City Notebook: Former councillor plans to keep sharing his voice

By COLLIN GALLANT on November 6, 2021.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

Former city councillor Kris Samraj is back penning columns – online, not for the News – and promises to keep stirring the pot and stoking conversation about reforming local politics after not seeking a second term.

A slew of column-style entries on his website written prior to the Oct. 18 election suggests live-streaming all committee meetings to lead to better citizen engagement.

He also suggests a system of rotating committee assignments for councillors, paying police commission members to attract better candidates, or to planning commission members.

“This is a serious job and should be compensated likewise,” Samraj wrote. “They oversee a $20-million (police) budget … the single largest budget line item … Security is perhaps the fundamental reason why people live together. The police commission needs to understand how powerful they are.”

Over the years, Samraj also suggested altering taxation rates for multi-family housing to address affordable housing issues, and even breaking down tax bills to an estimated cost-for-service model, rather than apportioning properties a share of the budget based on assessed value.

During his time in office he suggested the city lobby the government to explore municipal term limits, and basically forced the issue of long-standing complaints about the City Centre Development Agency.

New ideas suggest the city should encourage the creation of community associations and those groups could take over some issues from council.

While not writing, Samraj, who hasn’t said he’s done with elected politics, is looking for new opportunities.

He took a leave of absence from his job at the Medicine Hat Public Library to dedicate “full-time” hours to the position of city councillor. The former position has since been eliminated, he told the News.

Business news

Earnings season – the wave of financial reports from companies in the fall.

Interestingly the city’s mid-year financial statements on how the city power plant performed this summer are still outstanding.

A few items of local note from private sector:

– Cielo Waste Solutions has placed on its board Ryan Jackson, the head of an independent local investors group, Renewable U, which plans to franchise a “renewable diesel” refinery for the Dunmore area. That project had quite a to-do with a ceremonial groundbreaking this summer,

– Pembina Pipeline, which is in preliminary talks with TC Energy about creating a carbon dioxide transmission network in the province, announced this week its leadership sees the potential for a larger, multi-player operation for the province. This would be akin to creating a Syncrude-style operation for carbon capture. The City of Medicine Hat says it will seek partners for a regional storage hub, it was announced in August.

A legal question

This column boasts an engaged readership, and a few readers sprung into action after it asserted that few lawyers get elected to office in the city and region.

Current council members Ramona Robins and Linnsie Clark are members of the bar, and Bill Cocks was another legal eagle on council last decade.

Readers recall Roy Wiedemann and Murray McCarthy also put their time and expertise to work for residents on council, but that’s still only a handful of five in the last 60 years.

The 2013 council group featured three teachers all by itself.

This week’s question: Can you name two jewellers who served on council? How about school superintendents?

A look ahead

It’s another week without any official business for Medicine Hat’s newly elected council group… or is it?

Two agendas were released Friday afternoon in an unusual format that make it appear committee members may vote on whether certain items will be heard in closed session.

In-camera meetings, of course, wound up being a major issue in the municipal election, and a slate of “open” candidates won the day.

However, municipal governments have a very wide berth when considering if an item falls under freedom of information rules.

Councils and administrators the province over can find lots of ways to shoehorn discussions behind closed doors for perfectly legitimate reasons under that mandate. They do require some paperwork however, like when, and a vague description of why – which is where we are Monday at an early morning meeting of the public services committee.

As well, there’s a special meeting of city council set for the afternoon, which may or may not be just be one of a series of general orientation meetings to get the incoming council up to speed.

The easiest non-legalese explanation is that council or committees must vote in open meeting about whether to go into closed session. Any official or final action has to happen in open meeting. So expect big news on Monday… or not.

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