Rocky View County delivered the final draft of the County Plan to council May 28, and held an open house to introduce the highlights of the 105-page document to residents, May 29.
Presented by Senior Planner and Project Manager Richard Barss, the new master plan will guide Rocky View council in decision-making regarding development, services and issues in the County over the next 10 years.
The plan focuses on providing a strategy for how much growth to allow in the County, where it should take place and what it will look like. It also provides guidance on what type and the level of services that should be offered following the expected growth.
“There’s a whole variety of services that don’t just fall on the developer, but on the County and the taxpayer. So what rate do you do that at?” asked Barss during his brief presentations at 5:15 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. at the County Administration Building in Calgary.
Barss stressed the new plan will allow for “moderate residential growth” amounting to no more than 2.5 to three per cent annually for the region’s population. This would equal an 11,000 to 20,000 increase in residents over the next 10 to 12 years.
Some residents present at the open house voiced their concerns about the plan being too limiting for future development.
“We are on the doorsteps of the fastest-growing urban centre in North America. We have high salaries and a great standard of living. The County is missing opportunities to grow and to be the place to live and do business,” said Michel Berdnikoff, who said the plan was “sterile and lacked creativity.”
“I would hate to see the County just holding land for the City of Calgary to make their next big move,” said another resident.
Some opposing residents said the draft plan “did a good job at representing the different needs in such a large and varied county.”
“What you do in your backyard does affect your neighbour,” said one woman.
The County has been working publicly to develop the plan since June 2012. To encourage public participation, the County has held a series of workshops and provided surveys for residents to give feedback. The County received 600 emails, 785 participants in the workshops and 1,276 responses to the priority survey throughout the process.
“One of our goals is to make sure no one comes into council and says they didn’t hear about the new plan. They may not like what they hear, which is OK, but as long as they’ve had the opportunity to give their input. We feel like we’ve achieved that goal,” said Barss.
The following factors also contributed to developing the County Plan:
• Non-statutory plans and reports, including the Agriculture Master Plan, Solid Waste Master Plan and the Growth Management Strategy
• Existing area structure plans and inter-municipal development plans
• Provincial legislation
The first draft of the County Plan was released March 14. In response to the letters, emails and online comments, the County made changes to the plan to allow for conservation design as a subset of compact development, made community input a consistent requirement, and included guidance on Low Impact Development (which wasn’t in the original draft).
Barss said the main reoccurring thread in the feedback was how much growth will be allowed and where it should go, but although the County drafted responses to the concerns, no changes to the plan were made in that specific area.
“We didn’t change where the majority of the growth will go, but we hope we brought more clarity to why we chose those areas and gave more context to the plans.”
The County identified 17 areas of expected growth. Hamlet developments include Conrich, Harmony and Langdon. Country Residential Community developments include Greater Bragg Creek, Bearspaw, Balzac East and Cochrane North. Barss said the goal was to make sure the County will be fiscally sustainable by ensuring the growth pays for itself.
“We realize that some of these areas may not take off as we predict, which is why the plan is always open to amendments. Even though I’d like to think that everything in (the plan) is right, there may be things that won’t work out the way we thought.”
At this point, changes to the draft County Plan can only be made as amendments approved by council, but residents are encouraged to attend the public hearing at the County Administrative Building June 25 to make comments. Council will vote whether to adopt, make amendments to or reject the proposal following the hearing. Residents can also submit letters and emails to Legislative Services by June 12, at [email protected]
