It might be too early to say the City of St. Albert and Sturgeon County have kissed and made up, but recent compromises over contested developments on the urban fringe are nonetheless an encouraging sign that once frosty relations have warmed to the point of cool indifference.
Last week the two municipalities agreed at a committee level to amend the Sturgeon-St. Albert intermunicipal development plan (IDP), a legally binding document that outlines growth and future annexations in a 2,666-hectare area on St. Albert’s fringe. It’s the first move to change the nine-year-old IDP since the war over the 1,337-hectare annexation, but doing so raises new questions about the relevance of the bylaw and whether relations will take on a more co-operative spirit.
The annexation dispute put a lasting pall on relations, as both municipalities under former mayors Richard Plain and Lawrence Kluthe fought over a satisfactory property tax revenue sharing formula for the spoils of the annexation. Relations steadily improved during the Paul Chalifoux and Helmut Hinteregger councils of 2004-07, when a more collaborative spirit began to emerge. The tone has somewhat cooled since the 2007 election; joint council meetings between St. Albert and Sturgeon have been quietly polite thanks to a willingness on both sides to largely skirt around potential disagreements, in public at least. At one point St. Albert and Sturgeon agreed to leave the IDP as is even though the bylaw calls for updates every five years, neither side apparently willing to get into another potential row.
Proposed development aspirations on both sides have finally broken the status quo, though no one should misconstrue the newfound compromise as a warm working relationship. The city and county have agreed to disagree by removing the 2007 annexed lands from the IDP, along with two contested acreage developments in Quail Ridge and Northern Lights.
Removing the annexation area allows the city to pursue council’s goal of a new industrial park in the west. Industrial zoning has proved a regional stumbling block, largely because it goes against the city’s annexation arguments that spelled out mainly residential land uses and a strip of commercial along Highway 2. Given the legally binding nature of the IDP the city created three ‘future study areas’ — basically land-use voids — in the hopes of eventually convincing Sturgeon and landowners about the merits of industrial development, the former of which never happened.
Northern Lights is a multi-lot acreage development south of the former St. Albert airport, in an area that’s scheduled for future annexation. The development has been a major thorn in relations, reaching a low point when Sturgeon approved the development over St. Albert’s objections and unilaterally amended the IDP before the courts upheld the city’s arguments. Quail Ridge, a proposed multi-acreage development near River Lot 56, has created similar concerns about creating a new population base so close to St. Albert’s boundary.
Removing the points of contention from the IDP essentially releases St. Albert and Sturgeon from a significant part of their IDP obligations, putting the bylaw’s relevance in question, especially with the Capital Region Board making regional co-operation mandatory. The IDP changes still need approval from each respective council — and that’s far from a certainty given Mayor Don Rigney’s stated distaste for a document he has previously claimed is an impediment to Sturgeon County’s autonomy.
If the changes move ahead there’s a chance the absence of controversy could lead to a new co-operative spirit for two municipalities with historically strong ties. If the deal dies, get ready for a new cold front.
