Just over a year into its implementation, Rocky View County’s (RVC) County Plan was reviewed by administration and the resulting report was presented to the Policy and Priorities Committee on Dec. 2.
According to Richard Barss, senior planner with RVC, the goal of the report was to “provide qualitative and quantitative measurements to see how the County Plan is performing.” As this is only the first year of a document intended to guide the next 10 to 12 years, Barss said he feels a determination of how “successful” the plan has been is difficult at this time.
“Many ongoing initiatives have been undertaken since 2013, and we feel that when those come to fruition, more goals of the plan will be met,” he said. “Administration is not recommending any changes to the plan at this point.”
Development of the County Plan was a year-long process in 2013, involving a great deal of public engagement from RVC, according to Barss. He said RVC hosted 26 different public events, with almost 400 people attending their workshops.
“I would say that the plans and goals and directions of the County Plan were supported by the majority of our workshop participants,” he said. “This is a recognition of ongoing work the county has done for many years, and a response to our geographic position. We’ve got a large service area and a dispersed population, which is something we need to address that other municipalities don’t have to deal with.”
One of the objectives of the County Plan that has been a focus in the document’s first year of implementation is the development and retention of rural communities. Barss admitted this “is one of the tougher ones,” but said they do currently have four plans underway with this goal in mind. “In Balzac West and Conrich, we are trying to retain in our design the idea of a smaller community; in Bragg Creek, we are looking at how we can retain the vitality; and in Langdon, we have been looking at Centre Street and how we can contribute to the community there,” he said.
The County Plan indicated 17 residential growth areas, primarily within existing Area Structure Plans (ASP). According to Barss, the document recognized acreages in the area may have “maxed out,” so it provided for alternative rural development forms, which is something RVC may have to look at more seriously in the future.
“We need to host some workshops throughout the county so that the public can understand what these new forms of county residential could look like, and what benefits could be there for them,” said Deputy Reeve Lois Habberfield. “If they could understand that we can have the same amount of people but with more open space, I think we could get some buy-in.”
Anticipated population growth is currently slightly below the expected 11,000 to 20,000 new residents by 2026 as indicated in the County Plan, according to Barss. Since Canada Census data has not been updated since County Plan adoption, population growth estimates are based on development permits and county surveys, which shows an average of 743 residents a year, or 9,000 by 2026.
“There was a large drop in building permits around 2008 during a time of recession, and it didn’t really pick up afterwards. We are a little under our population growth right now, but I do anticipate that with Harmony and other development opportunities, we will certainly achieve that population increase,” said Barss. “We’ve also been increasing our non-residential assessment base.”
A strong message Barss received from workshop was the importance of RVC remaining fiscally sustainable. A key way to achieve this goal, he said, was to shift from a residential assessment base to a non-residential one.
“The resulting ratio of residential to non-residential is going in the correct direction to keep taxes low and under control,” said Councillor Al Sacuta. “The data I’m seeing so far in this report is exactly where I think we should be going, and it’s exactly what our plan said we wanted to do.”
In a letter signed by Executive Director circulated at the Dec. 2 policy committee meeting, Rocky View 2020 outlined its stance on the County Plan.
“The current language implies that development, particularly residential development is not welcome in the county,” the letter stated. “Language in the County Plan such as ‘should not … unless’ or ‘should only’ works against the vision. This type of language implies that conclusions are drawn by administration prior to any evaluation of an application ... That essentially cuts out our elected officials on decisions that are critical to the County’s future. That isn’t fair.”
Councillor Bruce Kendall said he’d like to see comparisons in the future, to see how RVC measures up against some of their rural neighbors.
“We do envision expanding some of the things we measured this year in the next report, because we didn’t feel we had the data to present everything at this time,” Barss said.
