Lethbridge Minute: Issue 296

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

📅 This Week In Lethbridge: 📅

• The Community Issues Committee will meet tomorrow at 9:00 am, the first of three daily sessions on the same agenda that continue Wednesday and Thursday. One of the items on the agenda is a first look at the draft 2027-2036 Capital Improvement Program, which sets a four-year capital budget for 2027 to 2030 inside a ten-year plan. The draft lists 101 projects worth about $1.64 billion over ten years, including $536 million in the first 4 years. There are 43 unfunded transportation and community projects, and Administration estimates $90.6 million is available against $181 million in proposals, leaving roughly $90 million in requests without a funding source. Administration attributes the squeeze to reduced grants from other governments. Following Council direction, the draft prioritizes maintaining existing assets over building new ones and leaves out projects with bike lanes other than multi-use pathways. No decisions will be made at these meetings, with formal deliberations scheduled from November 16th to November 20th and Council approval expected in December.
  
  
• Also on the agenda are community group submissions on the capital plan, led by a presentation from the nonprofit Henderson Lake Golf Course. The ask is for the City to replace the course's 1984 irrigation system at a cost of about $2.9 million, upgrade its maintenance facility for $1.9 million, and spend $2.4 million on planning and design to relocate its 1963 clubhouse, a concept estimated at $30.1 million. The golf course says it is prepared to contribute up to $1 million and reports $2.09 million in operating surpluses from 2021 to 2025. Lethbridge School Division has also submitted a request for City funding to enlarge the gymnasium at a planned west Lethbridge elementary school by almost 50%. The Division notes the City has funded similar gym upgrades at 4 other schools, including $1.2 million at Galbraith Elementary School.
  
  
• As the meeting continues, Administration will respond to Councillor Ryan Wolfe's parking enforcement motion, which Council passed 7-2 on March 10th, citing a Parking Reserve being depleted by revenue shortfalls. Administration recommends raising the downtown parking fine from $40 to $50 in 2028 while keeping the $20 discount for early payment, with the change referred to the 2028-2031 operating budget. It also proposes replacing windshield tickets with violation notices mailed to registered owners starting in 2027, which it claims would cut costs and reduce staff exposure to abuse. Other changes include kiosks that show only their own zone, after 11% of 4,549 reviewed appeals involved drivers picking the wrong zone, and converting a split block of 5 Avenue South to long-term parking. Administration also identified annual fees of $30 for residential parking permits and $45 for visitor permits for future budget consideration. Downtown business representatives supported the operational changes but asked that any fine increase wait until 2028, citing downtown vacancies and affordability.
  
  
• Also on the Community Issues Committee agenda is the City's decorative crosswalk policy, which Council adopted in September 2025 and ordered reviewed once the City of Edmonton finished its own crosswalk study, or by the end of the first quarter of 2026. Edmonton told Administration in May that its decorative crosswalks and alleyways program no longer exists and that there are no plans to reinstate it. Administration recommends keeping the policy unchanged, with the next review set for September 16th, 2029. Under the policy, applicants must pay all material, labour, traffic-control, installation, and removal costs up front, apply at least 3 months in advance, and install only between May and September. Council separately approved up to $10,000 from Council Contingencies for a Remembrance Day crosswalk next to the Cenotaph. In July, Council also directed Administration to develop a broader policy framework covering banners, decorative crosswalks, proclamations, and the lighting of City Hall by the end of the first quarter of 2027.
  
  
• Brent Nunweiler, president of Lethbridge Fire Fighters IAFF Local 237, says the City of Lethbridge has accepted a one-month extension of its Emergency Medical Services contract with Emergency Health Services past September 30th while it waits for a third-party review of the Emergency Health Services benchmark rate. Hospital and Surgical Services Minister Adriana LaGrange confirmed on September 29th that the review's findings have not yet been released, and said the Province will have more conversations with Lethbridge once the benchmark is finalized. The City says it will consider those findings before deciding how to proceed. Nunweiler says provincial partners have offered Lethbridge the same 2.5-year extension, at previous contract rates and through 2029, that Councils in Strathcona County, St. Albert, and Red Deer have signed. He called it disappointing and frustrating that the Mayor and Council will not accept that offer, and argued that residents value the city's 114-year-old integrated Fire and EMS model and are willing to pay more in taxes to keep it. The City says Lethbridge Fire & Emergency Services will keep its full integrated Fire and EMS service in the meantime, while it prepares for a possible transition to a new provider and explores either a future procurement process or a new agreement that would let its fire department keep delivering EMS.

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