Rocky View Gravel Watch email reviews the July 23, 2024 meeting of the Rocky View Council where disappointingly, and “despite an opportunity to expedite the process, … staff’s original recommendation that delays bringing back a detailed analysis of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee’s report, revised terms of reference, a work plan, and any associated budget adjustments until the end of the calendar year – a full year behind schedule.”
Read the full email correspondence following:
From: Rocky View Gravel Watch <rockyviewgravelwatch@gmail.com>
Date: July 29, 2024 at 11:46:33 AM MDT
To: Rocky View Gravel Watch <rockyviewgravelwatch@gmail.com>
Subject: Disappointing News on the ARP – long, but important
Greetings:
We were disappointed with the council majority’s decision on the ARP at their July 23, 2024 meeting. Despite an opportunity to expedite the process, we are left with staff’s original recommendation that delays bringing back a detailed analysis of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee’s report, revised terms of reference, a work plan, and any associated budget adjustments until the end of the calendar year – a full year behind schedule.
When Council considered the issue at its July 23, 2024 meeting, we hoped that they would stand by their earlier unanimous commitment to move the ARP process forward to completion before the next municipal election. Instead, in a 4-3 decision, Reeve Crystal Kissel, Deputy Reeve Don Kochan and Councillors Greg Boehlke and Al Schule voted against Councillor Samantha Wright’s motion to reinstate some speed into the project. Only Councillors Kevin Hanson and Sunny Samra supported her motion.
From our perspective, the majority’s decision is unfathomable given that, during the meeting, Administration repeatedly indicated that they could easily bring back revised terms of reference and a work plan by the end of September – the direction in Wright’s motion. At the very least, it would have signalled council’s commitment to getting the ARP back on schedule to both residents and industry.
We were particularly surprised by Kissel’s position since gravel is a major issue for many residents in her division. Without an effective ARP in place, her Division 3 residents will continue to face the negative impacts from existing gravel pits and threats from prospective pits.
The Stakeholder Advisory Committee submitted its report at the end of April. While some of the issues are complex, that has been recognized since the beginning. None of the issues identified by the Committee are new – they were all discussed ad nauseum in the last ARP process. What’s different is that the Committee was able to reach consensus on many key issues that had been contentious the last time around. We also assume that staff must have invested a significant amount of time during the earlier ARP process working through the complexities since they presented a comprehensive revised draft ARP as a completed document at that time.
We understand that staff may have a lot on their plates; however, the work associated with the ARP shouldn’t be a surprise. They had clear direction and timelines in the council-approved terms of reference. While there is no denying that there were some unavoidable delays getting the Stakeholder Advisory Committee up and running, those do not explain the further delays for staff to complete their share of Phase 1.
Here’s how the discussion and decision unfolded.
After staff presented their report, one of Gravel Watch’s members spoke to council emphasizing the importance of moving forward more quickly than staff was recommending. We felt it was important for council to hear residents’ perspective to provide balance to the letter council received from Hillstone, who operates a gravel pit on Hwy 567, questioning the validity of the Committee’s recommendations. Under council’s Procedure Bylaw, we requested permission to speak to the issue. Although Kissel questioned the appropriateness of our request, she voted in support. In contrast, Kochan and Boehlke voted against it.
Wright then argued that delaying the process was akin to “flogging a dead horse”. As well as congratulating the Committee for their great work in getting things this far, she pointed out that their work was a good leaping-off point for revised terms of reference. She emphasized the fact that the survey’s public engagement results identified both the Committee’s recommendations and many of the non-consensus items as priorities that need to be worked on.
Wright also pointed out that the route forward described by staff risked sacrificing the good in hopes of achieving the perfect. She expressed concerns that if perfection was the goal, we risked never getting there. As she pointed out, policies can always be amended later to add or modify their provisions. We couldn’t agree more.
Other points raised during the discussion included:
- Kochan was impressed with industry’s willingness to make improvements. His questions focused on trying to understand how staff were going to determine a comprehensive economic assessment of aggregate operations in the County – one of the non-consensus items.
- Boehlke emphasized that the Province was the regulator on gravel pits, not the County. He also pointed out that there were a lot of gravel pits in his division and they didn’t get any complaints.
- Hanson pointed out that the Committee’s recommendations gave council six things they “knew they wanted to do” and that, while a couple of them had wide-ranging implications for workloads in various departments, others were straightforward. As a result, he thought it should be possible to accelerate work on the simpler items while working through the complexities of the others.
- Samra asked for some clarification on why the project was on-going since 2013. In response to Boehlke’s comments, he stated that for alternative energy, council was happy to consider rules over and above the Province as being in the County’s best interests. The same should apply for gravel.
- Kissel and Schule made no comments.
In support of Wright’s motion, Hanson pointed out that all her motion did was separate the original motion into bite-sized pieces that should save both time and money since it would avoid having staff spend time doing detailed analysis and budgeting for items that didn’t have council support. Samra reminded his colleagues that staff had assured them they could deliver on the motion’s timeline. He also pointed out that council frequently moved things up in the queue and that this had been in the queue since 2013, so it should get dealt with.
Unfortunately, their arguments failed to sway the council majority. The explanations provided by the majority as rationales for rejecting Wright’s motion were:
- Boehlke felt that it was not appropriate to “make changes on the fly”
- Kochan insisted that they needed to fully understand the budget implications of all items in the Committee’s report before they made any further decisions.
- Schule thought the motion would slow down the process.
- Kissel indicated that she thought Administration needed the longer timeframe to address the non-consensus issues and that she did not believe that breaking the work into pieces would speed it up.
In our opinion, Wright’s motion did not make changes on the fly, and it certainly would not slow down the process. It was a proactive response to the information provided and the assurances from Administration that it could be done.
We are quite concerned about staff’s focus on providing detailed budget implications for every item in the Committee’s report. For starters, that is not the approach typically used in developing high-level policy documents. Understanding the budget implications of items that may not advance makes no sense. Decisions on what goes into an ARP should be based on the merits of the item, not merely on what it will cost. As well, staff appear to have forgotten that one of the basic assumptions underlying the ARP is that there will be a site monitoring bylaw under which industry will pay the costs for improved regulation, monitoring and enforcement – similar to what is done in oil and gas.
Staff’s comments about needing to do a risk assessment for all the items in the Committee’s report is also worrisome. In our opinion, staff’s emphasis on risk assessment is a red flag since they clearly identified the potential lack of industry support as a significant risk in pursuing the ARP. The ARP failed the last time because Council thought that without full consensus it shouldn’t move forward. As we’ve pointed out before, gravel companies are for-profit corporations, and it would be contrary to their shareholders’ interests to volunteer for tighter rules that could reduce their profits. That doesn’t mean that better rules to protect residents and the environment will stop them from extracting gravel here. Our proximity to the Calgary market is just too attractive to walk away from. We thought this shortcoming had been recognized this go-round.
From our perspective, the ARP has lost important momentum created by the stellar work done by the Stakeholder Advisory Committee. Even more concerning is the fact that the majority’s July 23 , 2024 decision will make it harder to get the all-important ARP in place during this council’s term., 2024
If you have any questions, please be sure to let us know. Also, please share this with your friends and neighbours.
All the best,
Rocky View Gravel Watch