Vague answers to defend the $400,000 expenditure approved for the rewrite of the County Plan just aren’t going to cut it. The development of the existing County Plan involved significant public input, and the document was created to last a decade. However, Reeve Greg Boehlke said due to significant growth, the County has “outgrown” it after only six years. Administration told council the public consultation alone cost about $250,000 for the existing plan. Was that money wasted? Did the input of residents gathered throughout a year’s worth of engagement somehow get it wrong? Is council saying it knows better than what residents told them they wanted for the County? It certainly seems that way. If council wants to make things easier to “say yes and not no,” could this not be done through amendments? And what is council hoping to say yes to? In the past, requests to amend or review the County Plan have come in large from pro-development organizations such as Rockyview 2020, which wanted the plan reviewed just a year after it was approved. Complaints were focused primarily on introducing development outside of growth areas identified in the County Plan, which residents already indicated they did not support. We don’t claim to be experts in municipal planning, but from the outside, it certainly seems there is some underlying agenda at play and that residents are not only being overlooked, but they are also paying the bill to be treated as such.
