A road, which has not existed in Crossfield since it was improperly closed in 1936, has officially “closed” through the proper channels after council gave second and third reading to bylaw 2015-13 at the Feb. 2 meeting.
The issue was first flagged in summer 2015 when land surveys were conducted to expand the size of the current fire hall and – on the books at least – it looked like the expansion was running into a road, according to Chief Administrative Officer Ken Bosman.
The project had to be put on hold until council went through the guidelines laid out by Municipal Affairs (MA) detailing the process of road closure, which is finally finished nearly half a year later, Bosman said.
“We’ve been wanting a new fire hall for quite a long time and there’s (been) details slowing us down,” he said. “I think we’re back on track.”
To close the road, council gave bylaw 2015-13 first reading on Sept. 15 and held a public hearing Oct. 6.
After the public hearing, an official request was sent to the minister of MA asking to close the road. Once the approval was secured, council was finally able to officially close the road.
“That strikes me as a lot of work to close a road that hasn’t existed since 1936,” Bosman said.
The Town has experienced a number of other issues that have slowed down the fire hall expansion, including securing access to the land for a construction right of way from CP Rail and power lines that needed to be relocated by ATCO Gas.
“There’s a number of issues we’ve had to deal with and we’ve got them all dealt with now, we believe, and we’ll be moving forward very rapidly,” he said. “We hope to have construction going in the next six to eight weeks.”
Tax rate
The 2016 mill rate for residential and non-residential taxes has been calculated and the change is minuscule to that of the third decimal point, according to Bosman.
The residential tax rate made a 0.03 increase from 2015 to 4.86 per cent. The non-residential tax rate actually decreased 0.025 to 6.36 per cent.
“It’s essentially unchanged for all intents and purposes,” Bosman said. “We still remain well, well, well below the average of comparable municipalities in terms of our tax rates.”
He calculated a tax rate comparison of those similar municipalities in terms of population and discovered on the residential side Crossfield fared 40 per cent lower on tax rates than the average 7.98 per cent. On the non-residential side the Town fared 49 per cent lower than the average 12.55 per cent.
“If council lost their mind and raised taxes by $3.2 million dollars we’d be exactly average for our comparison,” he said.
Though Crossfield has a lower non-residential rate, Bosman said in many cases the Town is actually generating more revenue annually due to the size of its industrial sector.
“As the old saying goes, ‘twice nothing is still nothing,’” Bosman said. “I’d rather have a smaller slice of a bigger pie than have a big slice of a pie that is pretty much not there.”
