Strong Towns Director of Membership and Development Norm Van Eeden Petersman speaks to CHAT News. (Kevin Kyle/CHAT News)

By Eli J. Ridder | @EliRidder

Strong Towns completes public engagement sessions, will continue to advise city ‘action team’ into 2024

Nov 29, 2023 | 4:45 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – The public engagement piece of an advocacy organization’s partnership with the City of Medicine Hat is now complete.

The non-profit Strong Towns has been working to empower residents to make changes they want to see in their city at the local level.

That effort has been successful, according to the organization’s director of membership and development Norm Van Eeden Petersman.

“Another great outcome in Medicine Hat is that there’s a growing group of residents that have said ‘hey we want to continue to build the Strong Towns ideas within a local context’,” Van Eeden Petersman told CHAT News after giving a final public presentation at the Medicine Hat Public Library on Wednesday.

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With the presentations complete, Strong Towns will continue to advise an “action team” made up of city employees for the next year.

“Very deliberately, we do a one-year engagement that’s in the active stage and then our goal is to provide another year of coaching for the action team,” Van Eeden Petersman said.

Seminars and courses that Strong Towns have made for Medicine Hat residents will continue to be available at StrongTowns.org.

‘A SYSTEM THAT HAS RESULTED IN THIS’

In Van Eeden Petersman’s presentation, he encouraged residents to work to shape Medicine Hat they way they want to see it, starting in their neighbourhoods and growing from there.

When it comes to a petition to recall the mayor and a recent letter from residents asking the province to “inspect” the city, Van Eeden Petersman said it is important for residents to use the tools available but warned there might not be as much support for these efforts as organizers think there are.

READ MORE: Mayoral recall petition in place

“When you have groups that are working together on a project like this it can be easy to become convinced that most people feel this way and that the people who aren’t speaking up are on your side,” he said.

Van Eeden Petersman went on to say the issues the city is dealing with — such as the utility rates — predate the current council and are lingering problems and singling one person out is not an effective way to tackle these issues.

“Often times there’s a really [strong] desire to say ‘we got to find the person that’s responsible for this’, when it’s a system that has resulted in this,” he told CHAT News.

Van Eeden Petersman still encouraged residents to dig deeper into what the city is doing to tackle the issues that residents face.

“Pursue what you can with freedom of information [requests]; in simpler form, asking the city to provide a breakdown of different types of costs,” Van Eeden Petersman said.

READ MORE: Medicine Hat limits communication with resident

While the Strong Towns director acknowledged he was not deeply familiar with the recall petition, he said that a city going through transition can sometimes cause citizen response.

“What we see is a city that is changing and that change can sometimes produce its own type of reactions or misunderstandings or a desire to see a different direction pursued,” he said.

“This is why we have elections.”