Half-Billion-Dollar Budget, Three Months, and a Committee That Meets Mostly in Private
Medicine Hat city council meets in Committee of the Whole this afternoon to discuss the 2027-2028 budget. There is no public portion of the meeting.
The agenda lists two items — Budget Discussion and Energy Business Matter — and adjournment. Both will be discussed behind closed doors.
The timeline is tight, but the process is the choice
The Municipal Government Act requires council to approve its budgets before the end of the year. The city's last operating budget was $459.9 million, with another $112.9 million in capital spending. The current document is of similar scale.
In previous cycles, that work was done across multiple public deliberations — budget assumptions in the spring, capital deliberations in early summer, operating deliberations through the fall, approval in December.
Cheryl Phaff - Photo From 1 2025Owl News Article
This year, council is using a Budget Committee created at the suggestion of Councillor Cheryl Phaff.
"On the issue of transparency, Phaff said a huge part of trust in government is the ability to see how it's functioning. 'And, we've seen a real lack of trust amongst the public for this current council.'"
The Budget Committee is chaired by Phaff.
Councillor Young is vice-chair, Councillor Mohammed is the third member, the mayor is an ex officio participant.
Phaff has told the Owl that all of council receives the same documents the committee does, at the same time.
What the rest of council does not receive is the discussion. The committee's meetings are closed, and closed meetings are not recorded.
Other council members may receive the documents, but they are not part of the deliberation — they do not hear the questions, the pushback, the trade-offs being weighed.
Since it began meeting, the committee has held five meetings.
Budget Committee August 4 2026 - Owl News
They spent at least 351 minutes in closed and 69 minutes in open.
The July 7 meeting was 115 minutes long but we do not know how many of those minutes were in closed and how many in open.
The only public information available by August 4 is the committee's terms of reference and its stated purpose.
The budget assumptions presentation delivered to the Budget Committee on September 15 was the first substantial public look at the document's direction.
Even that direction was muddy because a lot of questions were unanswered.
No decisions have been made yet.
Final budget recommendations are expected in November, with approval scheduled for December 7.
What the public saw last week
The budget assumptions presentation sketched out the scale of the challenge. Among the items administration has chosen not to recommend for funding right now:
$7.5 million for airport runway rehabilitation, deferred for multiple budget cycles and contingent on federal grant funding that requires year-round passenger service. WestJet ended service to Medicine Hat in June 2026.
A $50 million spare LM6000 gas turbine. The city currently has one spare. Council was told in August that acquiring a new one "could take three, five, 10 years, it's so backed up."
$4.1 million for a police training centre.
$27.6 million for a food compost facility.
$1.2 million for Third Street SE water and sewer replacement — pipes originally installed in the early 1900s, deferred to avoid a third consecutive year of downtown construction disruption. A water main break occurred in the same corridor in April 2025.
$91,000 for a police disclosure clerk, a position tied to a legal obligation to respond to access-to-information requests within 30 business days.
The budget assumes zero percent inflation for expenses over both years. Departments must absorb cost increases unless they submit a specific business case. It includes $1.1 million in operational savings for 2027 and $2 million for 2028 — savings staff acknowledged are placeholders not yet assigned to specific areas. It projects transferring $14.3 million from reserves over two years to cover the municipal budget gap.
The documents list what is being deferred and what it costs. They do not say when deferred work must be completed, or what happens if it is deferred again.
How this compares to the last budget cycle
The 2025-2026 budget was deliberated in public. Council's Committee of the Whole held open budget sessions on April 23, June 24, and July 9, 2024. There were closed sessions that year as well — May 28 (Energy Matter) , October 1, and October 17 (Energy Business Matter) — but the public deliberations were a core part of the process.
This year, the structure is different. The Budget Committee was created and has met mostly in private. The budget assumptions presentation was delivered as information, not deliberation. And the council sitting at the table is almost entirely new — only Mayor Linnsie Clark survived the last election, with three members returning after a gap of at least four years and five serving for the very first time.
That means most of council is learning the budget process while the process itself has moved behind closed doors.
The meeting record
The Budget Committee's first three meetings were held almost entirely in closed session. The closed portions of these meetings are not recorded at all. Under the Municipal Government Act, council and its committees must pass a resolution in public before closing a meeting, identifying what is to be closed and the specific exception being relied on. That vote is a public act. But the discussion that follows is not captured — no audio, no video, no transcript.
For the councillors who are not on the Budget Committee, that means the only record of the discussion is the minutes, which list items as "received for information" without capturing what was said. They receive the documents. They do not receive the debate.
Attendance
Committee Members
Chair Cheryl Phaff
Vice Chair Stuart Young
Member Yusuf Mohmammed
Ex-officio Mayor Clark
June 2 All 3 members + Mayor
June 16 All 3 members
July 7 Phaff and Mohammed
August 4 All 3 members
September 15 All 3 members + Councillor Bill Cocks
The transparency question
Council has held closed sessions before, as have previous councils.
The budget is the single most consequential document council produces. It sets tax rates, service levels, and capital priorities for two years. When the committee that shapes it meets mostly in private, the public's ability to understand the trade-offs is limited.
Budget Discussion (s.29 advice from officials)
Energy Business Matter (s.19 disclosure harmful to business interest of a third party, s.29 advice from officials, s.30 disclosure harmful to economic and other interests of a public body)
The exemptions cited
s.29 (advice from officials),
s.19 (harm to a third party's business interest), and
s.30 (harm to the economic interests of a public body).
The first is discretionary and frequently applied. It can act as a catchall for anything a council does not want to discuss in public. This council has been criticized for applying it so often to things that
The second and third could legitimately apply to the energy business matter.
Section 29 permits a council to close a meeting when staff are providing advice. It does not require it.
What happens next
Council must approve the budget by December 31. Final recommendations are expected in November, with approval scheduled for December 7.
Between now and then, there is no public budget deliberation on the published agenda.
Residents who want to know why the budget discussion cannot include at least a portion in open session can contact their councillors directly. Contact information is available on the city website.
The Owl will continue to review agendas and minutes as the process continues.
