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County Plan vs. councillors' plan

Dear Editor, In redoing the County Plan, the current council majority clearly demonstrated its disdain for public input or public good. The County Plan had the greatest amount of public input of anything ever held in Rocky View County (RVC).

Dear Editor, In redoing the County Plan, the current council majority clearly demonstrated its disdain for public input or public good. The County Plan had the greatest amount of public input of anything ever held in Rocky View County (RVC). It was intended to last 10 to 15 years, not five. Certain council members, notably ​Couns. ​Kim McKylor, Al Schule and Mark Kamachi, made it clear their intentions were to advocate for development in their favourite areas, if not for their favourite developments or developers. The County Plan, whether re-opened or not, is not a mechanism for such advocacy. It is intended to serve the public good by planning for the best interests of RVC as a whole. Developers are quite capable of advocating for themselves – councillors should not be their representatives. In attempting to bypass the presentation of administration's report, McKylor, Reeve Greg Boehlke and Schule made it clear their motives are best served by keeping the public in the dark. What other motive could they have? Time constraints? Not likely. After all, council meets once every two weeks, so they should be able to afford 10 or 15 minutes. Nevertheless, councillors who advocate for development are entitled to their view, but their motives should be scrutinized. By far, their major reason for the promotion of development – especially commercial and industrial – will lower taxes for RVC residents. Unfortunately, that's not true. Over the last approximately 15 years, RVC has had significant development resulting in a higher percentage of the total County tax take coming from new commercial and industrial developments – but so have the offsetting costs, and by at least the same amounts. If you have lived in RVC for 10 or 15 years, take a look at your tax bills. You will see your tax has not decreased – rather, on average, it has increased by more than the annual inflationary rate. Council plans to increase your tax this year by 50 per cent more than the inflationary rate. Furthermore, 15 years ago, RVC had minuscule debt; now, we have massive debt. The “benefit” for residents has been limited to more traffic, dirt and noise. To be fair, some developments have been beneficial to all concerned, but on the whole, development is responsible for our sad fiscal state – primarily due to successive councils' gifts of direct and indirect subsidies. Many development advocates preachi free enterprise and use words and phrases such as "protectionism" and "state controlled." In reality, most are advocating the total opposite of free enterprise. Free enterprise means no subsidies. You can verify this by viewing developers' campaign contributions to councillors, both currently and over the last 10 to 15 years. That is not to say RVC should never have more development, but it needs to be without subsidies and by approximately the same percentage as Calgary. That is precisely what RVC residents decided five years ago, through their massive input into the current County Plan. Jerry Arshinoff Former Councillor for Division 2

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