St. Albert and Sturgeon County need to leave their past quarrels behind as they drive into a shared future together, says county Mayor Tom Flynn.
Flynn met with the Gazette’s editorial board Monday to discuss a variety of topics, most of which dealt with city-county relations.
Last week, he and St. Albert Mayor Nolan Crouse committed to regular meetings between their two governments to discuss mutual interests – a marked change from the often-hostile relations between the city and the county in recent years.
“That’s been going on for lots of years,” Flynn said in regards to those hostilities, “not just the last five or six.”
Flynn said both governments should focus on the road ahead rather than looking in the rearview mirror at past quarrels.
“We have opportunities to move ahead,” he said, with great turnover in both councils and a province willing to give big grants for intermunicipal co-operation.
“We’re hoping we develop a united front on how to move forward as a region,” he said.
The two governments won’t agree on everything, he said, but they could clear a lot of minor items off the table.
“By the time we get down to the hard ones, there’s not a very big pile,” Flynn said.
One of those hard ones will likely be the county’s municipal development plan. Set to go to a public hearing later this month, the plan has twice been withdrawn from the Capital Region Board due in part to protests from St. Albert, which sees the plan’s proposals for the lands north of the city as a plot to fence the city in with acreages.
Flynn said he plans to speak to city council about the plan later this month.
The most recent version of the plan addressed St. Albert’s concerns by focusing rapid population growth in the Sturgeon Valley region, Flynn said, rather than all the lands north of St. Albert.
“The municipal development plan is how it will look 20 to 25 years ahead of time,” he said, and there’s nothing in it to stop St. Albert and Sturgeon from working together to plan these regions.
Another bone of contention is the Villeneuve area structure plan. Rejected by the Capital Region Board this year, St. Albert opposed this plan because it proposed to add about 6,000 people to the region.
County council would debate bringing this plan back this fall as part of its 2014 budget, Flynn said.
“I think we absolutely have to, because there’s a great opportunity there,” he said – one enhanced by the recent announcement of a $10 million museum at the Villeneuve Airport.
If the plan does return, Flynn said it will likely propose to add far fewer people to the region than the previous one – 1,000, he suggested.
Talks between himself and Crouse are pretty broad right now, Flynn said, and he isn’t sure what items will come up next February at the proposed county-city joint strategy session. He ruled out a revival of the intermunicipal development plan (which the county discarded a few years ago), saying that it would simply slow things down.
It’s hard to say if the tone has changed at the Capital Region Board due to the recent election, Flynn said, but there are about nine new faces at the table, including the mayor of Edmonton. Recent talks about Bill 28 (which would make the board’s regulations law) could also lead to changes.
Although board membership is on the agenda for next year, Flynn said he is not currently in favour of having any of the board’s 24 members leave the group.
“I don’t think the government is going to be too flexible about membership.”
He said he can see why Redwater would want out, but noted that the town’s industrial growth makes it a great contributor to the future of the region.
The board’s voting formula will definitely be reviewed, Flynn said, but he’s not sure what will happen to it.
“It’s too early in the game for us to know.”
