Editorial - City Breaks Procedure Bylaw…Again.

A damning municipal inspection report should have sent a message to the mayor of Medicine Hat and councillors.

It appears hardly a week following the public release of that report that council is again conducting business in an irregular fashion.

And, again, it appears the city’s procedure bylaw is the victim after being mauled during a reorganization in 2023.

That action lit the short fuse of a powder keg built up during the first half of this council’s term which exploded in the theatrics Hatters have had to bear over the past two years.

If not for any other reason, residents won’t have to deal with a lengthy repeat of the drama as the countdown to the next municipal election is being measured in weeks if not days.

On July 28, council held its second special meeting in four days, bookending a weekend.

City hall utilized provisions in the Municipal Government Act to allow such a meeting to be called without the normal 24-hour notice to the public.  It has done so in the past when the city has had to react quickly to emergent situations such as floods.

But one would be hard pressed to find a situation where the record of such a meeting was so scant.

Ten days following the last special council meeting, Hatters still don’t have an agenda for that meeting, know the location it was held or allowed to know the circumstances of the “open session” which passed two motions.

As was featured in the municipal inspection report’s recommendations, the city’s procedure bylaw lays out the provisions of when and how meeting agenda information is to be distributed publicly.

That includes being, “published on the City’s website for the general public and media, no later than twenty-four (24) hours after the agenda is sent to the Members.”

The Medicine Hat Owl has attempted to ascertain the location - physical or virtual - of the “open session” of this July 28 council meeting.

We’ve asked administration and council. We’ve sought comment from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs to better understand the procedural mechanics of not releasing information as simple as where a meeting of a municipal council is being held.

In a last-ditch effort, the Owl has tried to understand the process from the city’s two MLAs.

We’ve exhausted are avenues to better understand what’s going on.

Now, at the risk of being accused of weaponizing freedom of information requests, we have filed the necessary paperwork to try to obtain a meeting agenda from July 28 – the most basic and public documents the city provides.

We will share with our viewers and readers the documents when we receive them or the reasons city officials have determined meeting agendas are no longer considered public documents in Medicine Hat.