With the province intending to mandate the establishment of a Calgary Metropolitan Region Growth Management Board (CMB), the City of Airdrie has an opportunity to provide feedback on the draft framework, according to Leona Esau, intergovernmental liaison.
“Elected municipal officials…will have an opportunity to comment on the draft regulation in March. Public feedback will be requested in April and May and the regulation will become law in September, prior to the upcoming municipal elections,” she said. “Over the next two years, the board will be tasked with creating a plan for the region. Following that will be the creation of a regional servicing plan due in 2020 to the Minister of Municipal Affairs.”
The province released a discussion guide in December 2016 intended to elicit feedback on the CMB. The concept of a growth management board for the Calgary region was initially introduced in early 2015 when the province advocated for the implementation of the Calgary Metropolitan Plan (CMP).
The CMP, drafted in May of 2014 by the Calgary Regional Partnership (CRP), outlines how municipalities and counties in the region can work together to deal with issues related to growth including sustainability and environmental stewardship. Implementation of the CMP was stalled because not all parties in the region including, significantly, Rocky View County, are part of the CRP.
As a result, the concept of a growth management board for the region was introduced. Minister of Municipal Affairs Diana McQueen held a meeting with all the mayors, reeves and chief administrative officers in the region Jan. 21, 2015 to discuss legislation of the CMP. The CMB was announced in the fall of 2015, according to Esau.
City Manager Paul Schulz serves as the city’s representative on the CMB. Included are Airdrie, Rocky View County, Calgary, Chestermere, Okotoks, Cochrane, the MD of Foothills, High River, Strathmore and a portion of Wheatland County, west of Highway 21. Members will appoint one elected official to sit on the CMB.
Mayor Peter Brown asked what the impact would be on the community in terms of new resources that might be required for the city to comply with the regulations of the CMB.
“For the larger municipalities, what do you see as the resources that will be required. Are we looking at new hires? Do you think we’ll be able to work with what we have now?” he asked. “I’m not clear on the impact on the community.”
Schulz said he believed there would be an impact as more things become regulated.
“We will be working on essentially a level of statutory planning and we will be working on more formal servicing agreements,” he said.
“There will be an increase in workload. I don’t think we’ll see it right away in 2017.
“For many years the CRP tried to be a voluntary organization and use the resources – as we saw, as it got bigger we saw bureaucracies starting to form. With this entity now being legislated, I don’t see any way around the bureaucracy anymore. I think that’s something we really need to watch.”
Esau said the feedback from Airdrie would include a request that there be some resources and funding from the province to help with implementation and to transition from the voluntary CRP to the mandatory CMB.
“We don’t know the details of either the growth plan or the regional servicing plan,” she said. “We’re not sure what that may look like but we are committing to coming back to council and sharing information so that council and administration can make the best possible decisions moving forward based on the information we’re receiving.”
