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County plan vs councillors' plan

In redoing the County Plan, the current council majority clearly demonstrated its disdain for public input or public good. The County Plan had far and away the greatest amount of public input of anything ever held in Rocky View County (RVC).

In redoing the County Plan, the current council majority clearly demonstrated its disdain for public input or public good. The County Plan had far and away the greatest amount of public input of anything ever held in Rocky View County (RVC). It was intended to last 10 to 15 years, not five. Certain Council members, notably Couns. ​McKylor, Schule and Kamachi, made it clear their intentions were to advocate for development in their favourite areas, if not for their favourite developments or favourite developers. The County Plan, whether re-opened or not, is not a mechanism for such advocacy. It's intended to serve the public good by planning for the best interests of RVC as a whole. Developers are quite capable of advocating for themselves. Council members are not supposed to be their representatives.

In attempting to not have administration's report presented in Council, ,​ Coun. ​ McKylor, Boehlke and Schule made it clear their motives are best served by keeping the public in the dark. What other motive could they have? Time constraints? Not likely. After all council only meets once every two weeks so they should be able to afford 10 to 15 minutes.

Nevertheless, council members who advocate for massively increased development are entitled to their view but their motives should be scrutinized. By far their major reason for the promotion of such is that further development, especially commercial and industrial, will lower taxes for ordinary RV residents. Unfortunately that's not true, not even close to being true. Over the last approximately 15 years RVC has had significant development resulting in a higher percentage of the total County tax take coming new commercial and industrial developments - but so have the offsetting costs - and by at least the same amounts. The "proof is in the pudding." If you have lived in RV for 10 to 15 years, take a look at your tax bills. You will see your tax has not decreased - rather on average it has increased by more than the annual inflationary rate. Current Council planning is to increase your tax this year by 50 per cent more than the inflationary rate (three per cent vs two-per cent). Furthermore, 15 years ago RVC had minuscule debt. Now, we have massive debt. The benefit for ordinary residents has been limited to more traffic, more dirt and more noise.
Surely our Council members know this.

To be fair there are and have been some (mostly small) developments that have been very beneficial to all concerned but on the whole development is responsible for our sad fiscal state, primarily due to successive Councils' gifts of direct and indirect subsidies thereby explaining why so many developers view RV as a superlative opportunity. Many pro development people get their way by preaching free enterprise and using scary words and phrases such as "protectionism" and "state controlled" - code for "give me more subsidies". In reality most are advocating the total opposite of free enterprise. Free enterprise means no subsidies .Free enterprise is exactly what we need.

If you doubt the above you can check it out for yourself. A good place to begin is by viewing developers' (almost all of whom don't live in RVC) election campaign contributions to pro-development councillors, both currently and over the last 10 to 15 years. Council members who received contributions from a developer have never voted against that developer. An even better place to start is with your own tax bills.

That is not to say RVC should never have more development. If the Calgary region is to grow so should RVC ( either by choice or by necessity) but without subsidies and by approximately the same percentage as Calgary. That is precisely what RVC residents decided five years ago by their massive input into the current County Plan.

Jerry Arshinoff

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