Heggelund made her mark

By Collin Gallant on October 6, 2018.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com @CollinGallant

Since 2014, the City of Medicine Hat has built a massive hockey rink, kilometres of flood berms, two fire stations, redeveloped a seniors’ centre, leisure centre and airport terminal.

It’s blended oil, gas and power production into municipal operations, began tackling a 20 per cent budget gap left by low natural gas prices and added two major industrial interests.

Merete Heggelund points however, to a less-headline grabbing initiative from her office as her proudest achievement as the city’s top administrator.

A revamp of city’s health and safety practices beginning in 2015 didn’t garner much ink, but Heggelund said on her last day before retirement on Friday, that it led to a culture change at the city that spread to other areas.

“It’s the one time I went to council asking for additional resources, additional staff,” Heggelund told the News, adding that while in-place safety programs were strong, they were in “silos” in each department.

“It was all very fragmented. We brought that together … and when you do safety right, you get other aspects of good corporate culture right as well.

“At its core it’s about caring, taking care of each other, making sure the public is safe, staff are safe, and making sure it’s efficient.”

That drive for efficiency showed up throughout the organization during her tenure.

Councillors lauded Heggelund at her last council meeting on Monday as being able to balance competing opinions, but also her approach to ask hard questions of the organization.

Her replacement, Bob Nicolay, was introduced at the same time.

Heggelund, 57, was finance commissioner when she was hired in early 2014 to replace retiring municipal CAO Ray Barnard. A year later the former oil and gas executive with Statoil was given direct oversight of the energy division when chief operating officer Gerry Labas retired.

Also at that point, city hall began tackling a major, structural budget problems, namely that an annual $24-million gas dividend accounted for a quarter of all municipal revenue.

City administrators called it unsustainable in a cheap gas era, and launched what would be known as the Financially Fit for the Future review.

It asked the public about priorities, and led to a 10-year plan to cut costs and boost revenue, including taxes, closing the budget hole from both ends.

That’s come with some controversy, including a reversal of cost-saving transit changes last year, but the gap is $17 million in 2018.

In the energy division, a new round of managers hired by Heggelund enacted a major scaleback in capital spending in the gas division, and last year the city sold off a huge inventory of low-production wells.

As for efficiencies, Heggelund said beyond public perception, the city runs “a pretty tight ship.”

“The staff has always been bottom line oriented … it’s more a matter of setting large priorities from the community; how do we spend scarce resources,” she said.

As for Financially Fit plan, “we’ve got that nut half cracked,” said Heggelund, stating the coming 2019-2022 budget cycle will be a critical period. “In this community we’ve been so fortunate for so long that we haven’t had to make decisions that we can’t afford some things.

“If we really wanted it, we really could afford to do it with the reserve funds and gas (profits) … That became the city can to it, the city can solve it — and we really can’t. We’ve had to make tough choices.”

On a personal note, Heggelund plans to remain in town and simply enjoy retirement by splitting time between the city and an acreage in the Cypress Hills.

Otherwise she plans to renew interest in hobbies and art.

“We fell in love with the city before I ever got the job,” she said. “It’s our home.”

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