City Notebook: Communication of power

By Medicine Hat News Opinion on February 6, 2021.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

The city is attempting to get more information out on issues of a potential power plant sale with a Q&A portal on the its website.

It’s a complex matter riddled with details, wrapped in dense legislation and obscured by a hard-to-understand business environment.

It’s as hard to grasp as what’s going on in any given utility bill.

But, has the issue been framed properly by the city, which by the way, has a communications department larger than any newsroom in town?

Council members and administrators say it’s a matter of good business sense to examine what sort of dividends it can expect in the future. During the pandemic, it’s all the more immediate that the economy of old is subject to disruptive forces.

There is no doubt of a growing concern that renewable energy might cut the very profitable legs out from under the city’s gas-fed power plant.

(Your author has been called an “idiot” more than a few times via voicemail after a story on a multi-million-dollar solar project appears in that morning’s edition. And there’s another story today.)

Those gas and power dividends once padded the bottom line of the municipal budget, and when gas was rock-n-rolling, chopped $1,000 or more off each and every property tax bill. More recently, power profits are getting the downtrodden gas department out of a pretty big pinch.

Ever since market pricing was adopted in Medicine Hat in 2009 (mostly to ensure stability of the gas utility), the focus on the dividend has grown.

So, before we get too far into the details, we should answer a simple question first:

Is the mission of the utility to provide a dividend to city hall’s balance sheet, or is it to offer the lowest cost of service in a natural monopoly area?

The first might be required to gird the city budget as it tackles an infrastructure debt and “de-risks” itself against major change. We all pay taxes.

The latter speaks to and directly gives what Hatters continually ask for of government, namely more money left in their pocket. We all pay utility bills.

And why wouldn’t a modernized electrical facility provide some measure of both going forward?

Questions to ask and answer.

Downtown

A debate about the future of the City Centre Development Agency was touched off this week as a petition could force a vote on the group’s future.

Downtown business owners who pay the levy will have to decide, but the issue lays bare a dim picture of “community vibrancy” in the Gas City.

The CCDA puts on the annual Chili Cookoff, Easter Egg Hunt and pre-Christmas festival Midnight Madness in the core, among several other events.

Don’t forget, last summer the Canada Day Society disbanded when the dedicated group of volunteers said the city decision to stop a fireworks display amid COVID was a last straw.

Exactly what will be left of local public events when this all plays out?

Another big question: exactly who would own the Monarch Theatre going forward?

(More on this in the future?)

A look ahead

A run-through of 2020’s development statistics are due at Wednesday’s gathering of the municipal planning commission. Up next, the Family Day weekend means free fishing in Alberta, and the current cold snap lends to ice-fishing safety.

100 years ago

City hall was “packed to the point of suffocation” at a public meeting to discuss amending the city’s charter, the News reported on Feb. 5, 1921.

Voted down were items to elect aldermen on the basis of the top-eight vote getters, the implementation of a poll tax, offering a tax discount for early payment and the ability of “any one of any nationality who could prove three years residence in the city” to vote.

The province was regaled with updates from the fifth annual ice carnival in Banff in a series of special reports. The sporting program included skiing, sleigh dog races, a woodchopping contest and a curling bonspiel.

The Alberta Federation of Labour lobbied for an order in council fixing the minimum wage at $12 per week.

The state of Utah was contemplating extending a prohibition on alcohol to include tobacco.

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