Hat Deserves A Better Council, Will Get the One they Pick

It’s been a dismal four years for Hatters having come out of COVID, hit with skyrocketing inflation and record electricity prices while dealing with the daily flotsam and jetsam left in the wake of the opioid crisis.

While few could expect Medicine Hat city council to solve all these problems, not in anyone’s wildest minds could Hatters foresee that nine people elected to make the city a better place could cause such havoc.

As capable individuals as the nine council members were going into this term, it took a collective effort of all of them to cause such chaos and reputational harm to Medicine Hat.

And even then, it required the actions of city administration and their replacements to fulfill a level of futility which this city has never seen.

The city has now been left rudderless and it will be tough for whoever occupies the nine chairs around the council table to even be able to map out a new course as they lack the senior personnel required for the task.

While comparing a public government to a private corporation doesn’t always make sense, it’s fair for a municipal government to question whether it should be in business with a company which has blown through two CFOs in a matter of months. Especially when it comes without explanation and exceptionally when it happens without so much as a notification a city’s head bean counter has left the building.

Unfortunately for the city, that sort of critical analysis applies the other way around as well.

Over the past four years, Hatters have had to become accustomed to outside inspections and internal investigations.

Not only at city hall but at police headquarters.

The idea of a councillor utilizing his city email for an election campaign simply would not fly in most municipalities. Nor would political grandstanding with big ticket expenses at the very end of a term.

Senior administrators granting interviews to media discussing election issues like Saamis Solar or a committee meeting with three incumbents held four days from the election to tout this council’s successes would be out of bounds in most well-run municipalities.

But Medicine Hat is not a well-run municipality.

It’s a city which has been found to be run in an “irregular, improper and improvident manner.”

Hatters didn’t require a municipal inspection report to tell them this was so, but a spendthrift council did.

Hatters didn’t need to be burdened with excessive legal costs to know this council was out to lunch in the sanctions leveled against the mayor for a minor tiff with a city manager that has now been terminated.

But this council did.

Hatters know the depth of the hole this council has dug the city.

This council still doesn’t have a clue there exists a pit of animosity filled with their own angst.

 There will be a new council elected next week and no matter who sits around the table – new, old or recycled council members – if they don’t get a handle on the situation, there will be problems.

If the next council doesn’t get it together fast, Hatters will know and they simply won’t accept a repeat of the last four years.

And the next step could see the province step in to run our city if Hatters aren’t able to find nine capable individuals within our own ranks to do so.