Priority: Doing it right in the first place

by | May 8, 2017 | Campaign 2017, News | 0 comments

Development without supporting infrastructure doesn’t make sense. People have repeatedly asked me, ‘who’s making the decisions in this town, is it council or the developers?’ While I am in favor of development, the current pace of development that doubles our population every approx. 10 years, without the appropriate infrastructure, is ridiculous.  We already have traffic problems that seem to grow with each passing day, how does adding more traffic make sense?!  And this problem can only get worse with the construction of new developments that the are already approved and are expected to approx. double our population once again.

I believe we should note allow the distance between houses to shrink OR to continue to plan one stage of development at a time OR approve developments that lack essential safety elements such as sidewalks on both sides of the road.  Again, I can promise you that I will NOT vote for ANY development that includes only one access road.  Council must NEVER potentially risk someone’s life or the loss of your home because we failed to take a common sense approach to planning!

We must also not ‘forget’ about the basic elements that together form a community.  Our schools, our playgrounds and green spaces, our values and how we represent them, safety for abused women and activities for our youth are just some examples.  Council cannot ‘forget’ about these issues during our planning.  We must make better planning decisions if we are going attract businesses to Cochrane while continuing to enjoy our current standard of living.