Lethbridge Minute: COVID Confusion, Cancelled Meetings, and a Land Tax Proposal

Lethbridge Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Lethbridge politics

This Week In Lethbridge:

• On Tuesday at 1:30 pm, there will be a City Council meeting. Council will be discussing how to create a diverse and inclusive workforce, the province's coal policy, and tax relief for vacant lots, receiving a number of in-camera reports, and more.
  
  
• On Wednesday at 1:30 pm, there will be a meeting of the Economic Standing Policy Committee. Committee will receive presentations on Water and Wastewater, Waste and Recycling, and options for the Proposed Budget Process.
  
  
• On Thursday at 1:30 pm, there will be a meeting of the Community Safety Standing Policy Committee. Committee will be debating an update on Community Wellbeing and Safety, but this update is considered confidential for unknown reasons.

Last Week In Lethbridge:

• Many Lethbridge businesses struggled with confusing new provincial COVID rules after the province changed their re-opening plans at the last minute. The rule changes relaxed restrictions significantly less than had been expected and put gyms in particular in an odd spot. High-intensity workouts remain banned, while low-intensity workouts are permitted, but the province has left it up to gyms themselves to determine which is which!
  
  
• Rather embarrassingly, Council was forced to cancel every remaining public hearing on the City's new Municipal Development Plan last week, as well as a public hearing on the proposed Mustard Seed Temporary Shelter. The meetings were cancelled due to an advertising error, with adverts for the meetings containing the wrong link to further information. New dates for the meetings will be set this week, and the deadline for submissions for the new meetings will also be extended.
  
  
• The Building Industry and Land Development Association is asking Council to implement a 50% tax break on vacant serviced lots in the City. We're all in favour of the plan, as long as everyone else's taxes are being cut 50% too! More seriously, a more sensible way to tackle this issue would be to investigate replacing property taxes with land value taxes, that incentivize rather than punish the development of vacant land.

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