It’s interesting that neither Mayor Nolan Crouse nor Coun. Cam MacKay are concerned that residential growth in St. Albert is lagging far behind the rest of the region.
As new Statistics Canada census data revealed last week, St. Albert’s 6.4 per cent growth since 2006 was the lowest in the Capital region and far behind that of many other municipalities in the region, like Morinville’s 27 per cent growth, Spruce Grove’s 34 per cent increase, Beaumont’s region-leading 48 per cent increase and Leduc’s second place 43 per cent.
The mayors of those latter two municipalities provided glowing quotes to the newspapers yet MacKay and Crouse, when interviewed by the Gazette, weren’t at all sheepish that St. Albert is last in the region.
In other mayoral/development news last week, Crouse let slip during his state of the city address Wednesday that he’s working on a 20-point business attraction plan that seems to be focused on luring light industrial development to St. Albert. The plan will be made public Feb. 28.
The mayor’s nonchalance about sluggish residential growth combined with the fact that such an attraction plan is in the works could be positive signs that the city finally has its sights set on the right target: not unbridled growth but a focused strategy to attract the right kind of growth.
After all, it’s well known that adding residents costs the city more in service provision than it gets back in additional property taxes. As highlighted Saturday by our business columnist Larry Horncastle (the city’s former director of business and tourism development), several North American studies show residential growth is costly to cities while industrial development brings in revenue that far outpaces the cost of providing services.
The lack of light industrial development in St. Albert has been an issue for decades. Without a significant industrial base to provide taxes to city coffers, residents are left to shoulder a much greater portion of the overall tax burden than in more balanced municipalities. St. Albert’s fabled 80-20 split between residential and non-residential tax assessment has been a goal for years, but one that remains as elusive today as a desert mirage.
Council appeared to be making the right noises last fall when it passed a motion calling for the identification of 640 to 740 acres of land for future light industrial development. But later when it came time to actually identify land for development, council appeared to back away by voting to concentrate on land that was already designated industrial.
With Crouse’s speech on Wednesday, which mentioned an upcoming council vote to add 283 hectares (700 acres) of light industrial land, the issue is clearly still on the radar and may actually move forward.
Questions remain, of course. Will the plan be substance or fluff? Will it be pursued with the urgency this issue demands or will the city continue to dither while dozers continue to kick up dust just outside its borders?
And there are dangers to completely ignoring residential development, and more specifically the need to broaden St. Albert’s residential mix to include more options for young families. Failing to do so puts local schools at risk, degrades the demographic diversity that makes for a healthy community and threatens to cut off the labour supply needed by the very businesses the city is hoping to attract.
If the mayor and council pursue light industrial development with half the fervour accorded the city’s ongoing branding effort, it will not only be a meaningful effort, but it will be one that could actually bring real results that benefit the city’s current 61,000 residents.
