The first phase of development for the Rocky View County (RVC) Plan is now complete, and the upkeep of the region’s roadways tops the priority list for most county residents.
“Overall, roads are the top priority for just about everybody,” said County Plan project manager Richard Barss. “But when you do break it down to some of these sub areas, some communities, like Bearspaw, fire protection ranked number one and roads came out number two.”
Barss said that although roads came out on top in the northwest quadrant where Cochrane is located, agriculture and food came in at a close second.
“There are definite differences amongst our various communities and areas,” said Barss, “so that also might help us when we write the County Plan.”
Phase one of the public engagement for the RVC Plan included a survey for county residents to fill out and, in total, 1,276 RVC residents partook. Fire protection and prevention came in second on the precedence list, followed by agriculture and food, sewage, stormwater and garbage and watershed management rounded out the top five.
“We’re really pleased with the response,” said Barss. “It showed some cross the county trends, but it also brought out differences. The county is very big…so we would recognize there’re also different needs and different ways of thinking in the county.”
Barss said the county will model the new RVC Plan based on these differences to reflect the various needs depending on whether one lives in Langdon, Cochrane or in a more rural area of the county. The plan will determine a set of guidelines for the county over the next 10 years, prioritizing the various projects residents want to see completed during that timeframe. Barss said that for the polling they identified three types of living within the county, those who live in hamlets, country residential (such as north of Cochrane) and agricultural areas, which are more isolated.
“We tried to break those areas down and we’d see some differences in what people are interested in,” said Barss.
The next step in the process of creating the RVC Plan is a series of workshops, seven in total, that will dig deeper into what county residents want to see happen over the next decade.
“The survey results are essential to the next phase of the project,” said RVC reeve Rolly Ashdown, “as we engage residents in more in depth conversations on the goals for our communities.”
The Cochrane workshop is scheduled to take place at the RancheHouse Sept. 26.
Barss said that growth forecasts from the Calgary region and RVC suggest that by 2026, the area will hold a population of 1.9 million, which is an increase of about 700,000 since 2006.
“The question for Rocky View residents is ‘how much of that should we take?’” posed Barss, who said the county currently makes up approximately 3 per cent of the region.
Following the workshops, the county will amass all the information gathered and start to implement policies and options in November. The final phase will be drafting the plan, which would happen sometime in January or February, with the final plan before council in June 2013.
