Lethbridge Minute: Parade Day, Encampment Response, and a Budget Priorities Survey

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

This Week In Lethbridge:

• City Hall might be slow (there are no meetings scheduled at all), but Lethbridge is buzzing this week with the return of Whoop-Up Days.
  
  
• The annual Whoop-Up Days event kicks off Tuesday with a parade at 9:00 am. The route begins at Park Place Mall and follows its traditional path along 3rd Avenue and 13th Street N, ending at the Galbraith Elementary School. Whoop-Up Days is celebrating 125 years of history this year.
  
  
• Mayor Blaine Hyggen will be hosting the Mayor's Community Barbeque at City Hall immediately following Tuesday’s parade. Beginning at 11:30 am, the first 750 attendees will get free burgers, hot dogs, and pop. A musical performance by Trevor Panczak and an autograph signing by champion chuckwagon driver Kris Molle will round out the festivities.

Last Week In Lethbridge:

• The City launched “My Two Cents” - a city-wide campaign to gather feedback on what Council’s budget priorities should be. The interactive tool lets residents create their own version of the City's budget by testing out increases and decreases in spending. Unfortunately, the tool lumps wasteful spending into big broad categories that also contain useful work, and it also won't accept more than a 10% cut to any City activity. It's not clear how the City expects to get useful feedback by limiting things to only a very narrow window of what's "acceptable". The tool feels more like a way of reinforcing the idea that the current system is the only one that can possibly work. If you want to provide feedback anyway, the campaign will run until September 9th and can be accessed online.
  
  
• A new, $15.8 million seniors’ living complex opened on the southside. Officials were on hand for speeches and a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The homes offer a rental model that bases the price of rent on household income. MLA for Lethbridge-East Nathan Neudorf said he hopes the newly constructed complex will go a long way towards addressing housing affordability issues for seniors in Lethbridge.
  
  
• The City provided an update on its encampment response. The Clean Sweep Program has responded to 150 calls related to encampments. Some highlights of the response included ​​a total of 1,048 needles and 40 pipes disposed of since June 1st and 1,130 kilograms of debris removed from the Civic Centre area. On Thursday, City Crews were at Civic Centre dropping off Sea-Cans intended to store the belongings of those who were told to vacate the encampment. Individuals have said they plan to set their tents back up as soon as police and crews leave.

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