Shaping Medicine Hat's Future

Today the Porch welcomes City Councillor Bill Cocks. He shares insights on local governance, city development, budget strategies, and the impact of social media on politics. Discover how experienced leadership navigates challenges and shapes the future of Medicine Hat.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

04:58 Challenges in City Council and Budget Discussions

09:56 The Role of Social Media in Governance

14:49 Traffic Management and Urban Planning

19:36 Economic Development and Future Prospects

We explore the intricacies of city council operations through the eyes of Councillor Bill Cocks, who shares his experiences and strategies for effective governance. Whether you’re a citizen looking to understand local government or a politician seeking to improve your council's dynamics.

About Councillor Bill Cocks

Bill Cocks has been a dedicated member of the city council several times since first running in 1998. He has served multiple terms and brings a wealth of experience to local governance. Known for his tenacity and commitment to transparency, Bill has navigated various challenges throughout his tenure, making him a respected figure in the community. His insights into council dynamics and problem-solving are invaluable for anyone interested in local politics.

The Importance of Open Communication in City Council

Effective communication is crucial in a city council setting, as it fosters collaboration and understanding among members. CouncillorCocks emphasizes the need for open dialogue, stating, "This council is very different. We function in ultimately the same ways, but we benefit from being open communicators. They want to talk about everything." However, he admits that discussions can sometimes feel overwhelming. "Sometimes I get a little weary, thinking we’re talking this thing to death. Let's just go into council and debate this and vote and see what happens."

Tackling Budget Challenges

As with any governing body, budget discussions can become contentious. Councillor Cocks highlights the ongoing budget discussions and the challenges that arise during this process. "You're gonna see the challenge in the next few months as we begin our budget discussions."

Conclusion

Navigating the complexities of city council requires effective communication, strategic budgeting, and a positive environment. CouncillorBill Cocks’s insights provide a roadmap for current and aspiring council members to foster collaboration and enhance governance. By prioritizing open dialogue and community engagement, councils can address challenges effectively and serve their constituents better.

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Transcript

0:00

Hey, this is Brian again, and I'd like to ask you to do a favor. We can't do this work without people like you. So if you can, please like, share, subscribe, tell your friends about bring back the porch. this council is very different. We function in ultimately the same ways. I think we we benefit from from being open communicators. And this council that I've been elected to is very about it's communication. They want to talk about everything. They want to talk. Sometimes I get a little weary. I'm thinking we're talking this thing to death. Let's just go into council and debate this and vote and see what happens. But it's a very good council. We like each other. Respect each other. Have fun together. And in that regard. That's a that's a new experience for me. This episode will bring back the porch. Brought to you by Bernie Leahy, River Street Realty. Let's get you home. Well, if you were watching the last City Council meeting in the month of May, you saw my guest do something that I had not seen at a city council meeting some time. Councilor Bill Cox took administration to task for foot dragging on a request that you had made back in October, I think. November. November to find out why. License fees for liquor stores in medicine that went up by. I forget how much it was. 800%. 800%. And I told you in my little note when I invited you to come on and said that you were channeling your inner Harry Truman, you know, the buck stops here. You bet. And give them hell, Harry. So welcome to the porch. Well, thank you very much. It's good to be here. Now, has you or have you heard anything in the interim? Have they almost snapped to it? Almost immediately. And. As so many things in bureaucracy, there was a gaffe and I ended up having to. Well, I guess I didn't have to, but I did offer an apology to Mr. Popoff. He had, in fact, done exactly what he said he was going to do when we had that orientation session. And I raised this issue, and he said, you know, we really want to review our philosophy on business licenses. We will get on that. And then I heard nothing. And then I had the complaints that I'd heard during the campaign reiterated. And and I brought them to the attention of the chair of DNI Development and Infrastructure. And the whole thing just kind of got bogged down. And the decision from Councilor Muhammad in DNI was, we're not going to do anything about it. It's going to get resolved in the next budget cycle, or we will look at it in the next budget cycle. And I said, not good enough. Not good enough. The day after the meeting, the CEO, our interim CEO. Brought a memo to my attention that he had received from Mr. Popoff, doing exactly what he said he was going to do during the orientation. And that was here's the philosophy on business licenses. How can we adjust that? And I said, you know, the answer is probably in here. And that's what I was anticipating. And why didn't that come to committee and on to council as it should have? I haven't had a satisfactory explanation on that one, but I was told that it went as far as administrative committee, which is basically the mayor and all of the executive team. They kind of they meet weekly and make major sort of directional decisions about this. Needs to go to that committee. This needs my attention. That needs your attention. And it went that's where it appeared. And that's where it just kind of got punted and installed. So yeah, sometimes I guess you just have to give them hell and bingo, you get a result that could have been available months ago. Yeah. But now for the people who had to fork up that extra 800% on their license fee, what's the solution? And that remains to be determined. And they're looking at, well, it'd be a 900, another 100% on top of what they the increase that they encountered in 2020 I guess it was 2025. They're going to get it again in 2026. But I'm fairly confident the CEO said we can we can find a solution for this and we can do it sooner than the fourth quarter. So okay, well, I guess we'll put a bookmark on that and see where it goes. We will. I know that you'll be like a dog on a bone. You won't let it go. I won't know. I wanted to talk to you about being on council again for your fifth time. Fifth term? Yeah. You were elected in 1998 and three consecutive three year terms until 2007. Yes. When you wanted to challenge for mayor. Correct. And you were unsuccessful, then you came back in 2013, I believe, and got a four year term. Yes. So you're now working on 13 plus years of experience as a counselor? I am indeed I am indeed now. From your perspective, how has it changed from that rookie counselor back in 1998, how city council functions, how city administration functions? It has really changed. Each council has its own characteristics depending on who gets elected and who's there. Back in 2000. Sorry, 1998. When I was first elected, I was the new kid on the block. I had a very they were all the alumni of many years and much experience on city council. Ted Grimm was mayor, Ken Sauer, Wayne Craven, George Renner, Kathy Mandeville. I'm going to forget some names here, Graham Kelly Graham Kelly. Thank you. So it was a learning curve for me, but I learned from some of the best and it was good. And this council is very different. We function in ultimately the same ways. I think we we benefit from from being open communicators. And this council that I've been elected to is very about it's communication. They want to talk about everything. They want to talk. Sometimes I get a little weary. I'm thinking we're talking this thing to death. Let's just go into council and debate this and vote and see what happens. But it's a very good council. We like each other. Respect each other. Have fun together. And in that regard. That's a that's a new experience for me. Yeah. The having fun together part. Yeah I was going to I had written down here to ask you about the different personalities of the councils you've been on, and I guess each one has its own, I guess, feeling it does. It definitely does. And it it depends to some extent on the mayor. It just depends on the personalities. We this council, we all got to know each other quite well. During the campaign we would go to campaign events and sometimes we outnumbered the voters at the event. So we ended up talking to each other and we so we got to know each other. We got to understand each other a bit, learn about each other. There was nothing salacious or. Particularly divisive during the campaign, and once we got elected and into orientation, it became apparent that we we liked each other. We enjoyed each other's company. Brian Varga invited us to a Christmas party in his rumpus room in the basement of his house. And that was in November. And yeah, we played games and sort of truth or dare, and it was silly, but it was fun and and we let our hair down with each other. So how do you think that this council is going to do going into the next three and a half years? Now you're going to see the challenge in the next few months as we begin our budget discussions. And we saw some of them arise when we went to set the tax rate, some wanted zero, some were saying, we need to follow administration's advice and go to 6.9. We ended up with a compromise and. We're going to see more of that. But I think it's going to be it's going to be fine because we respect each other. It's not ad hominem. We're not attacking each other. We're debating positions and political platforms. Yeah. Do you think that this council will continue to be harmonious, or do you think that maybe personalities might eventually start to fracture and maybe become more dysfunctional? That's always a possibility. And I my my dander was ruffled that night in May. And yeah, I got a bit bristly, not just with administration, but with some of my fellow councilors. And the mayor tried to calm me down, and I wasn't being calmed down. You weren't going to come down from the from the legend, not from that ledge. But what I'm seeing is we can get a little hot and bothered. People aren't going to take it personally, even if it starts to edge in that direction. I think we're going to do okay. That possibility is always there and we'll see where it gets to. We are going to see some strong differences, I think, in the next few months, but I think it's going to be okay. Now, you mentioned the budget. That's the big one that I think you're just beginning to look at for 2027. They're having they had their first there's a budget committee. They had their first meeting yesterday. They're kind of doing some preliminary direction setting. Council has we've talked this over in closed session and given our perspectives on, on what we might be prepared to cut, what we are prepared to sacrifice, what we don't want to see sacrificed, how we want to get going on this. But yeah, we're going to be getting into some, some heavier discussions. And I think all I think there's a general sense that we want to amongst all of us, we want to tighten the budget. And we think that by and large, that can be done without sacrificing a lot of services. We think there's some fat in the fire here. Okay. And I think one of the things we feel fairly confident about our share together, I guess would be the way to put it, is we're a little over employed. I've heard that we've got just a few too many people on the payroll, and we'd like to see that tighten up and people having to work a little harder and get a little more accomplished in their day than they have been getting accomplished. But and it will vary from department to department, and I think it will be mostly in middle management that we see some redundancies that can be eliminated. You see a line by line review. We've talked about that. What what's the term they used. It's going to allude me now budget by priority budgeting I think that's the term they use priority budgeting line by line. Not so much. But I think we are we do want to see a shift in the way we approach the budget. We're sitting on some pretty healthy reserves. That's not a bad thing. And we do dip into them because budget is only a plan. It's not set in stone. Things go over, things go under, things don't get done that you thought were going to get done. There's a whole bunch of reasons for that. So. How we use the reserves. Of course, every time you take money out of the reserves, you're also taking income from. And we make a pretty good return on our investment. Yeah, we did very well last year. It won't necessarily always be that good, but you so when you take the money out of reserve, you're also taking it out of income. Generation might be good for the taxpayer in one sense, but it puts pressure on the budget in another way. I mean, curious to get your take on how when you started in 1998, there was no social media? Social media today is the court of public opinion. And, you know, depending on which way the algorithms go, you're either geniuses or you're dunces. I'm of an age, Brian, and so are you. Where I don't use social media very much, I. I have a Facebook page. I even have a city councilor Facebook page. I visited a lot during the campaign, but I haven't been back there very much. I don't use social media and I ignore it. And my advice to my fellow councilors is that they need to ignore it to. It's a very vocal minority and they are very opinionated. They have the answers and they want you to take their advice. And if you don't, you're a goofball and a fool. So I often hear things raised around the council table. Oh, this is going on on Facebook. Oh, this. You should be reading your social media. Oh, this whole lot X has got something. And I just go, oh, really? Well, isn't that interesting? I sleep better I think, than most of them. It's kind of like, you know, if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there, does it still make noise? Yeah I agree. And so yeah, it's there. I don't worry about it very much. But I was never one. And maybe that's why I've suffered a couple defeats in past elections. I was never one to make decisions based on the way the wind was blowing. No, that was never my approach, and I didn't respect politicians who used that approach, and I still don't. I listened to the material. I listened to the advice of our administration, the expert consultants that they bring in. And I make my decisions based on what I think is best for the city as a whole. There will be some winners and some losers and but overall, that's the way I make decisions, and I think that's the way they should be made. So I don't pay a lot of attention to social media. Okay. Social media has been very harsh on the Riverside Road plan. People on Facebook have been accusing the administration of already having their minds made up. They're not changing anything. They're not listening to us. As the chair of the committee that I think this falls under, how much are you watching that? Actually, it doesn't fall under my chairman, not under public works. It's under public services. Okay. Public services, public works falls under development and infrastructure. And the chairman of that is Yusuf Mohammed. Okay. And I forget the other committee members, but yeah, but I live on Riverside. I live on Third Street. As a matter of fact, at a busy intersection with the that intersects with the commercial zone, I'm I love it there. I really like Riverside. I enjoy living in a mixed use neighborhood. Sometimes people get a bee in their bonnet, and once you take a position, it's hard to back off, back down, or retreat or compromise. Administration hasn't made they have made changes to the Third Street plan. It is certainly not the Division Avenue plan, which is what brought this whole topic into some disrepute and properly so properly so I think we made this is before my term. Of course, there were serious mistakes made in the approach to Division Avenue. Having said that, Third Street is not going to be narrowed. They keep saying why are they narrowing the street? Why are they narrowing the street? They're not going to be narrowing the street. It's going to be the same width. It's going to be made more uniform in terms of the little inches in increments, but it's basically going to be the same confirmation parking lane on each side of the street and a driving lane to driving lanes. They are going to do some bump outs They've got better design on those bump outs now so that you can. The turning radius is you don't have to go so far out into the street. Division Avenue is ridiculous that way. Ridiculous. Third Street is not going to be that way. And there aren't going to be that many of them. They're going to be. They're trying to make the street look narrower. That's the optics. Yes. That's the optics they want to create to slow people down, slow traffic down. There is some some speeding goes on over there, I think because it's kind of slightly out of sight, out of mind. It's not high enforcement priority. Small neighborhood, one street, often, not much traffic on it. Somebody goes barreling down there on a motorbike or a car. I would like to see it slowed, the traffic slowed down, and I think the plan they have in place will do that. Isn't that funny that a so-called traffic calming got everybody riled up? That is that is an interesting juxtaposition. I hadn't really thought of it that way, but it there were so many obvious mistakes on Division Avenue, and I can see why people are upset there. I don't know why they didn't plant some lovely trees and make that a tree lined boulevard if they were going to narrow the street. I'm not sure they needed to narrow the street. I never thought speeding was a big problem on Division Avenue. I think speeding can be a bit of a problem on third Street because it's it is residential and homes front onto that street. They don't. There are a few homes that have their side facing the street, the homes front onto that street. They back out of their driveways onto that street. So we need to slow traffic down there. That's the objective. I have some issues with the multi-purpose. What are they calling that? The multi-purpose lane for walking and biking. Walking and biking? I'm not sure we need that. We'll see how the public input plays out on that one. I think bikers, you know, people that want to want to bike, commute, to work on a bike, whatever, just use Second Street. It's a very quiet street. Just go down the road. You don't need a bike lane where you're going to be competing with pedestrians anyway, like I think. Leave the sidewalk alone. Okay. One thing that I think in the campaign you were talking about was the need to make sure that council is on, I guess, in sync with the new CEO. Yes, we are now, I think six months, seven months after the election and we still haven't heard if we have a new cow, I know certain things that I can't really reveal at this point, but I think there's going to be an announcement very soon. Very soon. I, for one, I mean, council's got along very well. I for one said, folks, there's you know, we're getting along, we're talking we've I think restored to a significant measure the public's confidence in their council and that we are approaching things in the right way. But what have we accomplished? Job one was to find a new CEO. Job two, and I think in that order, was to develop a strategic plan. We haven't released our strategic plan yet either. That's not because we haven't been working on it. I think we've maybe we've taken a little longer, certainly a little longer than I was hoping. I sent an email to my fellow councilors. Oh, at least a month ago, maybe six weeks ago. And I was saying, these two jobs need to be taken care of, and I haven't heard much about them in the last little while. I've heard quite a bit in the in the quite recent term, and you're going to see things presented on both fronts very, very soon. Put another bookmark on that one. Okay. City clerk is also a position that is open. It is not open anymore. Oh, we have hired a city clerk. I don't know if I would think it was announced the public because it was announced to start. I saw it, but that doesn't mean I don't know how much fanfare it got. She is not in place yet that in terms of having moved to medicine and gotten into her office, but that is anticipated to happen before the end of June. Okay, so we have a city clerk. Southside Recreation Center was a hot topic in the election. And then since then, we've heard about Urban Hens and having a drink in a park, but that one just sort of very quiet again. So that is my committee, public services. I did ask our interim managing director, Lee, to bring that back to committee. Like what's going on? We basically put a hold and that's the last I heard of it. We've looked at that in closed committee and in closed council. There have been other developments. The Cypress County are wanting to put in some ice surfaces in Dunmore. We thought they might partner with us in Medicine Hat. Kind of caught us a little off guard. There are several things there. And as we go into the budget discussion, these will become priorities. It it's on the radar screen. It's not lost. Another thing to and I said this in the campaign when everybody was talking about economic development, I said, I think economic development has been an issue in every election campaign. And the almost 50 years that I've been covering the city. Yeah. So somebody is not doing it right. But you were recently in Glasgow, Scotland, and you related to me what a happening place it is. I said to you, well, how do we get that to happen here? I am not sure that I have the answer to that specific question. Higher density living does do quite a bit there. I know we all like our and I'm included in that. I like my single. Well, I'm not detached anymore. I'm in a townhouse, but we like our yards and so forth. But they've got a significant population based there and it animates their retail sector, their entertainment and restaurant sector. You better have a reservation if you want to go to a nice restaurant or be prepared to stand at the door for a while. If you're just going into a pub, they're busy. We need some more of that. I feel that Medicine Hat is stagnated. I know the economic development officer for the City of Medicine Hat would say, well, no, no, we you know, we're gaining as much as we're losing. And and I know people would love to see, you know, a big industrial development come to Medicine Hat. I'm not averse to that. But those opportunities are few and far between. We were just at, Well, I was, and the mayor and the chairman of energy editor, I'm on the energy committee, so that that's why we were invited to the ribbon cutting at CanCarb. They just commissioned a new solar field. It's going to generate enough electricity to serve their plant. It's going to be for their use only. They've already got a waste heat, electric generating thing that's been going for 25 years, 25 years. Proven, proven. They've the executive team yesterday all had jackets with 25th anniversary of the waste heat generator. There's a very good case of a of a an industrial corporate presence in Medicine Hat that has been very positive for a very long time. The investment was $7 million. They used a local. Well, it started out locally and I was told yesterday that Hat Smart has really got what got the firm that put in the electrical installation. I'm forgetting the name of the token. My memory. Anyway, they they started in Medicine Hat their head offices now in Toronto. We all signed an electric panel. Which two of them were going to put one. They're going to put one there at the plant. They're going to take one back to their head office in Toronto so that they can show to other prospective clients. See, this is what we did in Medicine Hat. Okay. So things there are things happening. But overall it feels sluggish. The whole economy generally, I mean we're just hearing technical recession and technical recession. And I think we sense that here. I'm not sure that Alberta senses it, because growth in Calgary is beyond their capacity to keep up with it. Poor Alberta, you know, we're just so hard done by yet. We have the highest incomes, the best infrastructure. We're not doing so bad here. And population increases. We lead the country with people migrating here, both from the world and from other parts of Canada. So Alberta seems to be in a good position. And and Medicine Hat is to we just need to learn how to take better advantage of it. Well, development would make your budget deliberations a whole lot easier. It would if we could grow that tax base. It would help a lot. Bill, thank you for the visit. Thank you very much. It's great to be opposite the desk with you again. Yes. Old timesOld times.