The Calgary Metropolitan Region Board holds first meeting

On March 22, Chestermere partook in the first Calgary Metropolitan Regional Board (CMRB) meeting.
The board is meant to ensure that growth in the Calgary region is sustainable and coordinated, as well as promote the economic well-being and competitiveness of the region.
“The elected officials of these ten municipalities are committed to working together, not only in the interest of each of their communities but in the interest of the best path forward for the region,” said Christopher Sheard, the Interim Board Chair in a press release.
He said the first meeting went well and all mayors and Reeves were positive and cooperative.
“Everything went very smoothly,” said Sheard.
The board has a very specific mandate imposed by the provincial government through the Calgary Metropolitan Region Board regulation.
The first meeting was an organizational meeting where committees were formed and members discussed work being done to begin the planning process.
The three committees made by the board thus far are Land Use, Inter-municipal Servicing, and Governance.
As part of the CMRB, Chestermere city councilor Laurie Bold attended the first meeting for Mayor Marshall Chalmers as the city’s representative.
According to Bold, Mayor Chalmers will be on two of the three committees including the inter-municipal servicing plans and the land use committees.
At the meeting, they also talked about work being done to begin the planning process.
“The land use has many aspects to it, not only where do the residential areas go, where do the industrial areas go, where does the growth happen but also where should the major roadways if there were to be new roads, where should pipelines go should there be pipelines,” said Sheard
They will be looking 10, 20, 30, or 40 years in the future and planning what the region will look like said Sheard.
“Once that plan is complete within the next three years all the municipalities are required to follow this regulation, required to comply with this plan, so it’s a mandatory thing that all municipal plans then must comply with the regional plan,” he said.
He said he expects the plan to be done and complete within a three-year period of the council starting.
“I fully expect that within the three year period that the province has given us we will be successful in preparing a growth plan for the region,” said Sheard.
He said that indications from this inaugural meeting are that they will be successful in doing that.
Bold shared the sentiment that this first meeting went really well.
She said she felt privileged to be able to be there as an alternate, and that she will be keeping up to date with what’s happening herself even when Mayor Chalmers is there.
Bold thinks that the board will do a good job with what they’ve set out to do for the communities.