We Must Get Our Own House In Order to Attract New Investment to Our City
- allardkg
- Aug 6
- 6 min read
All the best ideas in the world will not bring in investors unless we have our own house in order.
Until we do, nobody is going to want to do business with us (and rightly so).
Character is what you do when nobody is watching. I want to restore the reputation of the City of Medicine Hat. I want character and integrity to be our highest priorities. Only then can we have a chance in hell at attracting investors.
Our Reputation is Currently in the Toilet
How did this happen?
It started with previous councils. (I'm not sure how far back it went because I did not pay much attention until about a year after my husband died. Like many other people, life got in the way. Once I started paying attention, I was shocked at how the city was operating. )
What we have right now is a Shitshow but this did not happen overnight; it has been going on for decades. Rumours of back room deals, nepotism and low employee morale preceded the 2021 election. Whether the rumours were true or not, it damaged our reputation.
(By the time election day came along we had 33 council candidates, many of them were new faces who had never sought out public office before.)
The whole Invest Medicine Hat (IMH) /Orka RFP (Request For Proposal) mess is a prime example of apparent unethical behaviour by the City administration and City Council of the day. This was likely not an isolated event, it is merely a symptom of the rot that existed. The 2021 attempt to contact out IMH garnered so much public attention, casued such an outcry that the sole bidder withdrew their bid 4 days after it closed.
Here's How it Went Down
In 2021 City Administration changed the Conflict of Interest Clause on this IMH RFP to allow current employees to bid on this ten year contract (unusual for being so long, most RFPs were issued for 5 years or less). It seemed pretty obvious the RFP change had not gone through the legal department, it appeared as if nobody had proofread it.
Six IMH employees created a company called Orka four months before the RFP was even issued, this gave them a huge advantage over other potential bidders. It is no wonder only one bid was submitted, who wants to bid when the deck was already stacked? Again, that one bid was withdrawn 4 days after the bid closed due to public outcry. This damaged our reputation for fair dealing.
To top it off, nobody for administration or Council would admit they had done anything wrong. Council voted to to have an external review done using $75k of public monies.
(Spoiler, the outside agency hired to do a review did their job but they were asked the wrong questions.)
I said this nearly 4 years ago about the whole IMH/Orka review mess.
Not only does City Hall allow this sort of thing to go on but instead of admitting anybody screwed up, they pay $75,000 for an unhelpful review in an attempt to vindicate themselves. Why would anyone come here to do business with us when they see that?
This review is “As useless as a shoe shop in the Shire”
As Always, I Bring the Receipts
Read about the above unethical attempt to contract out Invest Medicine Hat (IMH).
July 2021 We Need New Blood - about the RFP timeline
Read about previous Council's subsequent attempt to prove they did nothing wrong by spending $75k of public monies.
The Shitshow was Long in the Making
What has happened since then has not helped.
The City Manager in 2021 "retired" a few months after the election; the city had a number of Acting and Interim City Managers while they searched for a permanent one. Council hired Ann Mitchell as a permanent City Manager in Dec 2022, she started Feb 6 2023. (Mitchell is currently on a paid suspension, council has agreed to hire an investigator.)
Almost right away Mitchell violated the Administrative Organizational (AO) bylaw, a bylaw which is only 8 pages long. Within months, the City Clerk who had been hired less than year earlier from Grande Prairie was gone. A search for another City Clerk was made; lo and behold, a former coworker of Mitchell's got the job.
(The replacement seemed well qualified but even he did not stay, leaving his position only one year later. At the time his departure was announced in July 2024, he had not been at a council meeting in months. The dysfunction in City Hall was in full force by then.)
The behind-the-scenes disagreement about the Bylaw Bypass eventually led to the Shitshow Showdown of August 21 2023. This ultimately ended up in a formal Councillor Code of Conduct complaint being filed against Mayor Clark by Councillor Sharps.
A few months after the Shitshow Showdown, Former Mayor Ted Clugston went on the news calling this Council a "train wreck". Former Councillor Phil Turnbull also went on the news, also critical of this council. They both had the opportunity to show their character and offer their help and guidance but instead choose to hurl insults from the sidelines.
An external investigation of the complaint (the Kingsgate Report) was done; on March 21 2024 the rest of Council (The Mutinous Seven Of Council aka TMSOC) voted to impose outrageous sanctions against the mayor. March 26 2024, Council released the heavily redacted Kingsgate Report. On April 1 2024, TMSOC put out a press release stating that they would not discuss the decision, that the public can be assured that they did the right thing even thought the Kingsgate Report was extremely redacted.
The public was angry because they were told the sanctions were only for the August 21 2023 public interaction between Mitchell and Clark at the Council meeting. The outrageous sanctions made the public think there was something more going on.
Mayor Clark filed for a Judicial Review of the sanctions. The Judicial Review found that Council was not capable of making reasonable decisions.
Council was unsatisfied with the judge's decision. Councillor McGrogan called for a Municipal Inspection; it passed by a split vote. The resulting Report found that the City was being run in an "Irregular, Improper and Improvident manner".
Until We Get Our Own House in Order
Nobody is going to want to do business with us (and rightly so).
Character is what you do when nobody is watching.
I want to restore the reputation of the City of Medicine Hat. I want character and integrity to be our highest priorities. Council needs to work as a team and not try to sabotage each other. Only then can we have a chance in hell at attracting new investment.
How can we make this happen?
1 Communication is incredibly important. In my experience, most conflicts come from misunderstandings. Council needs to get together on a regular basis and bring their problems to the table and solve them like adults.
2 We need to do a better job in hiring a City Manager. We need to do a thorough background check; we need to talk with their former coworkers. Someone might look great on paper but they might be an absolute nightmare in person.
3 I would like to see council seats be moved around the horseshoe on a regular basis. Sometimes a different viewpoint can be useful. Sitting beside different people can help build bridges and repair strained relationships.
4 Council members should be providing reports about what goes on when they go to conventions. I want to know who they talked to, and about what. We need not have specific details, it could be something as simple as "Councillor X spoke with this person about electricity rates. We decided to address it by doing Y." or, "Councillor A spoke with a Mayor from City B and learned about the way they address affordable housing, this could be a good model for Medicine Hat." When attending these conventions, Council should have a plan of action of who they want to connect with (and why) and who will meet with the different delegates. They can cover far more ground than just winging it. (They might be doing this already but we have no idea because we get no reports.)
5 I believe we should have full time Council Members. Full time members would have more time to
- to address residents' concerns - do their job including reading the large amounts of information put out by staff
- to build relationships with other council members and members of the community without the distraction of their day job. I did the math 4 years ago and discovered that we can have 6 full time council members for the price of 8 part time ones. Each full time councillor would be paid $66,000/year with $21,000 available for each councillor for benefits and allowances. It is obvious our growth has staganated - I believe we have outgrown having part time Councillors. The graph below shows that our City has hardly grown in well over a decade. Source - Regional Dashboard Alberta.
The table below the chart shows that according to StatsCan, Medicine Hat had grown by only 11 people between the 2016 and 2021 Canada Census. This means people were moving away.
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