December 5, 2024
City of Medicine Hat
Consider a career move to Medicine Hat - where bright ideas shine.
Please enjoy this week's edition of Neat to Know, a roundup of City news, updates, and other important information. You can expect to see the week's most interesting content and even some that may have not been delivered through our regular channels.
Heads up readers: NTK will not be published the weeks of December 26 and January 2. We hope you have a happy and healthy holiday season!
I do not like green eggs and scam" - scam alert
Please be aware of a telephone scam where the caller acts as a City of Medicine Hat representative and asks the resident to phone another number to pay an outstanding balance. That other number replicates the City’s call service to seem credible.
The City of Medicine Hat does not request payment by telephone and does not have a 1-800 or 1-888 telephone number.
If a caller claims you owe money to the City of Medicine Hat, hang up and dial the number on your utility or tax statements, or call our Customer Care Call Centre directly at 403-529-8111.
Stay vigilant and beware.
Ho Ho Ho-liday hours
As the festive statutory holidays approach, we want to remind you that the City’s administrative buildings will be closed on:
Recreation and cultural facilities may have different holiday hours. Avoid a wasted trip – check first at medicinehat.ca/HolidayHours.
This is also a great time to double check your waste collection day over the holidays so you don’t get stuck with a smelly turkey carcass and mountain of wrapping paper hanging around too long. And while you’re at it – download the 2025 schedule so you’re ready when the calendar flips!
Ice, ice (conditions) baby
As Vanilla Ice should have said:?“Alright, stop. Grab your skates and listen. Check out our page full of ice conditions.”
It's winter out there and many of the City's outdoor rinks and toboggan hills are either ready or nearly ready to be used! Our rinks and ponds are managed by volunteers through the Adopt-a-rink program and ice conditions are reported weekly on rinks and ponds map.
Updates are provided weekly on Friday afternoons. Check out the outdoor rinks and ponds map tomorrow afternoon for the latest conditions.
With a few days with forecasted highs above freezing, these conditions may change, so we ask for your patience as we wait for mother nature to cooperate with the skating and toboggan season.
New WestJet schedule in effect
As mentioned in last week’s Neat to Know, WestJet’s new flight schedule came into effect this morning for its route between Medicine Hat and Calgary!
As of December 5, the new schedule on WestJet’s YXH–YYC route has a slightly later departure from Medicine Hat, and arrives back home earlier in the evening:
Medicine Hat to Calgary
Calgary to Medicine Hat
WestJet notes that the change provides a more convenient schedule and allows travellers returning to Medicine Hat to connect through Calgary from 30-plus destinations in their network, reducing long layovers in Calgary.
The Medicine Hat departure time still allows travellers to access WestJet’s bank of connecting flights out of Calgary each morning.
For more information and to check flight times, visit the WestJet Flight Schedule page at:
eBilling Contest
Don't let a postal strike put you behind. You can go paperless and always stay updated on your bills – and a little bonus, you could also win a $500 Gift Card! Visit medicinehat.ca/paperless and register for eBilling before December 12, 2024 to enter.
Already an eBilling User? Good news - you're automatically entered to win!
Service through the postal strike
Customers are still responsible to pay utility statements and invoices on time despite a mailing disruption. Check your eBilling account or contact us to check your balances.
[email protected]?or?403-529-8111
Visit medicinehat.ca/CanadaPostStrike for details.
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Holiday fire safety tips
The holidays are a time for celebration with family and friends. Unfortunately, they are also a time when preventable residential fires and incidents increase across Canada—and our community is no exception. Medicine Hat Fire and Emergency Services wants to help you stay safe this season. Here are some holiday fire safety tips to protect your home, loved ones, and pets:
And as always, ensure that you have working smoke alarms in the home, and in case of an emergency, call 9-1-1. For more holiday safety tips, visit: medicinehat.ca/fire.
City Council heard a presentation about Halo Air Ambulance and debated the 2025-2026 budget at last Monday’s meeting. Read the Council Highlights for details.
You can even subscribe to receive Council Highlights right in your inbox by selecting the Council Highlights box at?subscribe.medicinehat.ca.
Want to attend a council meeting in-person? City Council meets on the first and third Monday of each month at City Hall.
It’s snow joke: snow clearing and snow removal are different!
City crews activated nighttime snow removal operations this week to pick up the lion’s share of the snow before the weather warmed. When the temperatures are hovering around zero degrees, catch basins may remain frozen, which leaves nowhere for melting snow to go.
But did you know that snow removal means something quite different than snow clearing? They are both strategic approaches to handling snow and ice, but in very different deployments.
Snow clearing plows snow off the roadway to make it safe, usually supplemented with traction control like sand or gravel.
A snow removal operation, on the other hand, requires the snow to be graded (windrowed), loaded onto trucks and deposited at one of the designated snow disposal sites. It is quite an impressive sight to see but takes up a lot of roadway all at once, so we try to do this work at night when there is less traffic.
Want to learn more on our snow and ice control program operations? Visit the program page on our website:
CPKC Holiday Train featuring American Authors and KT Tunstall
Sunday, December 8 around 3:15 p.m. at Queen & North Railway Street East of CPKC Station
The Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) Holiday Train rolls through Medicine Hat on Sunday for its 26th year of spreading holiday cheer and raising money, food and awareness for people struggling with food insecurity. CPKC donates to the local food bank at each stop and encourages all attendees to make a monetary or heart-healthy food donation.
New Year’s Eve Fest
Give 2024 an epic goodbye at New Year’s Eve Fest, our FREE total facility take-over event! Join in the fun with family activities all afternoon on Tuesday, December 31 from 1-4PM. ?You can grab tickets to score a spot swimming and for Nerf Battles starting December 20 on tixx.ca plus take in all the other festive activities throughout the afternoon! Best of all, the New Year’s Eve countdown! Early bedtimes are no excuse to miss out on the fun. Gather together in the lobby to ring in the New Year at 3:45 p.m.
What’s the bright idea? Upcoming traffic light installation
Traffic lights will be installed at a pair of downtown intersections on 3 Street SE this coming weekend.
Crews will be removing temporary three-way stop signage on 3 Street SE at 5 Avenue SE and 6 Avenue SE, and installing traffic lights in their place.
The work is anticipated to start and be completed on Saturday, December 7, weather permitting.
Balancing the needs of today with the requirements of tomorrow
On Monday, December 2, City Council tabled a motion to adopt the 2025-2026 Budget but deferred the decision to the December 16 meeting after much discussion and debate.
The City of Medicine Hat’s 2025-2026 budget proposes a 5.6% property tax increase in 2025 and another 5.6% in 2026. It reflects administration’s commitment to sustained prosperity and well-being of our community, including competitive taxes and utility charges, while ensuring fiscal capacity and flexibility to address the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
Read the proposed budget, highlights, business plans, and cases for new growth opportunities at: