City Notebook: Money talks as budgets, utilities and a new MLA dominate headlines

By COLLIN GALLANT on November 12, 2022.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

City council starts a new process to pass its next budget this week, but the debate has likely already started.

Kicking it off is our new MLA promising to tackle the rising cost of living with “direct supports” for Albertans from a bonanza of a provincial surplus, and throwing in a utility rate review to boot.

The Hat, too, is seeing good money pour in from electricity sales, and is promising to look at rates as well, but with it is coupled with a vaguely un-Albertan view of stashing cash while also raising taxes. (The short explanation is that money goes to an investment fund that will eventually provide a golden egg each year, much like the gas division did.)

Remember when both the Hat and Alberta were cash-strapped and desperate to get commodity revenue out of their respective budgets? If not, you’re not alone.

People are also wondering about promised cost cuts at the city and the “living within our means” side of the equation.

More pressingly, though, calls are growing for City Hall to push some of the $85 million it expects in clear power profits this year to staving off 4 per cent tax hikes in each of the next two years.

An alternate suggestion would be that using the windfall (provided largely by power sales outside the city) couldn’t suppress rates inside city limits.

That’s somewhat contrary to the view not that long ago – when the gas division was gushing red ink – that the city’s business entities be run like a business, devoid of emotion or nostalgia.

Do other utilities take pity? They sure don’t.

But, then again, Hatters don’t own the other utilities.

Whatever council decides to do, they better have a good explanation.

Election mop-up

It’s hard to argue that breezing to a win by 24 percentage points is a tight one, but that’s whats being talked about as Danielle Smith secured the seat for Brooks-Medicine Hat.

Mind you, people can’t stop talking about the new premier, and she’s giving us lots to talk about.

There’s some validity that parsing of vote totals and past performance is a pastime for second-place finishers. Smith’s campaign did double the vote total of its closest challenger.

That candidate, NDP’s Gwendoline Dirk, did however get more votes at city polling stations than the new firebrand leader of United Conservative on election day.

It’s probably neck-and-neck when advance voting out of Redcliff is factored. Outlying areas provided landslide numbers for the UCP.

Rural Alberta is the crux of Smith’s stated election strategy: hold 39 “rural seats” and pick up a few in Calgary to form a majority in 2023.

The problem is, some point out, that a lot of the so-called rural ridings out are actually medium-sized cities.

The Hat is one, though the urban area of 64,000 people was divvied up into two rural-weighted ridings before the last election.

Others, like Lethbridge and Red Deer, are wholly urban units, and what about the leanings of suburban communities of Airdrie, Sherwood Park and St. Albert?

Oh, well, let’s pace ourselves. We’ve only got seven months before we vote again.

A look ahead

A committee of the whole (a “whole new” process for Medicine Hat city council) will convene Wednesday afternoon to help hash out the 2023-24 budget presented this past week. The budget goes back to council for amendments Nov. 21.

In case you’re wondering, the Alberta Legislature reconvenes on Nov. 29.

100 years ago

The fourth anniversary of the Armistice in Europe was celebrated with a wreath laying ceremony at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Medicine Hat, the News reported Nov. 11, 1922. The nationwide observance of two minutes of silence was started by local church bells. An Armistice Dance was held at the Oddfellows Hall.

Exporting liquor from Saskatchewan was made a federal offence in an effort to combat a wild bootlegging enterprise in the southwest of that province.

A Medicine Hat judge upheld a guilty finding of “allowing a dog to worry a cow” against local man F. Freedman, but later suspended the penalty of having the dog turned over to the pound for destruction.

The News wisecracked that the appearance of ice floes near Finlay Bridge despite warm local temperatures was a likely result of cities upstream suffering from a lack of gas for heating.

Fair weather also allowed a late season country football match between Redcliff and juniors from the Industrial High School in Medicine Hat. The result was a scoreless draw.

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