Rocky View Snubs Calgary Regional Partnership
September 16, 2009
Calgary Herald
Jason Markusoff
CALGARY - Rocky View County council formally decided Tuesday to withdraw from the Calgary Regional Partnership, following the move Foothills district made last week in protest of the regional growth plan.
Municipal Affairs Ray Danyluk will wade into the impasse between the alliance's urban members and its now-former rural ones Friday when he offers his views on the controversial growth blueprint.
All the group's town, village or city members--including Calgary, Strathmore, Black Diamond and Airdrie--have endorsed the 60-year plan to preserve green spaces and concentrate growth in certain land pockets and highway corridors.
It also sets density targets as conditions if rural developments get much-needed access to regional water or sewer services, one of the deal-breaking conditions for Foothills, Rocky View and Wheatland County.
They also disparage the plan for giving Calgary an effective veto over major partnership decisions, even though the province has approved similar powers for Edmonton in the capital region's growth plan.
"We don't support the plan, and therefore we have to withdraw or the plan gets imposed," said Rocky View Reeve Lois Habberfield.
Airdrie Mayor Linda Bruce, the group's chair, has said the rural members' demands for changes to the plan would undermine the entire purpose of the plan.
The partnership has asked Danyluk for ideas on how to improve the plan, after the alliance's "gargantuan" effort to strike a sustainable development plan that conforms to the wishes of the province's land-use framework, said Rick Butler, the partnership's executive director.