Battle brewing as Chestermere attempts to annex land to block development
原始发布日期： 2015-12-20 发布者：中和字变大 字变小
 Chestermere Mayor Patricia Matthews, right. Colleen De Neve / Calgary Herald archives On Dec. 14, Chestermere chief administrative officer Randy Patrick wrote a letter asking Rocky View officials to stop all development of the land involved in the proposed annexation, located on the north, east and south sides of the small city. Chestermere is concerned the development plan that Rocky View passed at a council meeting earlier this month is not sustainable and city residents would be footing the bill for services Rocky View doesn’t have, such as fire and emergency responders. “We had to take immediate steps to protect Chestermere residents from the detrimental negative development,” Chestermere Mayor Patricia Matthews said in an interview on Friday. “Our plan is to freeze development until a good sustainable plan can be put in place. “We have no intention of developing that immediately ourselves.” Rocky View County Reeve Greg Boehlke said the proposed development in the county would include an expansion to the industrial area near the CN intermodal terminal, which was built in 2013, located in the tiny hamlet of Conrich — situated about three kilometres east of Calgary’s city limits. Boehlke said there would also be development along Highway 1 similar to what’s known as “gasoline alley” in Red Deer, consisting of service stations, hotels, restaurants and possibly big box stores. “This makes us sustainable,” Boehlke said. “This whole area is part of the sustainability of Rocky View County.” The plan proposed the development would sustain a population in Conrich up to 10,000 people over 30 years. However, Matthews said these developments would put a strain on her community after the city’s concerns were ignored at a number of public hearings. Chestermere filed an annexation request, which asks Municipal Affairs Minister Danielle Larivee to over-ride the typical annexation process. Municipal Affairs has confirmed it received the letter from Chestermere and is reviewing the annexation request. Matthews said the new Conrich residents and businesses would rely on Chestermere’s emergency and social services — without paying for them. “That’s paid for through taxpayers in Chestermere and we don’t recoup any part of those costs from Rocky View,” she said. “We don’t do it now. There’s no plan to have a conversation around it in the future.” Matthews said Chestermere has been trying to create an intermunicipal development plan (IDP) with Rocky View so both parties consult one another when it comes to border development. She said they’ve also been working with the Calgary Regional Partnership to focus on sustainable growth — an organization Rocky View quit being a part of in 2009. The alliance was jointly developing a long-range growth plan to protect farmland and limit growth to particular clusters. Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said he sympathizes with Chestermere’s frustrations with Rocky View County after it left the regional partnership. He said the county’s development plans in recent years are “inappropriate,” including a slaughterhouse just north of Calgary city limits and CrossIron Mills shopping centre, as the mall isn’t near public transit. “They put forth a plan, the Conrich Area Structure plan, which is terrible,” Nenshi said. “I stood up on behalf of the City of Calgary at a public hearing a couple months ago and not only suggested this was a very poor plan, but it was also a plan that had very, very significant cost impacts in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars on the City of Calgary.” Nenshi said the costs of interchanges and changes to drainage systems to support Rocky View’s plans would be on the City of Calgary, but he understands how Chestermere will also be impacted. “The overall concern is that you basically will be putting in a lot of industry and a lot of people into a rural environment where you don’t have the emergency services for it, where you don’t have the facilities that people will need to live and work, and they will rely on the services in Chestermere and Calgary without paying any property tax toward their upkeep.” But Rocky View is fighting back against the opposition. County manager Kevin Greig wrote a strongly worded letter to Chestermere pushing back against the annexation, suggesting the provincial government would see it as “an abuse of process, highly inappropriate and an affront to the intent of the Municipal Government Act and relationship building.” Boehlke said Chestermere’s annexation proposal, if approved, would hinder the growth of Rocky View and Conrich. He believes the opposition is connected to the county not working with the Calgary Regional Partnership. “It’s a protest of our growth because we have failed to go to Calgary Regional Partnership for various reasons, but the biggest one being we didn’t want any one municipality to have a veto over our land use and our economy,” he said. Boehlke said he was also frustrated with Chestermere for saying Rocky View County wasn’t working on the intermunicipal development plan. “Chestermere mentioned not going ahead with the area structure plan in Conrich until we had the IDP in place, but we’re working on it,” he said. “Chestermere is trying to make people believe that Rocky View is not working on this when in fact we are. It’s being circulated now.” Calgary Herald |