Council to unveil local COVID support package tonight

By Collin Gallant on May 4, 2020.

Collin Gallant
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com
Twitter: CollinGallant
Medicine Hatters will see a package of relief measures from city hall when council convenes at its regular meeting on Monday night.
When an economic slowdown set in following the COVID response in mid-March, council members requested options from administrators to help residents weather layoffs, a lack of business activity and deal with extra costs of complying with “stay home” orders.
Two weeks ago Mayor Ted Clugston promised that a package would be presented at the May 4 meeting and would represent, in his opinion, “the most generous” program from any municipality in Canada.
That item appears on tonight’s agenda — though without any accompanying material n a pre-released package. City hall could be ready to unroll some incentive programs to bolster economic investment to help stoke economic activity.
Tax, utility and strategic “investments in the community” were discussed in an outline given by Mayor Ted Clugston in mid-April.
“There’s a lot of moving pieces but perhaps there will be some (property) tax deferral and some some economic stimulus as well,” Clugston told reporters at a press availability on Tuesday, April 27. “I’ll leave it at that, because council hasn’t voted on it yet.”
Tonight’s meeting will be broadcast live on the city’s website and on Shaw-TV (cable channel 10 in Medicine Hat), starting at 6:30 p.m.
Councillors have declined commenting on what could be included the plan. Several have argued the provincial and federal governments have greater ability to direct financial aid to citizens. Those levels of government have announced a raft of measures and expanding grants and income supports to deal with financial strain and layoffs.
Medicine Hat has complied with a provincial utility billing order to waive late fees and disconnections until mid-June.
One local lobby group has asked for councillors to cancel a planned 3.5 per cent property tax increase that was outlined in the current 2019-2022 city budget, and approved last fall.
The city’s mill rate, which determines final tax amounts, won’t be introduced until at least later this month.
Last summer the city relaunched Invest Medicine Hat — its economic development and attraction program — as an in-house operation that would now also focus on supporting existing businesses with expansion and retention programming.
That work, as well as a labour force study was just entering final stages and policy development when the coronavirus emergency began in late February.
The council agenda package released late last week shows limited business items other than a planned presentation by the city’s director of emergency response, Merrick Brown.
A separate item related to property tax would move the due date on property tax accounts in Medicine Hat from late June to Sept. 30. That aligns with a provincial measure to defer collection of education levy amounts for non-residential accounts to that time, and would ease the process for the public and the city’s assessment department, according to a rationale presented at last week’s corporate services committee.
The only other item on the agenda tonight is the acceptance of a bid to begin construction on the Brier Park sewer gravity bypass.
Read Tuesday’s edition of the News for complete coverage and comment from city officials.

2
-1

Comments are closed.