Town councilor Alex Reed has expanded on his rationale as to why the town should start laying the groundwork for annexing further land for Cochrane.
At last week's committee-of-the-whole meeting, Reed referenced the need for the town to start the process now for something he believes can take up to a decade to complete.
Reed believes adding more land will give the town the opportunity to generate more taxes from nonresidential properties, reduce its heavy reliance on residential taxes, and take pressure off of people struggling with the rising cost of living.
"One of the ways we can manage property taxes is by increasing the proportion of tax revenue that comes from commercial properties. There's quite an inequity in our community between the residential tax and the commercial property tax."
He says Cochrane has limited commercial development opportunities that restrict its ability to generate revenue outside of residential taxes.
"By expanding our commercial base, we can grow our overall tax pool and better distribute the financial responsibilities for supporting our community," says Reed.
RELATED STORIES
Before Reed was elected to council eight years ago, he was chair of the Cochrane Planning Commission and was involved with discussions that led to the town's last annexation. In 2019, the town received approval to add about 200 acres to its corporate limits from Rocky View County to make way for the future high school, and major sports park as well as allow for further residential expansion slightly beyond the existing Sunset Ridge community.
"I have done a little research to understand what annexation means in our region. It could take up to a dozen years to be able to annex. It's a long process. It's very detailed, so from initiation to completion, I would say it could be almost a decade. That's why I felt strongly about saying we need to start that process sooner than later, particularly as it relates to land for commercial purposes."
The town has made no secret that it anticipates annexing further lands at some point. Increasing the corporate limits was given significant attention in a community vision prepared in 2019.
It's also been part of recent town council strategic planning sessions.
"Annexation has been part of the agenda in terms of being able to move forward for this council and administration. I think the reason didn't come up the other night is it was a long enough night as it was and we were covering a lot of information.
"People shouldn't be shocked by this. This is the direction Cochrane has been going for quite a while, quite honestly."