Our mayor claims that our current rapid poorly-managed land development practices and associated ‘growth’ pays for itself.
Growth does not pay for itself at any scale. This ideology has been tested time and again by economists and scholars, and much has been written on this topic explaining that growth does not pay for itself. The mayor’s simple rhetoric is simply not true, even if it sounds good to say it and act like it does, throwing caution to the wind in hopes that everything will settle out okay down the line.
In fact, growth in the context of Cochrane’s rapid urban sprawl and rapidly increasing population does not foster local economic growth, nor does it sustain the well-being of our community. Instead, it takes away our sense of small town living, destroys our natural infrastructure, and makes living and working here more difficult and debt-ridden for everyone. We are always paying more - businesses included. What we have instead of growth paying for itself is a constant, insufferable infrastructure deficit. We are always playing catch-up, stuck in traffic, with no new schools or facilities for our youth, and wasting tax dollars to pay for debt loads that have not been factored into the off-site levy bylaw because of poor forecasting and dreadful land use planning that reflects a fear of saying no ‘that it’s not okay to entice more people into this town without providing for them-if you want to develop land here for our future residents, you need to provide us with the infrastructure and services those folks will need’.
Off-site levies are not a panacea: they are highly regulated by law and practice. We all pay for growth: we citizens who live here now, and in the future, and let us take a minute to thank all those long term and past citizens who paid through the nose for growth since the late 1990s when the growth mantra first really kicked in because our business community wanted more customers. That is all we have become in this pro-growth climate– we have become deep pockets for developers and the business community who are addicted to growth for growth’s sake and not for the sake of our people and the landscape in this community.
In the pro-growth climate only the rich get richer and the rest of us bear the costs of keeping them rich.
Sincerely
Judy Stewart
Cochrane, AB
