Kevin Hanson – Division 1

Quick Bits
Building the second span of the bridge over the Elbow River has seen pile construction into the river bed, and approaches laid out and graded. Completion of the divided Highway 8 portion towards Stone Pine turn off is progressing. The roadbed for the new west-bound lanes is laid out and partially graded, revealing how it will be merged from its twinned configuration crossing the Elbow back into a single two-lane configuration.

Once completed, Rocky View will have the ability to work on adding its municipal features like pedestrian cross walks into the provincial road right of way at Lott Creek Drive (with the Province’s permission).

Municipal Development Plan Review
This is the highest-level statutory planning document for the County. Being “statutory” means that it is a legal policy document that any development in the municipality must adhere to. As the top-level planning document, it serves as the umbrella under which all Area Structure Plan are constructed. It is also the default planning policy for any areas of the County outside of an ASP (all our agricultural lands). Updating this plan was one of this Council’s major priorities, and it was a fulsome 2-year journey with much public engagement along the way.

The first public hearing was on July 10 th . Council gave first reading referring it back to administration to aggregate the feedback with individual councilor’s recommendations, and produce a final set of amendments. Since they were substantive, a second public hearing was called on September 2 nd , to allow for public comment. At the close of this hearing, Council postponed debate to September 16, 2025. This would allow time for administration to update the proposed amendments, and provide additional information and alternative options.

My point to all this is that the review and update was a very deliberate and thoughtful process, with lots of engagement and time for Council to consider not only the general intent of a policy statement, but all the potential implications or unintended consequences of the policy language.

There were 50 amendments to debate on Sept 16 th , considered in three tranches: 21 Minor, 11 Major, and 18 Clarifying. Administration provided 8 minor and clarifying amendments capturing the public feedback and translating into proper policy language for us. I provided 6 minor, 2 major and 8 clarifying amendments. Councillor Samra had a handful, while Councillor Wright had the bulk of suggestions. No other Councilors provided amendments for consideration.

My amendments focused on protecting agricultural lands, minimizing fragmentation of agricultural land by incursion of country residential development, stronger policy for 3rd -party review of complex technical documents, requirement for fiscal impact modelling of ALL new area structure plans, requirements for recreation matters, open space, parks, and trails & pathways be considered in ASP’s with a residential component, and having a 10-year sunset clause in any ASP with potential for rescinding if no progress has been made, or the plan is no longer compatible with the MDP. Many, but not all were successful.

Utilities Rate Increase
At the September 16 th Council meeting, Council unanimously approved a 10% across the board increase for all county operated water and wastewater utility systems. After 3-years of gyrations amongst Council with no progress and no rate adjustments during that time, we have stopped the backwards slide into more subsidy with this inflation-only adjustment. There is much more work here to be done on our overall Utilities Strategy.

Recreation Grant Adjustment for Bragg Creek Trails
BCT came before the Recreation Governance Committee to ask for consideration of some allocation adjustments to their approved grant funding of $166K for trail building and maintenance. Due to changes at the Provincial level, they have to reduce the scope of their project to trails “closer to home” which will leave a portion their grant available to invest in feasibility studies for an improved trailhead building. They also requested a one-year time extension to use the funds. Their ask was successful.

Kineticor Datacentre ASP
Just a note explaining my lone opposing vote for this ASP. During the public hearing I asked the proponent a number of questions relating to their willingness to modify the scale, scope, phasing, and policy addition for water conservation and protection of net agricultural output from the land they chose to locate on. Although their answers strongly indicated unwillingness to budge, I thought that if the application was referred back to administration for further work, they would more seriously consider the resident feedback and make adjustments. I also asked clarifying questions of administration about potential alternative directions to support that.

By not refusing the application, I did not vote in favour. I was looking towards an alternative direction for those considerations to be incorporated. I learned at the hearing that Kineticor’s public engagement was abysmal, and that the County should not leave stakeholder engagement in the hands of developers on a “developer funded” ASP. We need skin in the game.

Contact: KRHanson@RockyView.ca or call 403.463.1166.