Foothills County is expressing its dissatisfaction with a regional growth plan and looking for amendments and more public consultation before the model is adopted.
Over the past three years, 10 municipalities in the Calgary region have been working on a regional growth plan as part of the Calgary Metropolitan Region Board (CMRB). The group includes the cities of Calgary, Airdrie and Chestermere, the towns of Cochrane, Strathmore, High River and Okotoks, and rural partners Foothills County, Rocky View County, and a portion of Wheatland County.
According to presentations to Okotoks and County councils in February, the plan is intended to permit balanced growth to accommodate a projected influx of one million people into the region over the next several years, while reducing costs and impacts to residents and the environment.
Foothills County doesn’t feel it benefits from the plan, currently in its draft form, said Reeve Suzanne Oel.
“This draft plan limits development forms to red tape ridden exercises that don’t work for the County, including the densities are too high, there’s no employment areas, there’s caps and locations issues,” said Oel.
“This also duplicates what we already have in place with cost-sharing agreements, IDPs (intermunicipal development plans), and other agreements, and effectively creates problems where there aren’t any in order to justify what we would call an overburdening regional plan.”
She said the plan as it reads would effectively take away from potential future residential or employment growth in the county and other rural municipalities, essentially making them less than partners at the table.
“It’s not a level playing field with what’s being rolled out at this point,” said Oel.
Director of planning Heather Hemingway told consultants the plan would put Foothills in situation where it’s not open for the development of new area structure plans, because it denotes residential and economic growth are urban initiatives only.
She said exemption policies included in the plan should be revisited, and made open-ended enough that the board can consider potential new area structure plans in the rural municipalities.
“Tie them to population growth, not the fact that residential and employment growth are already accommodated in the urban municipalities and you rurals can just go away and do some farming,” said Hemingway.
Key to Foothills County is the ability to create development where it makes sense rather than strictly in the areas identified in the plan, and items like the joint water pipeline with the Town of Okotoks could be put in jeopardy if the County is unable to proceed with its growth plans, she said.
Service areas for the waterline in the County include the Aldersyde corridor and Dunbow Road area, which are not included in identified places for the municipality to grow, she said.
“Without having the ability to develop lands to utilize that water source, we question the need for it from our perspective,” said Hemingway. “Okotoks certainly has a need for it and the growth anticipated for using it, but our identified growth areas in the MOU (memorandum of understanding) are not part of this plan.”
She said taking a request to the board is possible, but based on past experience with the CMRB it’s rare for rural municipalities to have their requests considered.
“Rocky View is regularly turned down for any special requests they might need simply because they’re Rocky View,” said Hemingway.
Oel said in addition to requesting the growth plan be revised to be more inclusive of rural development, the County is also looking for changes at the CMRB table.
The interim growth plan, which has been in place for the past three years while the new one was developed, has worked because it placed every municipality on even playing field, she said.
“Our vision or our hope and what we’re asking or at the board level is to create a win-win,” said Oel. “What we’ve been finding at the board, it’s a win-lose.”
