City notebook: Council treads into rough decision water next week

By James Tubb on June 18, 2022.

For those Hatters who’ve been waiting for city council to get rolling and get something done, ready your seatbelts.

It’s been almost eight months since the election that included tackling social problems in the city centre as a core issue. With barely a few weeks between the release of a strategic priorities document, the issue will be front and centre before council and planning commission.

Monday’s council meeting will hear a plan to study a revitalization of N. Railway Street — the oft-overlooked portion of historic Medicine Hat — wedged between a redevelopment plan for the Flats and an overarching vision to boost downtown.

Wednesday’s meeting of the municipal planning commission will hear of a plan by the Mustard Seed to create an emergency overnight shelter in the space once occupied by the Champions Centre Cafe.

That same site was central to a ping-ponging controversy last year when an emergency daytime shelter was shunted off Third Street SE when businesses there won an appeal at the Subdivision and appeal board.

That’s a planning commission decision, but it will bubble up pretty quickly to where business owners and homeless advocates will each want council to act.

The answer last time around was for the previous council to issue a broadly worded statement about driving a vaguely described but broad effort to tackle the issue and even push for permanent space and shelter for those in the city who, if not technically homeless, are seen to be causing unruliness in downtown and adjacent communities. Word of police sweeps and residential protests in Riverside are coming in daily.

So, the big question is what to do, what to do?

High water

Rain typically visits Medicine Hat about the time the chuckwagons pull into town, but this year a break in the weather should see the races go off with a hitch (so to speak).

It will also likely mean sidestepping extremely high water arriving in town on its natural route from the Rocky Mountains to Hudson’s Bay.

The South Saskatchewan River was poised to peak late Friday night at levels nowhere near the level of berm network built after the 2013 floods.

No flooding? Fine by me.

It’s natural to wonder about the sturdiness of the structures that cost tens of millions of dollars in city reserve cash and grants, but it’s strange to hear folks wonder about a test run for the berms that line the banks near Lion’s Park, Harlow, a portion of Riverside, Strathcona Island Park, the power plant, sewage treatment plant and Industrial Avenue (miss any?).

There’s no point tempting fate.

A look ahead

Council meets Monday to receive the city’s first financial statements of the year. A proposal to create an overnight homeless shelter on N. Railway Street will be discussed at Wednesday’s meeting of the municipal planning commission.

100 years ago

Mayor Huckvale was confident cabinet would side with Medicine Hat and Redcliff in a dispute to stop a plan to pipe gas from the region to Calgary, but the Western Canadian Heat Gas Light and Power Co. Ltd threatened supreme court action if denied, the News reported on June 15, 1921.

“We must realize what gas means to Medicine Hat,” said Chas. Pratt of the local Chamber. “We must leave no stone unturned to defeat this proposition to take our gas to Calgary.”

Locally, heavy wind ripped the roof off a bunkhouse and sent an oil derrick owned by the “Medicine Hat Community Well, Co.” crashing to the ground with a tool dresser atop it.

Conservative and Liberal party members in Selkirk, Man. voted in favour of running a “fusion candidate” in the coming provincial election as an attempt to block a victory by farm or labour party candidates.

A new constitution for the Republic of Ireland was the main issue in a national election.

At Athletic Park, Elm Street School downed Connaught 5-2, while Alberta Clay Products crew ventured to Redcliff to face the Bricktown Brigade in commercial league play.

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