Rural municipalities recently met, and a motion put forward by Foothills County passed with 87 per cent approval.

Reeve Delilah Miller says the motion called for regional planning in Alberta to be done away with.

"We're against regional planning in all of rural Alberta and we know that it's coming to other rural areas and that's of great concern for all rural Alberta," she says.

She says the overwhelming mandate means the resolution can be taken to the Provincial government.

"If we're not going to be taken out of regional planning, that's our first preference, and our second preference would be to change the voting structure because right now the voting structure is six urban municipalities against two rural's and it's a very lopsided board and we have been forced and mandated to attend all these board meetings and if we don't attend our vote is cast in the affirmative."

Miller says Calgary and Edmonton, in the Capital Region, are given veto power so even if all the rest of the municipalities vote in favour of something they can vote against it and kill it.

"My argument is, you may have more population, but we have the lion's share of the land mass, so we deserve to have more of a say at the board level. CMRB is a huge obstacle for the county, and we have been working for five years with this government to try and have some concessions made or be let out of this plan and every government has refused, including this one."

"We are at our wit's end at the amount of money our county has had to spend. We estimate we've spent about $700,000 attending all their meetings, providing staff, providing council time to them and now because they cannot stay within their $1 million budget allocated by this government, their board, which we were out-voted on, voted to invoice all of us, so that's High River, Okotoks and Airdrie, Chestermere, City of Calgary all voted to be invoiced so we will be getting invoiced for all the extra work this committee wants to do, whether we like it or not.

She says several models were brought forward for determining how much each municipality would pay, none of which the County approved of except for one based on population.

"We feel if Calgary is going to get the veto and the urbans are going to get the majority vote over us, then the least they can do is pay their share by population," Miller explains.

"We brought forward developers from Rocky View County and Foothills County, we met with (Municipal Affairs) Minister Ric McIver at his request to let him know approximately how many housing starts we've lost since the CMRB has come into effect and those developers came forward and estimated almost 30,000 have been lost since the CMRB has come into effect because of their stringent rules and regulations around development, so developers have said they've left out area and gone elsewhere."

"So, during a housing crisis where we don't have enough housing for people coming to work and live in Alberta, we just threw away 30,000 because urban Alberta doesn't want rural Alberta to develop."

She says it's a travesty for rural Alberta.

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