A public hearing Monday on what should have been a routine set of amendments to St. Albert’s municipal development plan (MDP) was adjourned to August after Sturgeon County’s chief administrative officer (CAO) refused to give the changes his blessing.
Patrick Draper, St. Albert city manager, explained to council Monday that he had taken part in a conference call with the five-member CAO subcommittee of the Capital Region Board (CRB), seeking their approval of the MDP amendments.
Four gave their blessing but one, identified later as Sturgeon County CAO Peter Tarnawsky, refused.
Under the CRB framework, all five members of the subcommittee must give their approval to any amendments to an MDP. If the vote is not unanimous, the MDP is then voted on by the CRB board at its next meeting. Passage at that level requires approval by the City of Edmonton and 16 other municipalities. The next CRB meeting is Aug. 9.
“I’m sure it should be an easy pass,” said Coun. Cathy Heron.
The proposed amendments to the MDP bring the statutory document into conformance with the CRB growth plan. Some of the changes include adjusting population projections based on historical growth and requiring new developments to have a minimum 30 residential dwelling units per net residential hectare and minimum of 30 per cent of housing as medium or high density.
When asked at Monday’s city council meeting why Tarnawsky wouldn’t give his approval, Draper, without identifying the Sturgeon County CAO, said the concern was the city’s recently-designated industrial lands.
“The issue raised was a matter to do with the industrial lands being considered by St. Albert,” Draper said. “There was a request to have all our plans and employment forecasts associated with the industrial lands to be included within this MDP amendment. It was pointed out that was premature.”
Council last month designated 700 acres of land west of the city as future industrial land. The city annexed the bulk of that land from Sturgeon County in 2007 in an acrimonious process that soured relations between the two municipalities. Council also voted last month to pursue another annexation, but has not given any direction on how it will proceed or from whom it will try to obtain land.
Councillors were surprised by the outcome.
“I find that very frustrating because that was not even a part of the amendment, the industrial lands,” Heron said.
“That was pointed out several times to the individual in question,” Draper said. “However for reasons unbeknownst to anyone else, the individual in particular decided to proceed and withhold approval.”
A phone call to Tarnawsky seeking clarification was returned by Calli Stromner, Sturgeon County’s manager of community and corporate communications. Stromner did not offer an explanation for Tarnawsky’s decision.
“This particular application is scheduled to appear before the [CRB] on Aug. 9 and at that time the reasons for the non-unanimous vote will be made public,” Stromner said.
In a follow-up email, Stromner was critical that Tarnawsky had been identified as the dissenting CAO.
“The identification of an opposing viewpoint at this time may be a cause for concern as the details of the CAO subcommittee meeting are not a matter of public record,” she said.
St. Albert Mayor Nolan Crouse, who is the chair of the CRB, said he was surprised.
“If anything we thought we were doing our due diligence by just getting this done,” Crouse said. “I’m taken aback by it but that’s the process.”
Crouse said he anticipated the CRB would give its approval Aug. 9.
“My reaction is to let the board weigh in on it,” he said. “I think they will weigh in positively.”
