City of Chestermere
 

Town council votes 6-1 in favour of Chestermere becoming a city

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CHESTERMERE — Calgary’s fast-growing eastern neighbour has outgrown its status as a town, Chestermere council decided Monday night.

The community, which was only a summer village until 1993, will formally ask the province to rename it City of Chestermere at the start of next year.

It’s a move with no real effect on the municipality’s taxes or administration. But council hopes a new title makes the service-starved community more of a magnet for lucrative industrial and commercial development, or potentially for provincial infrastructure grants.

“The sooner we can get that competitive advantage, the sooner we can get access to the things residents want,” Mayor Patricia Matthews said.

Chestermere council voted 6-1 for the name change Monday, in front of a standing-room-only crowd that appeared largely opposed to the change.

“Is this the sort of thing that should go to plebiscite?” one resident asked at the meeting. The mayor said that option was too expensive, and public feedback from 250 people came after officials’ best efforts at formal consultation.

One of Alberta’s fastest-growing jurisdictions, Chestermere is home to 17,203 residents, this year’s local census states. It’s 2.5 times its size of a decade ago.

But it has few businesses contributing to property taxes. Its largest private employer is the Safeway, economic development officer Jean-Marc Lacasse said.

Less than five per cent of Chestermere’s property tax revenue comes from businesses, compared to half of Calgary’s.

Chestermere wants to draw more industrial and commercial projects so the tax base is big enough to offer many major urban trappings that don’t exist there, such as transit, curbside recycling pickup and a 311 hotline.

Councillors reasoned that the name “city” could give economic development staff a potent lure to developers who may overlook a town of the same size, or one so close to Calgary.

Lacasse said even before the switch, he’s heard interest from Calgary companies looking to relocate.

“They have shortlisted Chestermere, because by using the term city, for them it meant there was people, there were employees and there was a developed community,” he said.

Many residents were dubious city status would matter that much.

“I think making the place attractive to investment will bring investment,” said Peter Tindall.

“The name of the place won’t make any difference.”

Council members express hope the Alberta government will listen more to Chestermere’s grant requests if it’s one of the province’s 18 cities, instead of one of its 108 towns.

Any town with more than 10,000 residents can apply to become a city, though communities such as Okotoks, Cochrane and Strathmore have preferred to stick with the more humble title.

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"Town Council Votes 6-1 in Favour of Chestermere Becoming a City." Www.calgaryherald.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2014.
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Ummm, this is already being discussed in the 'Alberta and British Columbia' sub-forum. Probably fits better in there.

Is this going to make a difference in anything? And I will laugh my ass off if they go back to a "town" in a few years like Okotoks did. Mind you there is that proposal for 40 000 people in Chestermere, so it would be hard to have a town of 60 000 people...

Oakville in Ontario is still a town, with nearly 200 000 people.

Time to put up toll roads heading into the city from the north and east lol.

I wasn't aware of that, I thought Okotoks had never achieved city status. The only City that 'downgraded' to a town that I am aware of if Drumheller.

Okotoks has never had city status in Alberta.

Chestermere is 5 minutes to NE Stoney Trail which is closer than Legacy in SE Calgary to SE Stoney Trail. I think it is time to annex Chestermere.

If you look at Calgary, the east is by far the least developed. We can't really build farther west due to Tsuu T'ina.

I thought I remembered reading somewhere that they became a city for a few years then reverted to town status.

The east was constrained for a very long time by active sour gas wells. The area is beginning to open up now but the legacy of that barrier to development is a lack of transportation infrastructure compared to other sectors (the west is in a similar place for infrastructure but the constraint there had to do with acreages making large subdivisions complicated). For the east to really develop it would need new infrastructure. An International Ave LRT could really let the area build out and turn Calgary into more of a circle instead of a stretched out, lop sided, oval. It would also help the ever present problem of housing in the west and jobs in the east that has plagued our transportation planning.

Not exactly lacking infrastructure, as it stands, many from Chestermere take the NE LRT and park in the neighborhoods/park and ride.

I think the City needs to look more into developing the east now though. Most thing are cleaned up.

The irony is that this whole "becoming a city thing" is a symptom of resistance to the growing influence of Calgary. Chestermere wants to maintain the ability to build whatever crap it wants until they inevitably ceded or amalgamated in 2050.

They want to be a city so that they can keep building like a small town.:koko:

Why should we assume their 70 years of low density buildings and pay to replace all the EOL infrastructure they built on a shoe string budget? IMO I hope we never get to the point where we have to take on that burden.