Council Update - Nov & Dec Meetings

Before everyone gets settled in for the holiday season, we want to highlight a few key council decisions from the last few weeks.  These are:

• 2025 operating budget approved with a zero percent property tax increase.

• Burnco’s application to expand its West Cochrane gravel pit deferred until after Council considers new aggregate resource plan policy

• Rocky View withdraws from the Calgary Metropolitan Region Board (CMRB)

• Springbank ASP one step closer to final approval.

2025 Operating Budget

At the end of November, Council approved a zero percent increase in the property tax rate, with the $181,200 deficit required to achieve that coming from the Tax Stabilization Reserve.  It should be noted that the budget already offset 2025’s expenses with the $6.5 million transferred to the Tax Stabilization Reserve as the surplus from last year.  

Maintaining the zero percent increase in the property tax rate for the second year in a row has been possible because of substantial growth in Rocky View’s assessment base – partly from increasing property values, but even more so from new commercial and industrial development.  Relying on continual growth to cover increasing costs due to inflation and due to increasing service demands that result from growth is an appealing alternative.  However, what happens when that growth slows down?  As Councillor Hanson pointed out, it is more palatable to “under promise” and “over deliver” than the opposite, which appears to be what is being done with this budget decision.

The 2025 budget indicated that inflationary price increases and higher expenses due to growth in service demands each accounted for approximately $3.3 million in increased costs for 2025 relative to 2024.  The 2025 budget incorporated a more realistic $5 million estimate for growth in the County’s assessment base relative to Administration’s overly conservative estimates included in earlier years’ budgets.  As a result, the money “found” at budget finalization in the spring may be significantly less than in past years.

Comments from some councillors suggest that they anticipate substantive changes between now and budget finalization in the spring.  As Deputy Reeve Kochan stated, “the CAO needs more time to review exactly what should or needs to be done … by the time we get to budget finalization in the spring, we’ll have a more accurate reflection in terms of what the budget needs are and the type of dollar amounts required”.  And as Councillor Boehlke noted, the CAO “hasn’t had time to figure out and look to a new direction”. 

We are somewhat confused by these statements.  Even if the new CAO can put his own spin on county finances in the next three months, the reality is that the County needs a budget that deals with its ongoing activities and most of those costs are relatively inflexible in the short term.  If the references are to initiatives currently in progress, such as the Fire Services Master Plan, the utilities review, and/or revised offsite levies, budgetary impacts of any of these will be dealt with as stand-alone budget adjustment decisions, not part of the base budget council approved in November. 

Burnco Gravel Pit Redesignation Application

As Rocky View Gravel Watch reported, at its December 3^rd meeting, council spent almost 6 hours considering Burnco’s application to redesignate 300+ acres for expansion of its West Cochrane gravel pit.  At the end of the hearing, council referred Burnco’s application back to Administration until council has made its decisions on the Aggregate Resource Plan, scheduled to return to council by Q2 2025, or until Q3 2025, whichever comes first.

Although most of the residents and experts speaking in opposition to Burnco’s application would have preferred council to refuse the application, this is a much better outcome than Administration’s recommendation to approve about 100 of the 300 acres in Burnco’s application. 

Rocky View Withdraws from the Calgary Metropolitan Region Board (CMRB)

At the November 22^nd CMBR meeting, Alberta’s Minister of Municipal Affairs, Ric McIver, announced that the province will stop funding the CMRB in 2025 and that membership will become voluntary.

In response to this announcement, Rocky View’s Reeve added “emergent” closed sessions to the agendas for both council’s December 3^rd and December 10^th meetings.  After the December 3^rd closed session, council returned without making any decision, leaving one to wonder what was so time-sensitive about the discussion.

However, after the December 10^th closed session, Kissel, Kochan, and Schule supported Boehlke’s motion to withdraw from the CMRB because of “a need for greater planning autonomy and alignment with local priorities”.

From our perspective, this decision is, at best, premature since the CMRB has not made any decisions on how it might move forward in light of the provincial decisions.  While we understand that Rocky View and Foothills have always resented the CMRB’s voting structure that gives Calgary veto power, there are advantages for Rocky View from greater regional cooperation.  The joint Rocky View / Calgary Prairie Gateway project in south-east Rocky View is a clear example.  We can only hope that Calgary won’t respond to Rocky View’s decision by withdrawing its partnership in that project or re-activating its annexation application for those lands. 

Ironically, the November 22^nd CMRB meeting also featured an enthusiastic discussion of regional economic development that laid out a plan for members to maximize benefits by acting as a coordinated marketing team for the region.  Although the County’s press release about its decision to withdraw from the CMRB indicates that the County “remains committed to fostering regional partnerships”, in our experience, it isn’t typical to further better relationships by filing for divorce. 

Springbank ASP – the long saga is almost at its end

On December 11^th, council held the public hearing to consider possible amendments to the Springbank ASP, which had been the subject of an earlier public hearing in October.  As well as many housekeeping amendments identified by Administration, councillors suggested amendments to address issues raised at the October public hearing. 

Overall, the amended ASP reflects the input from Springbank residents, which makes it a dramatically better revision to the existing ASPs than any of the earlier iterations.  At this point, the ASP has been given first and second reading.  Administration was then directed to circulate the amended ASP to the City of Calgary for further review and to report back to council on the outcome of those discussions before the end of Q1 2025. The motion was supported 5-1 with all but Kochan in support.  Kochan felt that Calgary already had enough opportunity to comment and further consultation was pointless.

From our perspective, the outcome of council’s consideration of amendments at the December 11^th public hearing was mixed (see below for details).  The “good news” choices included:

• Eliminating one-acre cluster residential

• Rejecting the commercialization of the Hwy 1 corridor

• Advancing Range Road 33’s community core

• Maintaining the provincially owned land at the north-west corner of the ASP

The “bad news” was permitting decentralized wastewater treatment systems as an option rather than mandating that all commercial development and residential development in the “new residential area” connect to a regional wastewater treatment plant.

One-acre cluster residential

There was some discussion about keeping the option of one-acre cluster residential developments available for highly environmentally sensitive areas.  However, Kochan brought forward the motion to remove the option.  Thankfully for Springbank residents, he was supported by Kissel, Schule and Wright in a 4 / 3 decision. 

Commercialization of the Hwy 1 corridor

Some of the landowners who would directly benefit from this proposed amendment spoke at the public hearing.  However, when Boehlke brought his motion forward, it was soundly defeated in a 1 / 5 vote (Schule had left the meeting by the time this was considered).

Community Core

In a unanimous decision, council approved identifying Range Road 33, from Hwy 1 to Springbank Road, as the “community core” with the County leading a conceptual scheme to guide its development.  With assurances from Administration that the community would be involved in the concept scheme, the possibility of including limited local commercial development within the community core was approved in a 4 / 2 vote, with Kochan and Boehlke opposed.

Removal of provincially owned land

Kochan’s proposal to remove the provincially owned lands at the north-west corner of the ASP failed on a 3 / 3 tie vote with only Kissel and Boehlke supporting him.  From our perspective, Kochan’s reasoning for removing the land was questionable.  His comments suggested that he would have no problem with the land becoming a provincial gravel pit and leaving it in the ASP might make it more difficult for that to happen. 

Permitting decentralized wastewater treatment systems

From our perspective, Council made a questionable choice on wastewater servicing requirements for new development within the ASP.  Councillors proposed two options to clarify what the ASP meant by “piped” services.  Hanson proposed requiring connection to regional wastewater treatment systems while Kochan proposed permitting decentralized wastewater treatment systems as well connections to a regional system. 

Administration recommended that Council support Hanson’s recommendation requiring new development to connect to a regional treatment plant because it provided much better environmental, groundwater and source water protection than decentralized systems and because it would encourage orderly phasing of development.  Calgary also supported regional wastewater alternatives and raised concerns with permitting decentralized systems. 

Hanson pointed out that both residents and Administration favour regional wastewater treatment for new commercial and residential development (outside of the infill areas).  He also emphasized that Springbank is a “soggy” area and that decentralized systems raise challenges for the carrying capacity of the land. 

In opposing mandatory connections to a regional system, Kochan insisted that it would put developers “in a bind” and that they had heard that developers want the ability to consider decentralized system and that it was important to treat those developers respectfully.  Wright stressed that since council had just approved amendments to remove the 1-acre parcel option that developers were pushing for, it was not clear where decentralized systems would even make sense.

Despite this, that alternative failed in a 3 / 4 split, with Boehlke, Kissel, Kochan, and Schule in opposition.  At the end of the discussion, Kochan’s approach was approved.