Lethbridge’s mayor says the decision to release closed-session documents related to the Lethbridge and District Exhibition was to be completely transparent with the community.
City of Lethbridge Mayor Blaine Hyggen says city council decided to release the documents just over a year ago to share all the information the city has that explains how the LDE got to the point it did, where the city stepped in to take over control.
“Any questions, comments, suggestions, the work that was thought should be done, work that was done and maybe shouldn’t have been done, I think this information is important for the public to see and to also see what’s being done now,” Hyggen says. “I’ve always made the comment in council chambers that it’s losing less and I think that’s important. I know that’s a tough pill to swallow at times, but I liken it to some of the other facilities that we have, if it’s rinks or if it’s pools, etc… Some of these do [have] a cost element to it for the community because it benefits the community, so we just want to make sure that cost is as low as possible on the taxpayers.”
He explains the reason the 566 pages released Tuesday originally were confidential was because they had to deal with land, legal or labour information.
“If there’s a legal issue that’s ongoing, of course, we don’t want to have that in the community until it’s dealt with, as well as, another big part is labour. We have a lot of folks that are working over there, and we didn’t want instability going through this as they’re doing an incredible job in keeping that business running, and so we thought it’s important to keep these things confidential until said time to release, which is now.”
Hyggen says the documents released is all the information the city has to date. He states anything regarding an ongoing criminal investigation by police the information the city has is that the information was turned over to the police and they opened an investigation, otherwise they have no other information.
However, any other questions people may have the mayor says will most likely be answered by going through the documents released Tuesday.
The documents will include information about the LDE construction between 2021 and 2023 on the Agri-Food Hub and Trade Centre that received more than $70 million in funding from the Government of Alberta, the City of Lethbridge, Lethbridge County and the Government of Canada. As well the 2023 uncovering of LDE was experiencing significant financial challenges despite the project being completed and at the time was on the verge of having to shut down operations. At this time the LDE and city signed a memorandum of understanding with the city hiring an intern Chief Executive Officer who has worked with city administration.
The released report from the city can be found here.
