I served as the Director of Volunteers for the Games, leading the planning and delivery of all volunteer operations. I oversaw registration, training, scheduling, communications, attire, volunteer lounges, and volunteer rally and appreciation events.
Test City Manager Newsletter
Message from the City Manager
Welcome to the first edition of the City Manager Newsletter. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve as City Manager and excited to connect with you through this new quarterly publication.
My wife and I chose this community as the place to raise our three young children and build our future, and we have called Medicine Hat home for the last two years. We are committed to this community and becoming more involved in everything that makes Medicine Hat a great place to live, work, invest, and raise a family.
Over the past ten months, when I began the Interim City Manager role, I have had the opportunity to meet residents, community leaders, businesses, and City employees.
One commonality has become abundantly clear:
people care deeply about this community and are invested in its future.
That passion is one of Medicine Hat's greatest strengths, and it is something I truly appreciate.
It is also one of the reasons we've launched this newsletter.
Strengthening the connection between City Hall and the community we serve
Municipal government delivers hundreds of services and programs every day from maintaining roads, utilities, parks, and facilities, to planning for growth, supporting public safety, and delivering recreation opportunities. Much of the work that keeps our city running happens behind the scenes. While residents see the outcomes of those efforts, they do not always see the people, expertise, planning, and decision-making that make them possible.
This newsletter is intended to help bridge that gap.
Each quarter, we will provide updates on important projects and initiatives but also share stories about the dedicated employees who serve our community, highlight positive outcomes and accomplishments, and offer insight into the work underway across the organization. We will also use this space to answer questions, address common misconceptions, and provide context around complex issues and decisions. Our goal is simple: we want to reach people in our community who are interested in more than a headline or a quick social media post. We want to increase understanding of City services, strengthen trust with our residents, and create a stronger connection between City Hall and the community we serve.
In this edition, you'll find some employee spotlights, updates on significant projects, and examples of how collaboration between the City and community partners is creating positive outcomes for residents. Future editions will continue to feature stories and updates that help explain not only what we are doing, but why we are doing it and how it benefits our community.
I am incredibly optimistic about what lies ahead. While there will always be challenges to navigate, there are also tremendous opportunities before us. I look forward to working with our talented employees, supporting Council's vision, and serving the residents of Medicine Hat as we continue building a strong, sustainable, and prosperous future together.
Thank you for taking the time to read our first newsletter. I hope you find it informative and worthwhile, and I invite you to subscribe and follow along as we share more stories, updates, and insights in the quarters ahead.
Joe Hutter, City Manager
Employee Spotlight
In each edition, we take time to highlight our most important asset - our people.
This summer, Medicine Hat proudly hosted the largest multi-sport competition in our community’s history: the Special Olympics Canada Summer Games. While many City staff had a role to play in the event as part of their day-to-day jobs, I’m inspired by examples of those who generously contributed their personal time and talents to bring the Games to life.
Darla Grasley
Senior Continuous Improvement Analyst
24 years with the City
Terra Petryshyn
Corporate Communications Specialist
22 years with the City
Trampas Brown
Manager, Emergency Management
16 years with the City
1. What was your role in helping organize the Special Olympics Alberta Summer Games in Medicine Hat?
2. What inspired you to volunteer your time for this event?
3. Approximately how many volunteer hours did you contribute leading up to the Games?
4. What was your favourite moment or most memorable experience from the Games?
5. What do events like the Special Olympics mean to our community?
6. In one sentence, what would you say to someone considering volunteering in their community?
City Update
Get up to speed on the most important topics of the day.
Balancing Growth, Infrastructure and Affordability:
Budget 2027-2028
City staff are in the midst of one of our most important exercises: building the budget that will shape Medicine Hat's future. While budgets are often associated with spreadsheets and lengthy meetings, they are really about something much more meaningful: deciding how we invest in the services, infrastructure, and opportunities that residents rely on every day.
As Council prepares to begin deliberations on the 2027-2028 budget, the conversation will centre on a challenge familiar to nearly every household and business: balancing competing priorities within available resources.
Residents want a community that continues to grow and attract investment, jobs, and new families. They also expect safe roads, reliable utilities, accessible recreation facilities, emergency services, parks, trails, and public spaces that are maintained to a high standard. At the same time, everyone feels the impact of rising costs and wants to keep taxes and utility rates as affordable as possible.
The reality is that all three priorities are important, but they don't always move in the same direction.
Think of the municipal budget as a three-legged stool.
Growth
helps create opportunities and strengthens the local economy.
Infrastructure
ensures the community functions safely and reliably.
Affordability
keeps costs manageable for residents and businesses.
Focus too heavily on one leg and the stool becomes unstable. The challenge for Council and Administration is finding the right balance.
So where does the City's money come from?
Property taxes are one part of the picture, but the City's revenues also come from utility operations, user fees, permits, licenses, grants, investment earnings, and dividends from business units. These revenues support everything from police and fire services to road maintenance, parks, transit, recreation facilities, water and wastewater systems, and community programs.
A useful way to think about the budget is to consider the everyday activities most residents encounter in a typical week. If your tap water is safe to drink, your garbage is collected, your street is plowed, your child plays soccer on a maintained field, you visit a recreation facility, or emergency responders arrive when needed, the municipal budget is working behind the scenes.
This year's discussions will also be guided by Council's Strategic Plan and its four strategic priorities:
Fiscal Responsibility
Economic Growth through Asset Expansion
Organizational Effectiveness and Reliable Services
Strong Community Connections
The budget is where City staff move those priorities from ideas to action.
The proposed 2027-2028 budget reflects the reality that inflationary pressures, aging infrastructure, changing service demands, and economic uncertainty continue to affect municipalities across Canada. Administration has identified significant infrastructure renewal requirements and operational pressures while also recommending savings, efficiencies, and targeted investments that support Council's strategic objectives.
Over the next two months, residents will have the opportunity to follow the discussion, learn more about the City's finances, and see firsthand how difficult budget decisions are made. There will be spirited debate, thoughtful questions, and careful consideration of trade-offs – because there is no such thing as a budget that funds everything.
There is, however, a commitment to responsible stewardship. At its core, the 2027-2028 budget is about ensuring Medicine Hat remains a community that is growing, well-maintained, and affordable not just today, but for future generations.
The budget will be presented during the City Council meetings on November 2 and 16.
You can attend the meetings in person or watch online.
Watch meetings online Learn more about the City's budgeting process
Feature Project
Reflecting on past, current and future projects provides residents an opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of important community topics.
Building a Path Forward: The Riverside Corridor Journey
When City Council approved the preferred design for the Riverside Corridor project in September, it marked the conclusion of one of the most visible and closely followed planning discussions in recent memory.
For months, residents shared their views on the future of an important community corridor. Questions around road narrowing, traffic movement, safety, accessibility, active transportation, neighbourhood character, and long-term community growth generated passionate discussion and, at times, spirited commentary.
The strong public interest reflected something positive:
people care deeply about their city and the choices that shape it.
May 27, 2026 Open House
Some residents emphasized maintaining vehicle capacity and preserving current traffic operations. Others championed a more transformative approach focused on active transportation, enhanced public spaces, and broader community-building objectives. Many supported elements of both. Reconciling those perspectives was never going to be easy.
In public projects, there is often an expectation that engagement will reveal a single preferred path forward. More often, it reveals the trade-offs. Every option carries benefits, costs, opportunities, and compromises. The challenge for administration is to present those realities clearly, and the responsibility for Council is to weigh them and make a decision in the community's best interest.
Not everyone saw their preferred outcome reflected in the final decision. For some, the approved design represented a measured response to concerns raised throughout the process. For others, it perhaps felt like a missed opportunity to shift the vision for the corridor.
Both perspectives are part of the story.
What deserves recognition is the professionalism and perseverance demonstrated by City staff throughout the process. Amid intense scrutiny, deeply held opinions – and at times even misinformation and unfounded accusations – teams across the organization remained respectful and focused on listening, providing evidence-based information and refining options for Council’s consideration.
Working Group for Accessibility and Inclusion
The Riverside Corridor project is a reminder that meaningful public engagement is not measured by unanimous agreement. It is measured by a willingness to listen, learn, and thoughtfully navigate difficult choices. While opinions on the outcome may differ, the commitment of City staff to that process helped ensure Council's decision was informed by both technical expertise and the voices of the community they serve.
To learn more about this project and the design decision, visit https://shapeyourcity.medicinehat.ca/riversidecorridor
Community Impact
Our Community Impact stories emphasize how community partnerships bring important perspectives to City-led projects, ultimately resulting in better outcomes.
Braiding Western and Indigenous ways of working:
Lessons from the Saamis Tepee Dancefloor Resurfacing project
Submitted by Safira Lachapelle, Public Participation Specialist, City of Medicine Hat
At first glance, the Saamis Tepee Dancefloor Resurfacing Project was a straightforward infrastructure project: replace the rutted shale dancefloor with a surface better suited for cultural use.
What it became was an example of reconciliACTION and what it means to blend Indigenous and municipal ways of working together.
The project began after Indigenous community members shared concerns, through the City’s Truth & Reconciliation Recommendations Committee, that the existing shale surface had become uneven, abrasive, and difficult for dancing in moccasins and regalia. Rather than determining a solution on our own, the City partnered with Miywasin Friendship Centre and invited Elders, cultural leaders, dancers, knowledge keepers and community members connected to this place to help shape the future of the space.
Over two years, the project team gathered with community members, listened to stories and experiences, explored design options, tested surfaces, visited other pow wow spaces, and worked together to understand what would make the site function as a living cultural space. Community members helped identify not only the right dancefloor surface, but also broader needs related to gathering, ceremony, learning, and connection.
From the beginning, the project was guided by several strands that needed to be woven together: Indigenous leadership, diverse and inclusive community voices, co-design, Indigenous engineering expertise, and a dancefloor that felt good beneath moccasins. Alongside these were the City's responsibilities for accessibility, safety, sound engineering, maintenance, and budget stewardship. Rather than prioritizing one set of needs over another, the work became an exercise in braiding them together to create a solution that reflected both Indigenous and municipal ways of working.
Municipal governments often work through plans, timelines, budgets, procurement processes, and technical requirements. Indigenous ways of working often place relationships, trust, lived experience, and community connection at the centre of decision-making. These approaches can sometimes feel at odds with one another.
At times, the pace of municipal decision-making created pressure. At other times, community conversations revealed new considerations that required us to slow down and rethink our assumptions. We learned that relationship-building was not separate from the work. It was the work.
We also learned that meaningful partnership requires more than inviting people to participate. It requires sharing decisions, supporting participation, respecting protocol, and creating space for Indigenous perspectives to influence outcomes in tangible ways.
The result is a renewed dancefloor that better supports dancing, ceremony, cultural celebration, and community gathering (for all) beneath one of Medicine Hat's most recognized landmarks. More importantly, the project strengthened relationships between the City, Miywasin Friendship Centre, Elders, cultural leaders, and community members.
For local government, reconciliation is often discussed in broad terms. This project showed us what it can look like in practice, where people come together, listen to one another, navigate tensions with respect, and create something better than either could have achieved alone. Like a braid, the outcome is strongest when every strand remains visible, valued, and connected.
Ask the City Manager
Have a question about City services, projects, priorities, or how decisions are made? I'd love to hear from you.
Each month, I'll select a couple of questions from residents to answer in a future newsletter.
Whether you're wondering about a major project, a City process, or something you've always wanted to ask, send it my way.
The most helpful questions are the ones that come from a place of curiosity, tackle issues that matter to our community, and help others better understand how local government works.
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