They spent four fucking hours talking about curb extensions. Hours. About the width of a parking lane.

Last night, September 21, 2026, Medicine Hat City Council did what Medicine Hat City Council does best: they turned a straightforward infrastructure project into a municipal circus, complete with lawn signs, emotional anecdotes, and a gallery heckler who apparently had nothing better to do on a Monday evening.

Here's what actually happened, stripped of the theatre.

The Decision Nobody Will Remember

Council voted unanimously to approve the Riverside Corridor Enhancement Project design that keeps the existing road width, adds seven curb extensions at key intersections, and kills the multi-use trail that was supposed to connect the neighbourhood to the river valley path system .

That's it. That's the story. Four hours of debate. A unanimous vote. The status quo with some bump-outs.

The surface project costs $7.45 million, with 98% funded by federal and provincial grants . The deep utilities underneath, the actual pipes that are rotting away and necessitating this whole mess, still need $10.32 million that hasn't been budgeted yet .

So they spent the evening arguing about asphalt while the sewer line continues to disintegrate.

The Lawn Sign Brigade and the Expertise Vacuum

Here's the thing that should make you angry: the people who showed up with lawn signs and strong opinions, the ones who convinced council that "the community" opposed the original plan, most of them couldn't tell you the current width of Third Street if their lives depended on it.

I asked. They didn't know. The road is about 11.4 metres wide . The original proposal would have kept driving lanes at 3.3 metres with 2.4 metre parking lanes. The new design bumps the clear distance at intersection bulb-outs from 7-7.5 metres to about 8.8 metres .

That's the "dangerous narrowing" everyone was screaming about. A road that's still wider than most residential streets in this city.

But hey, lawn signs are cheap. Research is hard.

Councillor Young's Very Personal Truck

Councillor Stu Young

*Said to a member of the public: “That’s actually insane!”*

Councillor Stuart Young, who apparently drives a very large truck and wants everyone to know it, spent an extended amount of time explaining that he loves his truck, doesn't understand traffic calming, and doesn't want to appear like someone who supports it. He then detailed how his grandfather died at one of the contentious intersections and how people at his grandfather's retirement home agreed the road was dangerous.

I'm not going to mock a man's dead grandfather. That's not the point.

The point is that grief is not a traffic engineering credential. Personal tragedy is not a substitute for data. And the fact that Young felt compelled to spend that much time defending his position, while explicitly claiming he wasn't making it personal, suggests he knew exactly how it looked.

The Gallery Heckler and the Microphone Situation

Someone in the gallery was heckling during debate. They weren't asked to leave. Young interacted with them directly at one point, apparently exclaiming "now that's actually insane!" .

I couldn't make out what the heckler was saying because the audio situation was a mess. But the fact that council tolerated repeated interruptions, that a councillor engaged directly with a heckler, and that the whole thing devolved into something resembling a daytime talk show says everything about the state of municipal governance in this city.

The Money Nobody Wants to Talk About

Here's the part that should really piss you off.

While council spent hours on curb extensions, they barely touched the fact that Environmental Utilities needs $10.32 million for the actual water and sewer infrastructure that's driving this project . That money isn't budgeted. It hasn't been approved. It's just sitting there, waiting for the 2027-28 budget process, when everyone will be too exhausted from the surface project debate to fight about it.

Meanwhile, Medicine Hat's rental market is squeezing people dry. The average rent hit $1,210 in late 2025 . Short-term rentals are taking housing units off the long-term market and driving up costs. A McGill University study found that renters in Medicine Hat paid $3.6 million in additional rent from 2017 to 2022 because of short-term rentals .

But sure. Let's spend four hours on bump-outs.

The Money Trails

Brian Varga sits on council. His campaign contributions include $500 from Stark's, a plumbing and heating company, and $250 from Big Marble Farms . Stark's posts job listings for paving labourers in the Medicine Hat region .

I'm not saying that's corruption. I'm saying it's a smell that nobody on that council dais seems interested in investigating.

The project is years delayed. The infrastructure underneath is failing. The costs keep climbing. And the people making decisions about it have financial connections to the industries that stand to benefit from the work.

You do the math. They won't.

Tommy's Two Cents

Kelly and I have said it before, and we will say it again: they can spend months, years, arguing over something they have no expertise in and fumble several times, while something costing several magnitudes more gets less attention than anything. It really seems like the higher the price tag is, the more likely they are to have worked out something in the back rooms that they simply won't tell us about.

So they spend hours blabbing on about the circus and the bread, so we don't ask what's behind the curtain.

Also, Phaff, clicking the pen makes you look super nervous.

Phaff Causes Cocks Agony! They spent four fucking hours talking about extensions.

Medicine Hat's Budget Assumptions: The Bill Comes Due Later