The upcoming dissolution of the Edmonton Metroropolitan Regional Board (EMRB) could cost St. Albert millions, and could lead to tension between municipalities.
The EMRB voted in January to dissolve as of March 31, after Minister of Municipal Affairs Ric McIver announced that the board would no longer be receiving the $1 million funding from the province.
St. Albert Mayor Cathy Heron said that she is preparing for some tension in the board's absence.
"I've used the phrase before and I'll say it again, it's going to be the wild, wild west of planning," Heron said. "I'm worried about the relationships and tension it's going to create between urban and rural municipalities because we don't have the board to help us work through these issues. It could be contentious in the future."
Although Heron said that St. Albert would have been among the municipalities to vote to continue the EMRB voluntarily, she doesn't think it would have been a shield for preventing any future issues.
"The problem with the voluntariness of it all is we could have said 'yes, we're all going to stick together.' And then one day, whether it's a week or a month from now, or two years from now, a decision is made at the board that one municipality probably doesn't like, they don't have to stay there," she said.
With the EMRB dissolving, St. Albert and surrounding municipalities will have to turn to other means of land planning and working with municipalities, namely Intermunicipal Collaboration Frameworks (ICF), and Intermunicipal Development Plans (IDP).
IDPs are long-term agreements set between two municipalities that share a boundary and ICFs are agreements put in place between municipalities about "how we work together," Heron said. ICFs are mandatory in regions that do not have a growth planning board like the EMRB. With these agreements now mandatory, Heron said that the money spent toward the EMRB is gone "down the toilet."
She estimated that St. Albert contributed between $250,000 to $280,000 a year to the operations of the EMRB. With the need to develop ICFs and IDPs with neighbouring municipalities, that cost is going to balloon.
"St. Albert is now also going to have to spend -- and we don't have the numbers yet, but I'm predicting and have been collaborated with by my staff -- well over $1 million to develop these ICFs and IDPs with our neighbours. It's a waste of money," she said.
Sandeep Agrawal is a professor of Earth and Atmospheric Studies at the University of Alberta who has researched urban and rural land planning. He said that Alberta "may be the only jurisdiction in Canada and beyond that has made these intermunicipal agreements to be mandatory."
Before the EMRB, Agrawal said there was nothing. With no planning board and no ICFs, "individual municipalities did whatever they wished to do," he said.
With ICFs, Agrawal said the cost can become contentious, especially if an issue arises between municipalities and they are required to go to arbitration. He said that common service topics that went to arbitration involved recreation facilities, childcare services, and other soft services related to arts and culture.
He pointed to the town of Drayton Valley and Brazeau County, who went to mandatory arbitration for childcare services and entered mediation to deal with a dispute arising from the cost of recreational facilities.
Despite the additional costs and the potential for legal disputes, Agrawal said there are some benefits to ICFs.
"I think ICFs may be embraced better in Alberta because it does preserve individual municipalities autonomy, which municipalities thought was curtailed being part of the board."
Richard Plain served as mayor from 1974 to 1977 and again from 2001 to 2004. He said that he was able to accommodate high rates of growth without the density requirements imposed by the EMRB.
"We've had much greater flexibility in this decentralized model than we had in this centralized one where the growth plan and the density requirements really have restricted what could be done in certain areas," Plain said.
While many modern councillors may view life without the EMRB as a new development, Plain sees it as going back to where it all started.
"An old, but a new era in planning is in front of council," Plain said.
