Council adopts new strategic plan as clock winds down on term

Medicine Hat city council during its Oct. 21, 2024 meeting.

City council got off to a rocky start during its regular meeting, first correcting error riddled meeting minutes from the previous meeting while technical issues prevented broadcast of Monday’s gathering.

Council was informed the meeting was being recorded and would be able to be broadcast later. As of Tuesday afternoon, the meeting has not been posted on the city’s YouTube channel. Community TV has posted its video clips of the Oct. 21 city council meeting which can be exclusively be viewed on this organization’s YouTube channel.

Council took aim at a re-adjusted list of priorities during one of its shortest meetings in weeks.

Those priorities were boiled down to four more specific goals, down from six wide-ranging ones contained in the 2023 – 2026 council plan. The pared down version of the strategic plan was developed earlier this month with neither Mayor Linnsie Clark nor Coun. Cassi Hider in attendance. Clark missed the meeting due to objections to how it was conducted with Hider not in attendance due to going as a spectator at a slo-pitch tournament.

Clark questioned the need for a revamped plan so close to next year’s election, the inability to get information about the endeavour’s budget along with issues in how objectives and procedures were handled in the previous plan in explaining her absence.

Coun. Andy McGrogan described the plan’s objective as setting “some goalposts that are real and make some sense.”

Two priorities of note are the plans to tackle social disorder in the community and building a recreation facility in the south end of the city.

Regarding the former priority, “lead a provincial/municipal/community urgent response to social disorder, Clark noted a previous council debate on a related issue. That involved attempts to hire a social worker at the Public Library.

The city of Medicine Hat’s new strategic plan. 

She noted that it was discussed at that time such an act would see the city take on a provincial responsibility.

“Because when we weigh into areas that are not our responsibility, it’s hard to back out of those things,” said Clark.

In seeking more information on how a joint task force would work to deal with the issue of social disorder in the Hat, who has been or will be part of it as well as council’s role, Clark received responses from councillors Shila Sharps, Allison Knodel and Ramona Robins.

But it was city manager Ann Mitchell’s which stood out due to its terse nature.

“If you want to get hung up on the details, we can stay here all night. This is the focus that council wanted and this is what we looked at and we’ve already stated that administration will come back with our business plan with everything laid out in November,” said Mitchell.

The mayor responded that it’s good the business plan will come back for council approval.

Other councillors who spoke to the goal noted a commitment from Premier Danielle Smith to work on the issue in collaboration with council and other stakeholders will be involved in development of a plan.

Coun. Robins stated, “we’re saying this is important to us, this is important to the citizens – we hear about it a lot – and we want administration to build us the how we are going to do this.”

While the mayor indicated she backed the strategic plan “in principle,” a motion to have the wording “amended” removed from the 2024 – 2026 strategic plan resolution to reflect changes from the 2023 – 2026 strategic plan resolution appeared to derail her support.

 “I don’t love the word amended,” stated Coun. Knodel of the word utilized to reflect a change to a previously passed resolution or bylaw. “It is not amended. It’s summarised, clarified, focused.”

This despite the previous strategic plan and accompanying resolution containing 6 main themes outlined in a total of 53 sub-bullets. Nothing in that plan spoke directly about addressing social disorder, building a recreation facility in the south end or implementing a regional economic plan contained in the new plan.

The amendment to the motion to amend the city’s strategic plan, however, passed unanimously after the word “amended” was changed to “ratified.”