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City committee members heard Wednesday during a public meeting that the rising cost of rent and grocery inflation are the two largest factors contributing to cost of living challenges in Medicine Hat
neswdesk@medicinehatnews.com
The rising cost of rent and grocery prices are the two key major challenges Hatters are dealing with while trying to balance their budgets, according to data collected by the city’s finance department.
The annual summary is provided to committee members each year and is used to gauge economic trends within the community.
During a Corporate Service Committee meeting Wednesday morning, sitting members were provided an annual summary of utility and tax collection from 2025 prepared by Densie Schmaltz, manager of customer care and billing for information.
“Cost of living pressures tend to still be high for our community, with what we are hearing in the department, being mostly rent and grocery inflation being some of the major challenges for our customer base,” explained Schmaltz.
The summary also cites the regional unemployment rate at 6.8 per cent, slightly higher than the provincial average, as a financial strain on Hatters.
However the summary does cite the city experienced greater stability in energy commodity rates in 2025.
Last year about eight to 10 per cent of utility customers, representing approximately 2,700 Hatters, remained behind on their monthly utility payments.
The city serves approximately 30,000 utility customers and staff say when a property owner is at risk of their utilities disconnection, they instead are able to transfer their outstanding utility payments and interest to their property tax account to prevent service disconnection.
“That allows the customer to then make payment arrangements to avoid the disconnection and also help us then advocate if we need support through Alberta Works, Salvation Army,” said Schmaltz. “So the amount of disconnect warnings compared to the disconnects shows the success rate as well as how successful the team is in avoiding disconnects for some of our clients.”
Despite efforts, the city was forced to disconnect 684 customers last year and issued more than 6,400 disconnect warning notices to customers.
Last year city staff were able to transfer $1.1 million of acquired utility interest onto property taxes, typically this opens a payment window of four years for property owners.
According to the committee package documents, the city lost $2 million in 2025 in utility funding received as well as utility interest payments were reported to drop 27 per cent last year from $1.2 million in 2024 to $877,000 in 2025.
Schmaltz explained these rates typically fluctuate annually and are influenced by commodity charges and rate charges as well as the number of commercial properties within the rate base.
Committee members were also told last year Alberta Works, a government emergency income support centre, provided members of the community more than $200,000 in 2025 accounted for by the city’s financial department.
The city’s customer care and billing department is responsible for billing and collecting revenue for both utility services and municipal tax.
The department issues approximately 400,000 utility statements every year generating $189 million in revenue in 2025.
The department also issued more than 30,000 municipal taxation notices which generated more than $126 million.
