Rocky View County (RVC) council has voted to discontinue its planned targeted and comprehensive reviews of the County Plan and will instead begin the process of creating a new municipal planning document.
In a reversal of earlier decisions, council voted at a regular meeting March 12 to rescind two Terms of Reference (TOR) adopted Jan. 22 that would have guided a targeted review of the County Plan followed by a comprehensive review and rewrite of the planning document. Council also voted to rescind a $150,000 budget adjustment – approved Feb. 26 – which would have been used to hire a consulting firm to carry out the targeted amendments.
While the decision to rescind the TOR for the comprehensive review was approved unanimously – with Coun. Crystal Kissel absent from the meeting – Coun. Kevin Hanson cast the sole opposing vote to a motion to rescind the targeted review’s TOR and budget adjustment.
“I thought this was a good idea,” he said. “I voted for it because I thought it would be a good way for us to test the waters and see how we make out with our neighbours. By not doing this, we’re basically putting a lot of eggs in one basket.”
Council also voted unanimously to direct staff to begin the process of writing a new Municipal Development Plan (MDP), using $400,000 from the tax stabilization reserve to begin the project. According to Reeve Greg Boehlke, the region has seen significant changes since the current County Plan was first adopted, and council no longer feels the planning document sufficiently addresses the current context and has become to restrictive.
“We discovered, after six years, the County had basically outgrown the text of [the County Plan],” he said.
Boehlke added council feels it's, “been winging it a little bit,” and having a new MDP will allow for positive business and residential growth in RVC.
“We’re trying to find a way to [say] yes, and not [say] no,” he said. “The County Plan seems to be maybe a little bit more towards no.”
The decision to rescind the adopted TORs and budget adjustment emerged during a request for another budget adjustment to retain a consultant to undertake the comprehensive review. As part of that request, administration recommended two minor amendments to the TOR, and Boehlke then suggested several additional amendments of his own.
However, council was unable to agree on the amendments subsequently prepared by administration. Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Al Hoggan suggested the TOR may have over-complicated the process.
“It strikes me that we’ve created a 15-page document on something that could be as simple as a council resolution directing administration to begin the process of creating a new municipal development plan,” he said. “Instead, we have provided a bunch of documentation which I think has actually created, in part, this conversation.”
With the targeted review scrapped, Deputy Reeve Al Schule moved to direct administration to prepare amendments to the existing County Plan, council’s current MDP which was adopted in 2013 after a process that included extensive pubic consultation and was intended to last for at least ten years, according to a staff report at the Jan. 22 council meeting. These amendments – to remove hamlet population targets, amend a policy with respect to business development adjacent to existing business areas and to include the Langdon business area as a possible business area – would have been achieved through the targeted review project, he said.
“We have effectively taken the targeted review off the books…but by doing that, what we have done is eliminated any public engagement that we were going to have,” said Coun. Samanntha Wright, expressing her opposition. “Now, everything that comes forward is strictly the wish of council. Is that really the way we want to go? Before, we were at least going to put it to the public and make sure we have some buy-in. Now, we don’t have that.”
Hoggan confirmed staff would conduct “some public engagement” regarding the proposed amendments.
Hanson and Wright voted against motions to approve the amendments regarding the removal of hamlet population targets and adding Langdon as a business area, both of which were carried 6-2. Boehlke joined the pair in opposing the move to amend the business development policy, which nevertheless was approved 5-3.
