By rdnewsNOW staff

Municipal Excellence

Lacombe County receives Municipal Excellence Award

Sep 29, 2024 | 12:49 PM

The Minister of Municipal Affairs, Honorable Ric McIver, has awarded Lacombe County the 2024 Municipal Excellence Award in the Red Tape Reduction category.

Officials note, this award recognizes Lacombe County’s annual review process of the Municipal Development Plan and Land Use Bylaw as a new approach that minimizes the need for large-scale updates every few years, while ensuring the plan remains aligned with community needs and goals on an ongoing basis.

“While updating our Municipal Development Plan and Land Use Bylaw, the County saw the immense dialogue being generated on planning topics and committed to transparency and being a leader in our community,” said Tim Timmons, County Manager. “Part of this commitment was the annual review process. Six years later, our approach has proven immensely successful and has become the foundation of a strong planning framework.”

Each year, County Planning Services staff collect data and metrics that are used to critically evaluate whether each policy of the Municipal Development Plan is performing as originally intended. Officials point out, these results are published in a report available to the public.

Based on the results and submissions received from the community, changes may be proposed to the Municipal Development Plan or Land Use Bylaw to address policy shortfalls. The bylaw changes are presented to the public for comment before being considered by council for adoption.

Len Thompson Industrial Park

City of Lacombe celebrates grand opening of $10.8 million Operations Facility

10m ago

Power of Collaboration

Donation of $500,000 in securities to fund new preschool building at Kerry Wood Nature Centre

32m ago

Time To Plan Ahead

Recreation, community spaces and pool rentals available for 2025 spring, summer & fall bookings

1h ago

The County’s Municipal Development Plan seeks to protect large tracts of agricultural lands in the county from loss and fragmentation, while also providing opportunities for high-quality development at strategic locations. The County’s Land Use Bylaw is the implementation tool of the Municipal Development Plan, which places all land in the county into land use districts, outlining various developments that can be considered in each district.

“While all municipalities in Alberta are required to have a municipal development plan and land use bylaw, Lacombe County is one of the few, if not only, municipality in Alberta that has incorporated a systematic process to review these documents every year” said Cajun Paradis, Senior Planner.

County officials say the annual review process catalyzes further engagement on hot policy topics. In 2023-24, the County conducted community engagement on the topic of dwellings in the agricultural area. In late 2024, the County will be conducting engagement on animals in residential districts to better understand what the community thinks about livestock, chickens, and bees in the County’s residential areas.

According to County officials, engagements like this are hoped to inform important policy decisions made by the County.

“On behalf of Lacombe County, I would like to thank the Honorable Ric McIver for recognizing the hard work and dedication of our Planning Services department in developing and executing this annual review process,” said Barb Shepherd, County Reeve. “We hope that the recognition of this work through the Award of Municipal Excellence in Red Tape Reduction will encourage other municipalities to explore similar approaches that keeps their plans fresh and reduce the need for large-scale and costly plan updates.”

PAST RECOGNITION

Officials say this is the second award the County has received for its annual planning review. In July 2024, the County received the Award of Planning Merit in Implementation Success from the Alberta Professional Planners Institute.

In 2018, the Alberta Professional Planners Institute and the Minister of Municipal Affairs both recognized Lacombe County for employing an innovative, inclusive, and community-driven public engagement approach during the 2016/17 update of the Municipal Development Plan and Land Use Bylaw.

“We are grateful and express our sincerest gratitude to both of these organizations for recognizing us once again” said Dale Freitag, Director of Planning Services. “We believe this is a great milestone and a testament to the effective planning approach provided for in the County’s Municipal Development Plan.”

—

For local news delivered daily to your email inbox, subscribe for free to the rdnewsNOW newsletter by visiting rdnewsNOW.com. You can also download the rdnewsNOW mobile app on Google Play and the Apple App Store for all the latest updates on this and other stories.