Medicine Hat Minute: School Returns, Transparency Issues, and Record Breaking Rates

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

This Week In Medicine Hat:

• It’s going to be relatively calm at City Hall, with two meetings scheduled this week, starting with a meeting of the Public Services Committee at 8:00 am today. At this meeting, Council is to receive a recommendation from the Community Advisory Board on who should be inducted into the Sports Wall of Fame. Council will also discuss the AHS South Zone Healthy Communities by Design initiative and the City’s Parks and Recreation Master Plan.
  
  
• The City's agenda also shows a Corporate Services Committee Meeting scheduled for 11:00 am on Thursday, but no other information - including an agenda - has been posted for this meeting yet.
  
  
• K-12 students are returning to in-person learning today. This is welcome news for many parents, who had to make last-minute plans going into 2022, when the provincial government announced that schools wouldn’t be returning to in-person instruction until January 10th. Teachers unions' are warning that a move to online learning is still a looming possibility, however, thanks to staffing shortages.

Last Week In Medicine Hat:

• Electricity rates reached a record high as the City of Medicine Hat announced changes to its floating commodity prices for January. The City sets its rate at the average rate option for prices in the province, which shows local prices will need to be adjusted to just over 16 cents per kilowatt-hour. The newly adjusted price is 25% higher than December’s local floating rate and is almost 10% higher than the previous record price - set in January 2012 at 14.81 cents.
  
  
• The sea-can market project is already over budget, despite the size of the market being cut almost in half, from 14 to 8 sea-cans. Now, taxpayers are going to have to chip in even more money for related infrastructure! Council had "questions" but voted to allow the project to proceed anyway.
  
  
• Medicine Hat Police Chief, Mike Worden, reflected on his first year in the position, highlighting some of the challenges of getting to know the community during COVID-19, building a diverse organization, and addressing Medicine Hat's social issues. Worden said the last 365 days seemed to fly by and it felt good to be back home after spending nearly 30 years away - 25 of which were spent on the Calgary Police Service.

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