Red Deer Minute: Capstone Groundbreaking, Olymel Layoffs, and Budget Adjustments Begin

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

This Week In Red Deer:

• Today, at 10:30 am, there will be a City Council meeting. The meeting begins in an in-camera (closed) session where Council will discuss an update to Alberta Health Services contract negotiations, the intermunicipal plan, the appointment of an Integrity Commissioner, and citizen appointments to Committees, Quasi-Judicial Boards, and External Boards and Societies. Council will then receive a report on how the municipal by-election will proceed before debating Councillor Higham’s Notice of Motion on removing the Overdose Prevention Site by the end of 2024.
  
  
• Council will meet from Tuesday through Friday, at 10:00 am each day, to debate amendments to the 2024 Operating and Capital budgets. Recall that Red Deerians are facing double digit increases if the City doesn’t get spending under control.
  
  
• Also on Tuesday, at 5:00 pm, the Housing and Homelessness Integration Committee will meet. The Committee will receive reports on the Budget Implications of the Reaching Home Program, the funding for the Reaching Home Winter Response, the 2024 priorities and timeline for the Committee, and a verbal update from the Lived Experience Committee.

Last Week In Red Deer:

• Red Deer received more bad economic news last week as Olymel announced it would be laying off 100 workers. The pork plant says this is largely due to the global pressure on the pork market and the slow down in hog production in Western Canada. The company is looking to soften the blow by offering early retirement packages to eligible workers, and says it may recall workers in the coming weeks or months.
  
  
• Despite the bad news, there’s some good news in town too - ground was broken on the first project in Capstone. A local developer is building a 62-unit residential building just west of Carnival Cinemas. The project is estimated to be worth $20 million and will feature a range of one- and two-bedroom units. The lands at Capstone have been vacant for years after the City moved all of their civic yards out of the riverfront space in hopes of creating a new residential neighbourhood. The building is expected to be completed in 16 to 18 months.
  
  
• Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to serve as commander of the International Space Station, gave a talk at Red Deer Polytechnic. He spoke to students in the afternoon, and to a sold-out crowd of 1,500 at the Gary Harris Centre in the evening. He spoke about his time as an astronaut and sought to inspire people to live their lives intentionally.  “Your life is the strung-together inevitable sequence of all the little things you chose to do next. It’s super important to be deliberate in what you do next,” he said. Hadfield’s speech kicked off a series of events to celebrate RDP’s 60th anniversary.

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