City Notebook: All-month budget bash

By COLLIN GALLANT on October 29, 2022.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

HL: We’ve skipped mentioning a number of recent procedural changes at city council for obvious reasons (i.e. general wakefulness), but the budget process is about to change, which should open some eyes.

In the past, multi-year budget plans or annual updates would arrive on council’s agenda in late November or early December, then passed at subsequent meetings and put into force for Jan. 1 of the new year.

That’s not how every city does it however, and soon Medicine Hat too will formalize a schedule of deliberations over several meetings.

Recall last year that the proposed budget update was bandied back and forth a few times and eventually set well into the new year. That was a new council made up largely of new councillors. And that was just amendments on a set business plan which runs out in 2022.

Now, the proposed budget for 2023-24 will be presented at Nov. 7’s regular meeting and a separate, special meeting for deliberations will be held a week later. Much to the delight of reporters on deadline, it’ll be held in the afternoon.

So what sort of back and forth can we expect when the budget comes out?

We’ll have to wait and see, but one thing to watch for is interest rates.

The city pays for a lot of its $25-million-ish annual construction program and bigger projects through borrowing, but rates offered by the Alberta Treasury Board are double what they were 12 months go. The go-to line is always that capital construction paid via debenture isn’t an operating expense affecting taxes, but the money needed to pay off projects is.

Hatters a far

– Of local note in the shuffle of Alberta’s top ministerial administrators outlined Monday is Ray Gilmour will remain the province’s top civil servant as deputy minister for executive council (cabinet).

Gilmour, the Hat’s corporate services commissioner in the early 2000s, was first appointed to the cabinet position by Jason Kenney in 2019.

– June Winger, late of Cypress County and now based in Ottawa as the president of the Union of National Defence Employees, sends a release that the federal government needs to get serious on bargaining.

For the record

Not that it matters much to present day, but the last time a premier was located close to the Gas City was Harry Strom’s final years as the Cypress MLA as the Social Credit dynasty waned in the late 1960s.

This is topical, of course, because Premier Danielle Smith is running for a local byelection seat.

But, in reverse fashion, Arthur Sifton stepped down from the job in 1917 to win a federal seat in Medicine Hat and join Ottawa’s war cabinet during the Conscription Crises. He signed the Treaty of Versailles, which is no small beer.

Smith, already premier, is also in charge of intergovernmental affairs in cabinet, a post local MLA Jim Horsman handled in the 1980s. That era included the repatriation of the Constitution, Meech Lake and the run up to the Charlottetown Accord.

Area MP Monte Solberg had a federal cabinet role in the early 2010s, and Bud Olson was Ag minister for a short time, then government’s leader in the Senate, then Lt. Gov. of Alberta, and there have been provincial cabinet positions that dot the timeline of Medicine Hat’s electoral history.

A look ahead

In the spirit of tricks and treats, Halloween as well as politics is upon us Monday.

Advance polls in the Brooks-Medicine Hat byelection run Tuesday through Saturday ahead of general voting Nov. 8. As well that day, the U.S. mid-term elections are set to take place, so expect the general media cycle to speed up.

100 years ago

Leader of the Fascist Party, Benito Mussolini, declared that a new Italian cabinet led by him as premier would take power Oct. 30, 1922, the News reported on the day.

Locally, the Chamber of Commerce would support a drive by Alberta members of the International Typographical Union, including workers at the News printing plant, for Alberta’s school books to be printed in the province, rather than by “eastern firms.”

A reverend in Havre, Mont. was shot dead in his home by a former parishioner and wife of a district judge who had since moved to California. She proceeded to take her own life leaving an unsolved mystery toward motive.

Taxes on grazing land leases in unincorporated districts of Alberta should be reduced to one cent per acre, according to a position by the Alberta Stockgrowers Protective Association.

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