By Geoff Smith (@GeoffSmithLNN on Twitter)

Mayor pleased with supports, wants to speed up drug crisis response

Dec 27, 2018 | 4:23 AM

LETHBRIDGE – Mayor Chris Spearman is grateful that supports are finally coming in to help the city deal with its drug crisis. Now, he hopes to speed the process along.

In a year-end conversation with LethbridgeNewsNOW, Spearman emphasized that while public awareness of the problem grew considerably during 2018, the city’s actually been working on it for three years.

“We identified (that) the city of Lethbridge had little in terms of supports. That’s also identified in the 2015 provincial mental health study, that the city of Lethbridge was unique in its lack of supports,” Spearman said. “So, we needed to enhance our availability of treatment facilities and enhance harm reduction. Those lobbying efforts have been taking place for the past three years, and finally were rewarded recently with the announcement of $15 million in additional supports for the city of Lethbridge.”

He added that was a result partly of community consultations during October, which helped the city get its message through to the provincial government.

“So, while that was a troubling issue this year, we have many of the supports in place, or will soon be in place, are funded, and will be addressing those issues,” he explained.

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He cautions, though, that it could take 18 months to years to implement those plans. Spearman hopes to work with the city’s partners to move the process forward. He also says the problem will be helped by the peace officer and watch programs approved in the budget.

Speaking of the budget, Spearman is pleased the tax increase was kept to the smallest level in two decades. He explained the challenges they faced from the start.

“We were challenged by the fact that our taxes are comparatively high versus other cities in the province. So, that was a starting point,” he said. “Having said that, we did challenge our administration, also, to absorb inflation over four years and absorb growth. We were starting out with a 1.6 per cent increase to fund additional debt. The debt is associated with the new ATB Leisure Centre and a new fire hall that we anticipate will be built was built into the budget.

“That 1.6 per cent increased to 1.82 with the funding from taxation of eight initiatives. Those included the police initiatives. Ninety-eight initiatives were submitted to City Council. Most were rejected. Some additional initiatives were funded from reserves. But certainly, what we want to do is minimize the tax increase.”

Looking back at the year, Spearman also pointed to accomplishments like the Legacy Park opening, completion of the Whoop-Up Drive and Métis Trail projects, and hiring a new city manager. But with the growth came a growing pain during 2018 – the replacement of downtown parking meters with the new electronic kiosks.

“Using modern methods to pay for parking (is) fairly common,” he said. “So, really, there’s been no increase in the actual parking fees charged, just a different way to pay and more comprehensive parking, if you like. So, I think that we’re trying to treat all areas of the city equally, but there was some community reaction, initially, to the new parking meters and I think that’ll dissipate over time. It’s advances in technology and different ways of paying for parking.”