Harlow family takes down anti-development signs after Medicine Hat changes approach

Span West Building Corp., of Saskatoon, Sask., had its condo development approved by the City of Medicine Hat’s technical coordinating committee on March 27 against the wishes of many Harlow neighbourhood residents.

The developer left the site after conversations with residents in an effort led by the Hales.

As the summer came to a close, the Hales were considering taking the signs down, according to their son Brock Hale, who also lives in Harlow and has been a de facto spokesperson for the those who were against the condo development.

Harlow residents protested a proposed development in May. Jesse Gill/CHAT News

The Hales received a letter from the City of Medicine Hat’s planning and development services department on Sept. 5 demanding they remove the banners.

The Hale family later replied later that month saying they would not be complying with the request.

The city was quick to respond, saying it would start issuing tickets that could cost his family thousands of dollars.

The Hales said they felt targeted by the city and reached out to city councillors to ask why they were receiving demands to take the signs down.

Suddenly, the signs disappeared in early October.

The Hales took them down because they started feeling heard by the city in what was a major shift in how they were being treated, Brock said.

Brock Hale poses in front of the signs his family put up to protest a proposed development in a First Street block. Eli J. Ridder/CHAT News

Meetings were set up with senior staff and city councillors were advocating privately on their behalf, he explained.

“The sign was to try to express our opinions, and so if we can express those opinions in conversations face-to-face with some of the people at city level then we didn’t need a sign,” Brock told CHAT News in a recent interview.

A couple of the city councillors the Hales were talking to encouraged them to remove the signs as a show of good faith as the Hales and city administration come to the table “open and ready”.

That’s something Brock said his family was willing to do after the city’s drastic change in the way they were communicating.

“We didn’t want to be fighting. We didn’t want that to be how we’re going into these conversations,” Brock said.

The Hales met with Medicine Hat’s chief administrator Ann Mitchell last week.

“Mitchell was great to talk to and she listened and we were able to express our concerns,” Brock said.

The family is scheduled to meet with other high-level staff, including the city’s development and infrastructure managing director Pat Bohan and others.

Mitchell said city staff followed Medicine Hat’s land use bylaw through their entire engagement with the Hales — but acknowledged the city fell short in its interactions with the family.

“Sometimes good-faith communication gets lost in the bureaucracy,” Mitchell told CHAT News in a phone interview Tuesday morning.

“Face-to-face sometimes is so much better than in, you know, an impersonal email or letter or something like that.”

Staff and departments separated by silos can lend to miscommunication across a complex organization like city hall, a reality Mitchell has been working to change since she started as the city’s new city manager in 2023.

Medicine Hat-based political consultant Jim Groom believes the city could have taken a better approach with the Hales.

“Diplomacy always works a little bit better than a hard approach, especially with people who are well-meaning and are willing to come to the table,” Groom told CHAT News.

Signs like those put up by the Hales are “a delicate issue” as there are bylaws that regulate sign size and placement — such as Medicine Hat’s land use bylaw — so it’s not a freedom of speech issue, Groom said.

“It really is more of a question of the appropriateness of the sign and the message they’re trying to send. And the fact that a citizen had to get to a point where they put up a sign suggests that there wasn’t a lot of communications coming out of city hall.”

Mitchell said the city has been working on how to improve how it communicates

There are others like Brock Hale who say they don’t feel listened to by the City of Medicine Hat.

That’s why the city is increasing and diversify how it gathers feedback from residents through avenues like municipal open houses, the city manager said.

Mitchell believes there still is room for improvement.

“Can we do a better job of listening? Absolutely.”

by Eli J. Ridder

Harlow family takes down anti-development signs after Medicine Hat changes approach

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