Alberta Premier Calls for Faster Municipal Approval of Housing and Commercial Projects

In her mandate letter delivered on Friday, the Premier of Alberta wants municipalities to approve projects for the construction of housing and commercial activity zones on their territory more quickly.

Danielle Smith is calling on Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver to work with his Cabinet colleagues to develop appropriate incentives and criteria to significantly reduce municipal approval times for these types of projects.

Ric McIver, himself a former Calgary councilor, believes municipalities could do more to speed up the processing of applications.

Sometimes you hear builders and developers around the world say the process isn’t as fast as it should be, he says.

He wants Alberta to have a reputation as an easy place to do business because, he says, time is money.

According to him, if land is zoned for a particular use, municipalities should be able to carry out environmental impact studies and traffic studies before a developer comes to solicit them.

Association of Municipalities of Alberta president and mayor of St. Albert (northwest of Edmonton), Cathy Heron, says municipalities pride themselves on how few barriers they impose compared to other levels of government.

She believes that if there is anything stopping the development of needed projects, such as affordable housing, it is the lack of provincial funding.

Sarah Hoffman, Alberta’s New Democratic Party (NDP) municipal affairs critic, accuses the United Conservative Party (UCP) of hiding its record, which she says includes the failure to make restitution municipalities for unpaid property taxes.

Municipalities in Alberta need a real partner in their provincial government, and nothing in this letter indicates that this is a priority for the CERP for the next four years, he said. she writes.

Further revision of local law to come

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has long toyed with the idea of ​​allowing municipalities to keep some of the property tax they collect for the province and for funding education.

His mandate letter asks Ric McIver to examine the viability of such a measure.

This year’s budget calls for municipalities to collect $2.5 billion in property taxes for education, which will cover about 28% of the costs of operating the K-12 school system and the Ministry of Education. ‘Education.

Cathy Heron would like to know more about this, as she considers provincial funding for municipal infrastructure. According to her, there is a $30 billion backlog of municipal infrastructure across the province.

Next year, a new infrastructure model called the Local Government Fiscal Framework will link increases or decreases in this funding to provincial revenues.

The Premier also instructed the Minister of Municipal Affairs to make changes to the law governing local elections. Danielle Smith has previously said she wants to see a party system in municipal politics. This worries Cathy Heron, who says she has seen voters reject lists in previous elections.

They want their councilors to have their own values ​​and principles when they walk into the boardroom, she said. This would disappear with the introduction of parties.

Ric McIver believes that the subject does not concern his mandate.

On the other hand, he would like to consider the possibility of consulting the original electronic ballot papers during the counting and the publication of a greater number of information by polling station when the official results are published.

With information from Janet French