City council has given final reading to the Chelsea rezoning bylaw, but not all residents are happy with Chestermere’s path to growth.
At its regular meeting on May 15 council gave second and third readings to Bylaw 025-16, amending its land use bylaw to pave the way for 2,000 residential additional units near the city’s eastern border with Calgary.
According to city planner Benazir Thaha, the plan would make way for 5,000 new residents along with 100,000 square feet of commercial development to create 200 new jobs.
Chelsea has been in the works for more than a year. The plan aims to balance residential growth with new commercial development to broaden the tax base, Thaha said. Presently Chestermere relies on residential taxes for more than 95% of its revenue.
However, a bigger and possibly even more significant restructuring, the Bridgeport Plan, was given first reading at the same meeting. Bridgeport, located north of Highway 1A is about three times bigger than Chelsea and will see construction of about 4,000 residential units on 266 hectares of land, adding another 10,000 residents.
When fully completed, Chestermere would see its population almost double, to about 35,000 people. According to Thaha, council is looking to have the Bridgeport modifications in place by the October municipal elections.
The prospect of such rapid growth has more than a few local residents leery. According to local resident Al Kersch the real costs of growth exceed the benefits — namely diversifying the tax base. He’s worried offsite levies won’t be enough to fully fund the cost of adding municipal services to the thousands of new lots.
Although developers are ostensibly required to cover the costs of adding water and power lines, the city doesn’t recoup those costs for at least a full tax year once the properties are sold and the residents move in.
“That keeps us getting deeper in the hole,” he said in an interview.
Kersch — who to date has not declared any intention to run as a mayorality candidate in this fall’s election — makes the bold assertion that property “taxes are going to double in the next seven years” unless residential development is halted in favour of more commercial and industrial additions.
“What needs to happen is that we need more commercial (development),” he said.
An open house to discuss the plan is scheduled for June 6 from 4:30 — 7:00 at the Chestermere Recreation Center.
According to Mayor Patricia Matthews, everything is on track to take Chestermere’s population to 45,000-60,000 people over the next decade.
“We don’t aim for a specific number of people, just good, sustainable development like we have now,” she said.
In an email interview, she said she’s happy residents are taking an interest in planning issues that affect the long term development of the community. However, she cautioned against jumping to conclusions with respect to the balance of residential and commercial development.
“When Bridgeport comes before us for a decision we’ll debate its feasibility, including the tax balance analysis that is performed for every application to ensure there’s a proper amount of commercial versus residential development in the plan.
“I won’t speculate on what may or may not be an election issue but it will be great to hear candidate’s views on the vision of Chestermere in the future.”
