Cypress signs first new IDP, a relatively easy one
Cypress County has posted a draft of its Intermunicipal Development Plan agreement with the MD of Taber on its website.
This is the first attempt by the county to comply with the provincial government’s new mandate that as of this year all municipal areas, rural or not, enter into some form of IDP agreement with neighbouring jurisdictions.
The IDP with the MD of Taber is a good starting point for Cypress County as it goes forward with drafting other IDPs with the County of Newell, 40 Mile County and the Special Areas, which all share much longer borders with the county.
“We don’t share much of a border with the MD of Taber,” says county planning supervisor Jeffrey Dowling. “It’s the Bow River that flows between the two municipalities that creates the boundary. There is actually only one road, provincial Highway 524, and only one bridge that joins our two municipalities where our borders touch. The majority of the area within the planned boundary area, the one mile on either side of our municipalities’ borders we have agreed to, is Crown land. There is very little deeded land.”
The area encompassed by the IDP is about 33,459 acres total, and is mostly rural farmland, which also makes coming to agreement easier, says Dowling.
“Because there are common interests, and because a lot the land is agriculture, for those reasons these plans between rural municipalities are usually fairly simple to draw up,” explains Dowling.
However, there is one weird little potential sticking point in the IDP. For some reason, says Dowling, when the borders were drawn up between the MD of Taber and the county’s predecessor Improvement District No. 1, the surveyors cut off a small chunk off the MD of Taber’s side of the river which later became Grand Forks Park.
This park now officially sits in Cypress County, but has no access road leading to it from the county, and is mainly used by residents of the MD of Taber. For years a handshake agreement between the county and MD has stated the MD will take care of park maintenance. The new IDP now officially codifies that agreement.
“The IDP is a way to help both municipalities communicate with each other,” Dowling says, “which is why the province wants us to enter into them in the first place.”