I started volunteering on the Okotoks Municipal Planning Commission (MPC) in 2008.
At a MPC meeting in early 2010 we were presented a report about the Joint Planning Agreement (JPA) that had just been approved by the Okotoks Town council and the Municipal District of Foothills council.
The amount of space that I have in this column doesn’t allow for a full description of the JPA, but, in a nutshell, the plan was that Okotoks would keep the town boundary as it is and semi-urban neighbourhood development would happen all around Okotoks in the M.D. of Foothills.
The taxation complexities of this made my head hurt. All of the thousands of future residents living around Okotoks would need public services and facilities in Okotoks but their property taxes would go to the M.D. of Foothills.
The M.D. of Foothills is a great neighbour with a long history of sharing costs with Okotoks but would they be willing to provide all of the property taxes from the neighbourhoods around Okotoks?
What needed to happen was crystal clear in my mind. If the community of Okotoks was going to continue to grow, this future growth should happen within Okotoks and not around it.
I figured I needed to be at the table to try and make this happen so I ran for Okotoks Town Council in 2010. Thankfully, Ray Watrin was also elected to town council in 2010 with a vision for continued growth.
At many points along the way it seemed hopeless, but agreement and consensus gained momentum over time.
It’s amazing to know that now we can plan for our future in Okotoks with the annexation approved by the Government of Alberta.
