Photo from City of Medicine Hat

By Jayson Taylor

Strong Towns Community Action Labs announced schedule changes

Jun 5, 2023 | 10:10 AM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – The public presentation scheduled for Tuesday, June 13 will offer a second community discussion on Wednesday, June 14. This change was made in response to community feedback to organizers.

The presentation scheduled for June 13 will still take place from 7-10 p.m. at The Yard downtown on Third Street. The second presentation will be taking place at the Medicine Hat Public Library from 1-2:30 p.m. the following day, giving those who are unable to make the first session to get information on the event.

Strong Towns is an organization that is based in Minnesota. Their Community Action Labs project seeks to improve the city’s long-term financial and community wealth and resilience. Strong Towns’ plan is to make the city reanalyze and shift the way the city develops, innovates, grows the local economy, and gets locals to contribute to the success of the community. The project is scheduled to take place over the course of two years.

“One of the things we are hearing loud and clear is that people want to better understand what Strong Towns is and how it can play a role in making Medicine Hat a sustainable, vibrant community. We’re seeing how much people appreciate the opportunity to participate in a conversation about Strong Towns, so we want to refocus our efforts to generate more of these opportunities,” Rochelle Pancoast, who is managing director of Strategy and Analysis, said on Monday.

“A big part of this two-year project is math. Methodically analyzing our long-term infrastructure liabilities both now and as new infrastructure is proposed, needs to become automatic. This ongoing analysis will help us to secure the financial health of our municipality and keep tax rates manageable in the long term. However, the Community Action Lab is also about shifting the way that the ‘municipality’ as an organization interacts with our community – empowering both staff and residents to innovate and improve our systems and processes to make our city an even better place to live. When we engage residents in conversations about our community, it needs to be effective and responsive,” Mayor Linnsie Clark said in a statement on Monday.

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More information on the project can be found on the City of Medicine Hat’s website.