Medicine Hat city council: $9.5M food waste facility, human resource metrics

Those interested can watch council in-person at city hall or online via the city’s YouTube channel.

$9.5M facility

City staff are proposing council approve setting aside $9.5 million to fund the development and construction of a food waste organics composting facility.

Council originally left out that proposal from its 2025-26 budget when going through the financial planning phase last year.

The horseshoe approved a motion directing staff to work collaboratively with nearby Cypress County and Redcliff to see what options existed for a compost centre.

However, staff say multiple good-faith efforts were made to partner with regional municipalities on such a project without success.

Staff say the city’s food waste diversion pilot confirmed both the operational feasibility of the composting and strong public support.

Shane Briggs, city waste and recycling manager, wrote in a report to council that the proposed facility would help extend Medicine Hat’s landfill and fits within the waste management strategy.

HR metrics

Efforts by council to get various human resource metrics published by the City of Medicine Hat will return to council.

Staff are proposing that summaries of severance payments and bonuses paid to staff are included within the city’s tri-annual report.

Twelve other metrics — including turnover, age demographics, retirement rates and number of new hires — would be published quarterly.

However, the release of that information would be on the premise that it’s not “an unreasonable invasion of privacy pursuant to relevant legislation as determined by the FOIP Head.”

That’s in reference to Alberta’s Freedom of Information and Privacy Act, which allows people to request records held by public bodies like the city, school boards and police services.

The city’s policy coordinator Rondi Korven, in a staff report prepared for council, said the recommendations aim to weigh the desire for public transparency with the requirement for individual privacy.

“It is problematic to attempt to provide a definitive statement as to whether a certain type of
information is disclosable because the facts of each situation need to be weighed to find the right
balance between transparency and protection of personal privacy,” she wrote.

This slew of HR metrics coming forward for this council meeting is a carry over April 7.

At that meeting, council unanimously approved publishing twice a year the amount of money senior city employees spend on expenses such as travel, meals and hosting.

Mayor’s legal expenses

Once again on the agenda is Mayor Linnsie Clark’s motion to get the city to reimburse her legal fees from 2023 and 2024, when she fought the city manager and took council to court.

This item — postponed several times since March — requests the City of Medicine Hat reimburse legal fees she accrued during the sanctions scandal that led to a leadership crisis at Medicine Hat city hall in 2024.

Clark’s motion directs city administration to cover $76,017.62 in legal fees over five different items.

She did not give a reason for delaying the motion but council has a hefty agenda that could result in an lengthy meeting. Also, two councillors are not present, including Robert Dumanowski and Allison Knodel.

The first is the cost of obtaining a second opinion about the reorganization of city hall that chief administrator Ann Mitchell carried out in 2023.

Clark, who before becoming mayor worked in the city solicitor’s office as a lawyer, paid for legal advice on the legitimacy of Mitchell’s restructuring.

Guy Giorno, a lawyer with Calgary-based Faskon Martineau DuMoulin LPP, said Mitchell’s actions contradicted the city’s Bylaw No. 4662.

by Olivia Thorington

Medicine Hat city council: $9.5M food waste facility, human resource metrics

$9.5M facility

HR metrics

Mayor’s legal expenses

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