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County council increases rural densities in MDP

Seeking to encourage more development, County of Stettler will now enable property owners to add housing with changes

Seeking to encourage more development, County of Stettler will now enable property owners to add housing with changes in the municipal development plan.

Following a quiet public hearing at its monthly meeting in June, county council adopted changes to the MDP and land-use bylaw.

“We’re just changing density on a quarter section with other minor changes,” stated Johan van der bank, the county’s director of planning and development.

After consultation with property owners, the county received no responses for either bylaw, he said.

“People seem to support the changes in the bylaws,” van der Bank said last week.

Updated, the MDP also owners to increase the density in the agricultural district from two private titles per quarter section to three private titles per quarter section.

“This means that each quarter section in the county could have two parcels subdivided out of the remainder of the quarter section while all three titles remain in the agricultural district and rezoning is not required,” van der Bank said.

Now the plan allows any subdivision that proposes the fourth and additional private titles out of a quarter section as a multi-lot subdivision that must follow the rules for multi-lot subdivision.

As well, the bylaw changes the definition of a farmstead subdivision so that the setback distances required for private sewage disposal systems from property boundaries are not included.

Under the land-use bylaw, several parcels of land were rezoned to public service district.

“This change was prompted based on several phone calls from adjacent property owners where it became evident that the public service district was specifically created to accommodate land held by government and not-for-profit organizations and accommodate recreational used in the same manner as the recreation facility district, and people seemed to be less concerned with the public service district than with the recreation facility district,” van der Bank said.

For confined feeding operations, the policies in the plan align with the provincial Agricultural Operation Practices Act, he said.