Business
Downtown Red Deer: safe, fun and open for business!
By Mark Weber
With summer just around the corner, downtown Red Deer is all the more bustling with fun events and even more local businesses to check out. But there are a few misconceptions about the area that persist, and that can even prevent some folks from visiting the city’s increasingly vibrant core. “Downtown Red Deer has an always lot of good things going for it,” explained Amanda Gould, executive director of the Downtown Business Association. “Sometimes, that is outweighed by the perception people have of downtown. “What we need to remember is all that has been happening downtown, what with the murals, the events, the alley upgrades – there are a lot of good things happening. And it’s making it such a great destination to come and visit and to also set up your business,” she added.
“We have seen, over the last year, an increase of 50 new businesses downtown. It’s great news, and the downtown is a great place to go.” As mentioned, however, certain misconceptions about the downtown area persist including that
there is a significant parking problem. “We absolutely do not have a parking issue,” noted Gould. Visitors may not always be able to park directly in front of their destinations, particularly if they are in a facility with lots of other businesses and agencies, but there are typically plenty of places to park nearby if you are prepared for a short jaunt. “If you were to travel just a half a block down the street, or even a block down, you will find there are usually plenty of spaces. We are lucky that our downtown is walkable as well.”
She also mentioned that some residents believe that downtown Red Deer is unsafe. “Again, this is a misperception – it’s not the reality of it,” she said. “We are so lucky as a neighbourhood downtown to have our own RCMP policing unit everyday – they chat with business owners and help them solve any safety issues they may come into contact with,” she said. “There is a team of seven on that unit, and surely that makes downtown one of the safest places to be.”
As to the surge in businesses, Gould noted that reasonable rents attract local entrepreneurs to launch ventures there as well – nicely adding to the growing variety of businesses in the area. It’s yet another plus for Red Deer residents.
In the meantime, one of downtown’s most prominent features – the Ross Street Patio – is really starting to liven up these days with the warmer weather and regularly scheduled musical performances. ‘Music on the Ross Street Patio’ is a free event and is open to all ages. Performances run from 4:30 –7:30 p.m. on show nights. Another annual favourite, the Downtown Market, kicks off on Wednesday, May 25. An accredited farmers’ market, visitors are invited to come down and purchase all their fresh fruits and veggies between 3:30 and 6:30 p.m. each Wednesday. Live music on the Ross Street Patio is also a key feature on Wednesdays.
Gould added that Friday, May 27, is the official kick-off to summer on the Ross Street Patio. To celebrate, they have partnered with Sawback Brewing to introduce a limited-edition Ross Street Patio beer which is super exciting, she explained. “Free samples will be available at 5 p.m. that day (May 27). There will also be music and other activities. The special beer, featured at several downtown restaurants, will be available through the summer.
Looking into June, performances on the Patio will run on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. “Businesses are now opening up their patios – and we’ve got the music happening on the Patio, so we are really starting to see a lot more people coming down, spending some time outside and enjoying the live music that we are putting on,” she said.
For more about the Downtown Business Association and all that is planned for the Ross Street Patio, find them on Facebook or visit www.downtownreddeer.com.
Legislators had 24 hours to read through 1,547 pages. Ramaswamy read them. Musk presented an alternative. The process collapsed.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are flexing their muscles even before President Elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, spiking a bipartisan spending bill. The bill was introduced on Tuesday with voting scheduled for Wednesday. Legislators were under massive pressure to approve of the spending bill or risk a government shut down. Problem is, the bill was over 1,500 pages long!
Chances are, the bill would have passed and in the ensuing weeks as details became known the public would have been outraged by all the extra plans to spend / waste taxpayer dollars. Legislators would have apologized by saying they simply had no time to read everything and they were desperate to avoid a shut down.
That’s where the new DOGE comes in. First Ramaswamy somehow read the bill and posted a video to TikTok and X to inform voters what they were going to be paying for in this new bill.
@vivekramaswamy Congress wants to waste your money without telling you, make sure that doesn’t happen
From MXMNews
The newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, successfully campaigned to halt the bipartisan continuing resolution (CR) in Congress. Musk and Ramaswamy took to X, rallying conservatives against the 1,547-page stopgap funding measure they argue is riddled with wasteful spending and unnecessary policy provisions.
Musk, a billionaire entrepreneur and vocal advocate for government reform, characterized the bill as a “pork-barrel” monstrosity. “Unless @DOGE ends the careers of deceitful, pork-barrel politicians, the waste and corruption will never stop,” Musk posted on X, adding that lawmakers who support the bill should be “voted out in two years.”
Meanwhile, Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate and DOGE co-chair, proposed an alternative to the bulky spending bill. Sharing a draft of his one-page resolution, he described it as a minimalist approach that avoids exacerbating historical spending excesses. “This is what a clean CR looks like,” he wrote, emphasizing the need for fiscal restraint.
Musk and Ramaswamy posted this to X.
Shorter = better. This bill is only 116 pages, instead of 1,500+ pages. Took a LOT less time to read. Glad to see the following garbage from yesterday’s bill removed in the current version: – Congressional pay raise/health benefits – 17 miscellaneous commerce bills – Random new pandemic policies, like funding for “biocontainment research laboratories” – Renewal of the “Global Engagement Center,” a key player in the federal censorship state
In record time, the public was informed, politicians were influenced by outraged taxpayers, and politicians blamed each other for a faulty bill and were forced to go back to the drawing board.
It’s all explained very well in this video presentation from Kaizen Asiedu, a Harvard graduate in philosophy who makes videos informing Americans about complicated political matters.
Friday’s deadline to avoid a government shutdown looms. Musk posted on X that a shutdown would be “infinitely better than passing a horrible bill.” His DOGE partner Vivek Ramaswamy urged Americans to contact their representatives to “stop the steal of your tax dollars.”
And President-elect Donald Trump posted this: “If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then CALL THEIR BLUFF,”.
Should the spending bill fail, it will mark a significant victory for DOGE and a potential turning point in efforts to reform Washington’s spending habits.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Harold Hutchison
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa introduced legislation Thursday that would send nearly a third of the federal employees out of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.
The bill, known as the ‘Decentralizing and Reorganizing Agency Infrastructure Nation-wide To Harness Efficient Services, Workforce Administration, and Management Practices (DRAIN THE SWAMP) Act, is far more sweeping than the “Returning SBA to Main Street Act,” legislation introduced by Ernst Dec. 12 that focused on the Small Business Administration (SBA). Ernst told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the move would improve services for Americans while saving billions of taxpayer dollars.
“Federal employees don’t want to work in Washington, so why should taxpayers be footing the bill? By relocating at least 30% of the federal workforce, we will save billions and improve service for veterans, small businesses, and all Americans. The bureaucrat laptop class has been out of the office for far too long, and it is time to get them back to work for the American people,” Ernst told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The legislation requires most government agencies to “promote geographic diversity, including consideration of rural markets” when relocating employees from the D.C. area and to “ensure adequate staffing throughout the regions of the Administration, to promote in-person customer service.” Exceptions are made for fewer than 10 agencies, most involved in national security, like the Department of Defense, Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Energy.
The legislation also requires most federal agencies to reduce the total office space in their Washington, D.C., headquarters by at least 30% in a two-year timeframe following the bill’s enactment.
Ernst issued a 60-page report Dec. 5 that covered findings from Ernst’s investigations into telework since she sent an August 2023 letter to 24 government agencies requesting a review of the issues involved with telecommuting.
Previous investigations by Ernst into telecommuting by federal employees detailed the issues that telework created involving locality pay, an adjustment to the basic pay of civilian employees in the federal government intended to make sure that federal employees have comparable compensation to private-sector counterparts in a given area of the country. In the August 2023 letter sent to 24 government agencies requesting a review of the issues involved with telecommuting, Ernst cited a media account of a VA employee who attended a staff meeting while taking a bubble bath.
Ernst issued a 60-page report Dec. 5 that covered findings from her investigations into the issues involved with telecommuting by federal employees. Those findings detailed issues that telework created involving locality pay, an adjustment to the basic pay of civilian employees in the federal government intended to make sure that federal employees have comparable compensation to private-sector counterparts in a given area of the country.
In one case cited by the senator on multiple occasions, a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) employee received locality pay for the Washington, D.C., area despite living full-time in Florida. The employee in question retired before the conclusion of the probe, according to a summary posted on the USAID inspector general’s site April 30.
Ernst’s legislation mandates that affected federal agencies “ensure that the rate of pay of the employee is calculated based on the pay locality for the permanent duty station of the employee.”
The Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
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