City Notebook: Third quarter, time to shine or show true colours

By COLLIN GALLANT on January 6, 2024.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

Halfway through city council’s term, there’s still a lot of debate about what sort of council it is, but an answer may already be emerging, or likely will in the next 12 months.

Borrowing an adage from sports, a team will generally prove whether it’s a contender or not in the third quarter of a season, i.e. how it performs just after the halfway mark.

That measure compensates for early stumbles and weeds out those fast starts that may not be matched with stamina.

Sure, sometimes a team will get hot in the stretch, but is that where you want to place your money?

A team will generally prove its true worth in the third-quarter, and, good, bad or ugly, go from there.

In a four-year council term, that’s year No. 3, which technically began last October.

And for this council, that involved settling down controversy of power prices (the hottest issue in a decade at least) after a long stretch of seeming indecision and squabbles in the summer.

Chief among the challenges of 2024, will be finalizing an environmental roadmap for the city, folding in any learnings from the Strong Towns initiative, approving a clean energy strategy to modernize the power generation business, not to mention a business review of the power plant itself.

Something old, something new

A few items fell through the cracks during the News’s wind-up coverage of 2023, most of which have big implications for 2024:

– The city purchased the Medicine Hat Curling Club building mid-year, backing the group’s efforts to raise cash to repair the aging facility in the North River Flats (expect that to figure prominently in a “facilities for the future” plan that’s been lurking since 2021, but will get attention as the next city budget is developed);

– All facets of the electricity system got barrels of ink in 2023, but back up the tanker truck for 2024, when the “pause” on wind and solar projects unpauses in late February, a review of the city’s power plant is due and the Saamis Solar field proposed in the city’s north goes for approval.

– People get triggered when you talk about the weather, but admit it, it’s been weird. Expect water supply to be a hot topic in the next six months at least.

Railroad debate

This edition contains a look back at the 1984 train derailment in the city, which will certainly stir some memories.

Reading old clippings also makes a reporter wistful, especially for an initial explanation from Transport Commission officials within 24 hours of the crash.

In modern times, it took almost a year for such officials to admit they were looking into (and had already closed the file) on a pilotless plane that crashed in to a Hat-area house.

The idea of moving the rail yard was a hot topic in 1984, as you might expect, but seems to have petered out over the years, despite several major “urban planning” programs over 40 years.

On one hand, there are important issues that require attention and might suffer from distraction of a rail yard redevelopment push.

On the other, shouldn’t Medicine Hat be thinking “big picture?”

A look ahead

Winter will finally arrive in Medicine Hat, it seems, this next week after an unseasonable, almost unbelievable, mild fall and start to January.

City council will next sit Jan. 15 in a single meeting this month.

100 years ago

Three flour mills in the city made Medicine Hat the largest milling centre west of Winnipeg, the News crowed in a series of articles to lift economic spirits heading into a new year. Full capacity of the three was 560,000 bushels per month.

Druggists should be kept out of the liquor retailing business, members of the Alberta Pharmaceutical Association voted at a convention as the province planned to adhere to a referendum on prohibition in late 1923.

Britons elected their first Labour government.

Collin Gallant covers city politics and a variety of topics for the News. Reach him at 403-528-5664 or vie email at cgallant@medicinehat news.com.