Red Deer Minute: Freak Weather, Hockey Tournament, and the City Nature Challenge

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

This Week In Red Deer:

• We’d like to wish all of our readers a happy Easter Monday. It’s not going to be a very busy week down at City Hall with only one meeting scheduled.
  
  
• That one meeting is a meeting of the Housing Asset Development Sub-Committee on Wednesday at 5:00 pm. The Committee will receive information about the Community Engagement Process.
  
  
• Red Deerians are being advised of traffic delays and should plan accordingly due to a road closure at the 54 Avenue and 60 Street intersection. The closure went into effect today at 7:00 am while City crews work on water and sewer replacements. A detour has been set up and the City is reminding drivers to be mindful of all traffic signs in construction zones.

Last Week In Red Deer:

• At last Monday’s regular City Council meeting, Council approved the recommendations made by City Administration to release information about the permanent homeless shelter from 13 in-camera meetings spanning from April 29th, 2021 to January 10th, 2022. The nearly 250-page report contains Council reports, presentations made by administration, and correspondence between the Province and the City. Anyone looking for answers regarding the actual site of the permanent shelter location will still have to wait, however, as a decision has yet to be made and information is still redacted from the report.
  
  
• City Council approved the new tax rate bylaw for 2022-2024, and it’s not looking good despite the spin coming from City Hall. It’s quite obvious that City Council wants you to focus on the 2022 tax freeze, but this was decided by the previous Council before the election, not this lot after the election! Being self-congratulatory and misleading, while hiking taxes in 2023 and 2024, by 4.7%, and 4.3% respectively, isn’t exactly forthcoming.
  
  
• In what the City called an effort to increase administrative efficiencies, Red Deer City Council passed a Tribunal Bylaw that re-structures appeal boards from two boards to four. The Tribunal Bylaw repeals the existing bylaw and establishes four boards -  the Subdivision Development and Appeal Board, the License and Community Standard Board, the Review Board, and the Administrative Penalties Board. It will be interesting to see if expanding appeal boards will indeed lead to efficiencies or only serve to double the operating costs associated with appeal boards in general.

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