City Notebook: Big cuts are coming

By Medicine Hat News Opinion on December 5, 2020.

Mayor Ted Clugston promised a peek at the tips of the waves of a late-year budget update.

It will be a pretty high white cap when it breaks at Monday’s council meeting.

The chief amendments for council to consider is $11 million in cuts to payroll.

That chop equals about 13 per cent, and paints the broad picture of organizational changes that aim for a zero per cent tax increase in 2021, erase the memory of the cancelled tax hike in 2020, and gain ground on a structural budget deficit during a year when other revenue is likely flat at best.

And the number that doesn’t reflect a big gain in salaries related to the city taking over operations of the Co-op Place event centre, according to the agenda released Friday.

Some pain is already settled with the city’s largest union ratifying a barebones contract. Police and firefighter contracts are still to be settled.

Most relates to “Financially Fit” initiatives, which is a catchall term of the budget process that now aims to “substantially reduce the cost of government” according to a new council directive.

So a total of $13.7 million in cuts will avoid a planned $2.6-million tax hike in 2021, but also try to factor in almost certain further cuts in the provincial budget, and lower economic activity and likely higher pandemic operating costs lingering into 2021.

The rest comprises efforts to plug the hole left by stripping natural gas profits out of the city budget.

If the past is any indication, rec facilities won’t fare well. The 2017 edition closed the Medicine Hat Arena and Heald Pool to save $900,000 a year.

Speaking of dividends, a planned review of how business units pay out profits to municipal coffers is expected to leave the city with $2.3 million less next year.

A side note, the budget should also begin to give some clue about the operating structure, budget and oversight for “Invest Medicine Hat.”

That was reformed inside city hall one year ago, and is where all roads seem to lead, though nobody’s ever been showed a map of how the land department, other business units, or the communications department relate to each other.

Masking the issue

All politics are local, the saying goes, and it may have seemed like the whole world arrived on Medicine Hat’s doorstep this week.

Rising cases of the coronavirus and a monumental debate about mask use, the value of science, and the role of government featured prominently.

There’s a local mask bylaw in place that is either badly needed and long overdue or completely useless and won’t do any good, according to whatever you’re scrolling through in the deep dark days of December.

Some ask how government can dictate personal behaviour, and others, why can’t government put a lid on the yahoos.

It sounds more like the United States than most Canadians would be comfortable with.

It sounds like any number of big-city problems that small towns seem to think they’re sheltered from. Others include the opioid crises and climate change (or at least climate politics).

So it’s somewhat surprising that Hatters are surprised to find they’re more deeply divided than they assumed.

The coronavirus, by the way, found its way into Buckingham Palace and the White House, as well as a meat packing plant in Brooks and almost everywhere else over six continents.

How Medicine Hat would be different is a mystery.

Power age

News on Thursday that Capital Power will build a $90-million solar plant near Enchant, Alta., was coupled with news the company would complete a conversion of coal-fired power plants to burn natural gas by 2023. Those would be the last coal burning plants in Alberta and the change puts Alberta seven years ahead of schedule in the coal phase-out.

That’s perhaps the single greatest accomplishment in all of Canadian history towards reducing emissions. It happened largely due to market forces that were led towards low-cost, less polluting natural gas by both the last and current government, and without much feared price spasms.

So, will there be enough credit given, either inside and outside Alberta?

A look ahead

City council meets on Monday for an overview of budget amendments, finalizing utility rate changes and setting off-site levy subsidy levels for the coming year.

A development appeal hearing in Cypress County on Thursday will hear arguments for and against a substantial greenhouse expansion located in an area west of the Highway 3 entry into Medicine Hat. That land had been slated to be a major greenhouse corridor before it was deleted from the Intermunicipal Development Plan agreement last winter.