Medicine Hat Minute: Capital Projects, Building Incentives, and Government Transit Grants

Medicine Hat Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Medicine Hat politics

This Week In Medicine Hat:

• We’d like to wish all of our readers a very happy Easter Monday, perhaps the only day of the year when it’s acceptable to keep all your eggs in one basket. Council is set to get back to the action with two meetings scheduled for this week.
  
  
• Today, there will be a regular meeting of City Council at 6:30 pm. Council will begin this meeting by receiving several in-camera reports from Committees before opening the meeting back up to the public. Once open, Council will receive a presentation on the 2022 Property Tax Bylaw as well as the Chief Financial Officer’s report. There will also be a public hearing regarding Bylaw 4695, a motion to close the lane/road west of 511 Spencer Street SE. City Council will also receive a number of reports from past Committee meetings before moving forward to discuss a couple of new bylaws which relate to property taxes in 2022.
  
  
• On Thursday, there will be a meeting of the Energy and Infrastructure Committee at 3:30 pm but no agenda is available yet for this meeting.

Last Week In Medicine Hat:

• According to officials with Invest Medicine Hat, more than $500,000 was approved for downtown building incentives last week. The initiatives were funded out of the Waterfront District “housing” and “vibrancy” grants. The vibrancy portion provides grant funding for business owners whose improvements contribute to the city centre and the housing portion pays for additional residential units in certain areas. Wouldn't it be easier to just cut taxes, let the businesses keep their money, and spend it on "vibrancy" without washing the cash through City Hall first? I guess then there'd be nothing for all the City's middle-managers to do...?
  
  
• The City released its map of capital projects for the upcoming year which shows some items waiting to be completed after being held up last fall, but very little in the way of new projects. Aside from the completion of the Towne Square space at 603 First Street, the only other major project for the upcoming construction season is the design work for the NW Industrial Park.
  
  
• Both the federal and provincial governments pledged millions of dollars to help local municipal transportation services offset the loss of revenues experienced on account of a steep decline in ridership during the COVID-19 pandemic. This latest announcement means Medicine Hat Transit is set to receive nearly $630,000 in government grants as part of a wider $160 million transit relief package, including $10 million specifically earmarked for small- and mid-sized communities.

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