This year is going to be an interesting but uncomfortable year.
This will be the Year of Putin and the re-emergence of the USSR. He will inherit most of the credit for putting down ISIS. Europe’s hope for stemming the flow of refugees from this part of the world now depends mostly on him. The political integrity of European Economic Community will collapse unless it gives in to Britain’s demands for constitutional change. China will continue to recover the Four Chinese Seas that made up the boundaries of ancient China – along with their petroleum deposits. China will own most of Africa.
Donald Trump plays on in the face of a marginalized president as he tries to devise a positive legacy for his sad eight years in the White House.
Canada and Alberta will survive by spending money we don’t have.
As for St. Albert. I like many others have stood by in silence through a series of stumbling city planning and development adventures and its pitiably anemic economic development. Unfortunately, after some of us vote for council, we turn our musings elsewhere except for occasional wry amusement at its embarrassing ineptitude. We will increasingly pay for our chronic inattention.
I refer to the geographical makeup of St. Albert. Beginning in the 1950s, and continuing to this day, our city has been made up clusters of homes, parks and recreational facilities. We have given the streets distinctive names – Mission, Grandin, Lacombe, Parkwood, Oakmont, – and so on. We are in some respects, a municipal commonwealth of neighbourhoods linked together by public pathways leading to the Red Willow Park system. It may seem corny, but it works. For most of us, the selection of where we chose to live was based on the type of locale we were moving into.
Sometimes changes are needed to accommodate new schools or types of housing or changes to public spaces – such as underused parks. Sadly, over the past couple of councils, such changes seem to be driven, not by looking at the distinctiveness of our communities, but by developer-driven or NIMBY decisions of individual councillors. Consultation with community citizens has been carried out but the process seems after-the-fact and gives the distinct impression that it is a check-listed council obligation to enable implementation of the city manager’s prior decision.
Such an approach is again underway. This time Braeside is the victim. A land developer has unaccountably purchased residential properties on the riverside of Sturgeon Road where he plans to build a 90-plus unit apartment complex. Traffic from the complex will absolutely run through the heart of Braeside to access schools and recreational facilities. If the complex is built on the riverside of Sturgeon Road, it opens the other side of the road to be developed in a similar manner. One councillor has announced support. A second reported being under pressure to make a decision. Consultation to date has been limited to the area which falls under the shadow of the complex – 50 per cent of which involves fish, ducks and the occasional otter. That’s community development 2016 style.
Maybe it’s time for a ward system for councillors before we lose St. Albert. Or do we start to man the barricades?
Alan Murdock is a local pediatrician.
