Workers stage cribbing for a foundation in the south-end community of the Hamptons on Thursday afternoon. In future, new outlaying communities may see differing levels of city services under a new Municipal Development Plan that passed city council this week.--NEWS PHOTO COLLIN GALLANT
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
Long-term development in Medicine Hat will be guided by the ideas that not all communities are created equally and that concentrated infill development can arrest growing costs of maintaining infrastructure.
The Municipal Development Plan, which sets growth patterns and priorities in a 30-year outlook, was passed by a 9-0 council vote on Monday.
“We’re suggesting that the infrastructure that we put into our communities match the need,” said planning general manager Kent Snyder in a presentation to council.
It also lays out “Urban Villages” or areas of focus for more intense redevelopment – the downtown, areas around the Medicine Hat Regional Hospital, Trans-Canada Way and Strachan Road, and smaller parts of older neighbourhoods. There, redevelopment would add tax assessment value without the need for new infrastructure, bus routes or utility lines.
Meanwhile, it removes obligations of developers to meet population density requirements in new outlaying communities, which previously translated into offering a variety of lot sizes and multi-family parcels.
“It shows that we’re on the right path and open to brownfield and greenfield development,” said Coun. Darren Hirsch, referring to new suburbs and intensification in established neighbourhoods.
Mayor Ted Clugston has said the city’s previous planning policy, especially lot-size requirements, were “aspirational” and better suited for larger cities rather than the marketplace in Medicine Hat.
On Monday, the new plan was hailed by councillors as a plan to tackle long-term development through the lens of allowing developers to better match market expectations in new communities, growth in the tax base.
At the same time, planners say that the cost of expanding development can be contained over the next 30 years when lower growth is expected. During that same time, the city will need to replace much of the infrastructure in existing neighbourhoods.
That could mean smaller, new connector roads and items such as sewage stations built to accommodate near to mid-term development, rather than larger structures up front to accommodate the longer-term build-out of the entire area.
Coun. Kris Samraj raised some criticism, noting internal city studies that stated “in general” new residential assessment growth doesn’t provide a payback in tax revenue due to new costs.
The result, he said, will be that “there are going to be residential tax payers with lower levels of service that are paying the same tax rate,” said Samraj, who has long advocated for rebalancing tax rates or reforming the property tax classification system.
The “urban transect” model now used by planning staff and other administrators assigns expectations of general use for tracts of land (higher use to lower use) to base infrastructure and servicing levels upon. Planning policy superintendent Robert Sissons called that “purpose-built servicing levels.”
That could also mean centralized services, like new recreation facilities and parks assigned to general areas of a city (there are six “sectors”), rather than on a community by community basis.
Linear parks and fewer, but larger, multi-use rec facilities, would become the norm.
Several years ago the city undertook steps to amend its servicing manual. More recently administrators had discussed whether guidelines for items related about where to locate things like bus stops need to be more flexible.
It would also aim to postpone new residential developments from coming online until more land could be sold quicker, therefore more quickly begin to pay off the costs of extending roads and sewers to new areas.
A queue for bringing new residential subdivisions online would be adhered to, with planners vowing to discourage new approvals until more lot inventory is needed.
