Thursday later that month or in November. Collin Gallant covers city politics and a variety of topics for the News. Reach him at 403-528-5664 or via email at cgallant@medicinehatnews.com. 27-26
