The CEO of Rampart Avenir Communities has threatened to go elsewhere if St. Albert city council doesn’t support his grandiose development plans for the land over by Carrot Creek. I am not as worried about their residential development as I am about the financial impact it could have on our taxes if this project goes ahead.
Despite all the puffery we read about in their full-page ads claiming that “all the required and necessary studies have been completed,” we still know very few of the project’s details.
For example, where is the financial impact assessment and the traffic study that should accompany such an application? As a long suffering taxpayer, I am more interested in the financial impact that would require the city to upfront a huge infrastructure cost to get services over to the Carrot Creek area for what is essentially a ‘leap frog’ type of development, which other municipalities who have fallen for this kind of hype have lived to regret.
I’ve attended two presentations by Avenir and when they are questioned about details of some of their claims such as energy production for example, they can’t give the details. The same goes for water recovery and local food production, which they say their engineers are working on. And what exactly are alternative servicing technologies?
I just hope that our council is not authorizing hundreds of hours of administrative time to study this half-baked scheme. Until we see more details and an economic study, which should be done at the cost of the developer not the taxpayer, perhaps we might be better off to turn it down.
Bob Russell, St. Albert
