Morinville is headed for a showdown with the Capital Region Board over a policy gap it says unfairly caps its growth.
Town council voted in favour of first reading of a revised version of its municipal development plan (MDP) at a meeting last week.
The plan, originally sent to the Capital Region Board (CRB) late last year, had been taken back for revision after the town learned that the board's administrators were going to recommend it be rejected due to its population and employment forecasts – the town was growing faster than it was projected to under the Capital Region Growth Plan.
The growth plan had projected that Morinville's population would hit 8,305 by 2014. Since the town has 8,504 residents as of today, according to the latest town census, the MDP would have to plan for zero or negative population growth for the near future in order to meet the growth plan's projections.
The revised MDP instead projects 1.3 to 1.9 per cent growth per year over the next 35 years. Both rates are lower than the town's historic rate of two per cent a year, the MDP notes.
Mayor Lloyd Bertschi said he fully expects the board's administration to reject the revised plan, meaning the town will have to try to convince the board's 24 members to approve it.
This MDP points out serious gaps in the CRB's structure when it comes to growth outside of big cities, Bertschi said, and hits on the same issues that have caused Sturgeon County and Leduc to butt heads with the board.
"This has been boiling for a long time," he said, "and it's going to come to a head."
The problem
The province tasked the CRB with creating a regional plan in 2008 in order to better manage the region's growth. That plan now requires the board's 24-member municipalities to submit municipal development plans for approval by the board before they are implemented.
The board's growth plan is complex, but essentially says that future growth should be focused on priority growth areas such as Edmonton. It does permit growth outside of those areas, but there are few rules in place for those zones.
When the plan was being made the province stepped in and gave the board projections for how fast each community was likely to grow over the next few decades, Bertschi said.
"The problem is that somehow these population and employment forecasts have become caps, if you will, and they were never intended to be that," he said.
It's unrealistic to use these projections as caps, said Debbie Oyarzun, the town's chief administrative officer.
"How do we use that as a cap? You can't stop people from moving here," she said.
The revised MDP argues that the board's population projections should not be considered caps, as that contradicts the growth plan's policy of allowing growth outside of priority growth areas. The plan presents new growth projections based on an updated forecast and argues that Morinville has the infrastructure to support that growth.
"We're basing this on realistic numbers that are actually happening," Bertschi said.
When asked by council why the town didn't apply to become a priority growth area (which would accommodate its rapid growth), Oyarzun said there was no way for the town to do so under the CRB's rules.
"Morinville is a perfect model of how this system doesn't work," she said.
Fix is in?
The growth plan's population forecasts were meant to show the province where growth was happening so it could plan roads and overpasses, said CRB chair and St. Albert Mayor Nolan Crouse.
"It certainly wasn't intended, from my point of view, to have any control over anyone," he said.
But the plan as a whole was meant to discourage new towns or subdvisions, he added, as those would put more stress on regional infrastructure.
"Current communities are allowed to grow," he said. "What was not intended was for new communities to develop."
While Crouse said he was unfamiliar with Morinville's MDP issues, he said the board is now working on a five-year review of its policies (set for completion next year) that would likely revise population targets.
Bertschi said he hoped reason would prevail at the board and that the town's MDP would pass. The big problem is Edmonton, he added, which has an effective veto on the board.
"If we don't have Mayor [Stephen] Mandel on side, it's not going to happen."
The CRB next meets on Aug. 9.
