Lethbridge Minute: More Spending, Rentable Scooters, and Revitalization Efforts Flounder

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

This Week In Lethbridge:

• It's back to a more normal business schedule this week at City Hall with one City Council meeting and one Committee meeting in the schedule.
  
  
• The City Council meeting will take place on Tuesday at 12:30 pm and will discuss everything from Capital spending, Operating spending, E-Scooters, Urban Forestry, Land sales, Mail-In Ballots, and more.
  
  
• There will be a meeting of the Cultural and Social Standing Policy Committee on Thursday at 1:30 pm. The Committee will receive submissions from several City managers, a presentation about the Lethbridge Public Library, and Committee Updates, as well as hold a confidential discussion about "Fee for Service and Lease Negotiations".

Last Week In Lethbridge:

• Instead of considering how Council could help struggling businesses in these tough economic times, City Council spent the majority of their time at last week's Economic Standing Policy Committee meeting making multiple multi-million dollar commitments to new capital projects, including $3.5 million a year for four years towards the City's curbside organics "green bin". Councillor Mauro got so frustrated he got up and left the meeting entirely, saying it's not fair for a Council with just a few months remaining in their term to commit a future Council (and we would add Lethbridge taxpayers) to projects they may not want to pursue. We agree - why not wait a few months before making decisions that will last for decades?
  
  
• After only months on the job, the Executive Director of the Downtown Business Revitalization Zone has been fired. No clear rationale was given for the early dismissal, but the Downtown BRZ did issue a statement to its members stating that it was in the best strategic interest of the organization. We suspect there will be more that comes out about this in the future. Given this likely involves taxpayer money, if any of our readers have an inside tip as to what happened, feel free to email us what you know and we'll guarantee your anonymity.
  
  
• A major topic of discussion at last week's Civic Works Standing Policy Committee (and that says more about the Committee than the topic) was the viability of bringing rentable e-scooters to downtown Lethbridge. What do our readers think? Would you try one? We have, and they can be fun, but one thing we definitely don't need is any taxpayer money going towards them!

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