Hatters still wait for update on provincial investigation

It’s been nearly three weeks since council’s invitation to the provincial government to investigate city operations. Every day now that pass represents one less of the nearly 400 left before the municipal election in 2025.

To put that 13-month election timeline in perspective, it took 10 months to complete the controversial Chestermere municipal investigation and present the results to the public last year. It involved more than four dozen interviews and hundreds of other communications.

That report produced 16 recommendations which required a provincially appointed monitor to oversee municipal operations for another six months.

Suffice to say, Medicine Hat is not Chestermere.

It’s nearly three times the size and incorporates the equivalent of a mid-sized energy producing unit as part of its corporate structure. And it’s in the middle of a substantial review of its energy division which will determine the future of how it operates for at least the next decade.

The cost of the provincial investigation will also see taxpayers on the hook for the bill while it will surely be a distraction to staff which have already been demoralized by this fractious lot.

Just how much that bill will be or how little city hall trusts citizens with that information will be on display soon enough as the move comes right as the deadline for the two-year budget is presented. While council was quick in its decision for the inspection, it will move at a snail’s pace in revealing the financial and organizational impacts for its request.

The province can choose to not proceed with the investigation and look to other alternative resolutions to dealing with a council which appears to be not only at war with itself but its residents.

But as this council has demonstrated, it’s determined to get its pound of flesh from both the mayor and Hatters prior to next year’s election.

If council is willing to continues to wrangle back decision-making control from administration, put aside its purely internal grievances and get to work doing the people’s business, it could turn a corner in public perception.

To be fair, city council has moved to a more normalized state of affairs by actually debating issues and allowing information to flow publicly both at the committee and council as a whole levels.

But council needs to get its city manager under control, push back against her extremist views of how municipal governance should work and educate her on the need to show respect to elected officials.

Her behaviour in response to the mayor’s apology was astonishingly inappropriate which a municipal investigation will most certainly determine if the issue is examined.

The city manager’s continued presence in her role will continue to be a threat to the legitimacy of this council’s actions for the rest of the term and into the next as long as she remains.