Red Deer Minute: Airport Investment, Transit Deal, and Health Restriction Debates

Red Deer Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Red Deer politics

This Week In Red Deer:

• It'll be reasonably quiet at City Hall this week, with just two meetings scheduled - one Council meeting and one Commission meeting.
  
  
• The Council meeting is a City Council Special Meeting that will be held today at 12:30 pm. The meeting will start in-camera where Council will discuss items pertaining to a permanent shelter location, before making the motion to revert back to an open meeting. Once the meeting is open, Council will receive a report from Maven Strategy outlining stakeholder engagement concerning the permanent shelter issue.
  
  
• On Wednesday, there will be a meeting of the Public Art Commission. No agenda or meeting time was posted at the time of writing.

Last Week In Red Deer:

• Red Deer Regional Airport is set to get an upgrade following a $7.5 million grant approved by the Province. The money will go towards partially funding a large airport expansion project that will include widening the main runway, strengthening the main taxiway and apron, and constructing a terminal to support new low-cost passenger services.
  
  
• The City of Red Deer and the local transit union signed a new 2-year collective agreement. The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 569 ratified the agreement on February 7th and City Council accepted the deal in a private vote at its meeting on Monday. The City said the agreement includes “several mutually beneficial changes”, with wages not expected to increase during the duration of the contract.
  
  
• After the Province announced it would be easing COVID-19 restrictions last week, both Calgary and Edmonton’s Mayors were swift to criticize the government's decision as an example of provincial overreach. Red Deer’s Mayor, Ken Johnston, had a different take, saying that health restrictions should indeed be a provincial responsibility and not a municipal one. Johnston said he sees no problem with the Province banning municipalities from implementing their own COVID-19 rules in the future, as it is the Province that should determine what public health rules should be.

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