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67 percent of stakeholders vote to disband CCDA

May 14, 2021 | 10:27 AM

Medicine Hat, AB–Taxpayers of the Business Improvement Area has voted 67 percent in favour of disestablishing the City Centre Development Agency.

The results were released on the City of Medicine Hat website Friday morning. In accordance with BIA regulation, the bylaw to officially disestablish the CCDA will be presented to City Council on June 7, 2021, for second and third reading. The Bylaw will take effect June 30, 2021.

Earlier this year, a petition was launched to disband the CCDA. The petition was fueled by stakeholders who said they were fed up with the organization following years of frustration. Jan Crommer is a stakeholder. She told CHAT News she’s not a fan of mandatory enrollment. She’s also concerned about a lack of transparency in the budget, especially recently with events in limbo due to the pandemic.

“Last year many of those events did not occur, and they did a proposed budget again this year for those events to occur, they haven’t occurred. Again, where is the money going for that? I question the role of the CCDA that has seemed to have come across, from the budget’s perspective as event planning, as opposed to revitalizing the downtown,” Crommer said.

On Monday, the CCDA announced the hiring of a new Operations Manager even though the vote was about to to take place.

More to come..