A Letter from our Rosemont President

Regarding the Blanket Rezoning proposal in Council this week.

Posted April 22, 2024
Matthew Guilherme
President, Rosemont Community Association

Blanket rezoning is up for debate and voting this week at Council. I would like to take a moment to discuss Rosemont Community Association’s (Rosemont CA) position on the topic, what we have submitted to Council and provide a summary of my meeting with the Mayor this past weekend.

At the start of the blanket rezoning discussion, Rosemont CA committed to the following:

  • Provide information about what this blanket rezoning means for Rosemont and the city

  • Provide direct access to our council representative for Ward 4, Sean Chu

  • Consolidate resident feedback and submit this to Council

We put together 11 documents and hosted an open house on the subject on Jan 24. With about 40 Rosemont residents in attendance, Councilor Chu provided a Q&A session for residents to ask questions and understand more. We also set up tables for residents to provide feedback and concerns about specific aspects of the proposal.

After making our information available on the website, we also set up a web form to gather information for anyone who was unable to attend the open house. 11 folks provided feedback via this form.

In total, approximately 5% of Rosemont residents provided feedback through Rosemont CA, with about 95% of that feedback being in opposition to blanket rezoning. The primary concerns that folks raised were parking (19), doubting impact on affordability (9), setbacks from property lines / large buildings (7), efficacy of development permit process (6), lack of consultation/plebiscite (6), impacts on trees / water / sewage (6), impact to community character (5), rezoning should be targeted not blanket (5).

This feedback was sent to Councilor Chu as well as the City’s feedback mechanism where it has been included in the public record (Attachment 20 – Public Submissions 1801-2000 - page 172-174)

During this process, several Community Associations were circulating a letter in opposition to blanket rezoning. The board didn’t feel comfortable signing it as we were still gathering feedback from residents. But once feedback was gathered, the Board voted to sign this letter as we felt that the general intent of the letter was in alignment with what we heard from residents. This letter was signed by about 50 Community Associations and can be viewed here.

After this letter was sent to the Mayor’s office, she requested a meeting with the signatories where we met on Saturday April 20 for 90 minutes (https://globalnews.ca/news/10440254/calgary-mayor-community-associations-zoning-changes-meeting/). During this meeting, Community Association Presidents and Development Chairs were provided with an opportunity to provide additional information and context to our opposition.

There are several news articles and Twitter posts from the Mayor regarding this meeting. These articles and summaries are in alignment with my experience on Saturday. There was no other Administration present, with the Mayor listening to our concerns the entire time (I sat near her and watched as she took about 8 pages of notes from the ~20 people that spoke). Issues raised were varied, as different CAs have different issues and perspectives.

General themes included the lack of public involvement in future developments and say in their communities, the distrust of developers to actually make anything affordable, parking and transit, giant buildings going up near bungalows and not being contextual to the area, impact on infrastructure (water, sewage etc), the proliferation of AirBnBs and their impact on housing supply, missed opportunities such as Westbrook, and genuine engagement with Community Associations during planning and development.

There was unanimous support for densification among those who spoke, but that it should be done thoughtfully and intentionally. In general, I would summarize it in two points:

  1. The public (individuals and Community Associations) doesn’t have a voice in their community’s development and this proposal weakens that voice even further

  2. There are many other ways to densify and there should be more focus on those tools already available

I took the opportunity to speak to three specific issues:

  1. Macro Contextual Development: I expressed support for density and that context is needed for the density. We have things like Local Area Plans that the City is pushing for which are used to identify areas for higher density. What is the purpose of doing these exercises if it isn’t going to be utilized?

  2. Micro Contextual Development: In the RC-G designation which is being voted on, C stands for Contextual. Based on this, residents think this means that a development needs to be more contextual to the houses and street around it. But that isn’t the case. Contextual doesn’t mean anything in this designation. If a street has bungalows and a developer wants to put up a giant 11m building with nearly no setback from their neighbour, this isn’t contextual. Make contextual genuinely contextual. The rules for setbacks and integration into neighbourhoods is so loose that it basically means nothing and developers will try to get away with as much as they humanly can.

  3. Data and Performance: The city is a data-driven organization, which is a good, objective way to approach problems. Administration believes that blanket rezoning is an important tool to solve the affordability crisis, which is a valid thought as there are many tools available. But what does success look like? What kinds of key performance indicators (KPIs) are being used to suggest that this tool is going to actually result in genuine affordability? How will we know that this policy is producing the results that it is purportedly going to produce? Are there reporting mechanisms 1, 3, 5 years from now that we can point to and say “blanket rezoning made housing X% more affordable andwe should keep it as a policy”.

The Mayor took a few minutes at the end to answer specific questions which were asked, which is what the CAs asked for. She expressed frustration at the fact that provincial and federal levels of government were putting strings on funds and not letting municipal government look after municipal issues in the way they feel is most appropriate. She noted that the City’s Housing Accelerator Fund application had rezoning as one of the tools identified and this was long before the federal government mentioned anything about tying the funding to rezoning.

It was a very respectful, thoughtful meeting with many people far more versed on this topic than I am. I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to share the voice of Rosemont with our elected officials. It was noted that there were about 40 Community Associations in attendance, who represented about 200,000 residents. The value of Community Associations has changed over the years and the impact that we have sometimes feels small (believe me, the title of ‘Community Association President’ wields far less power than many people think). But in situations like this, it is refreshing to see voices being genuinely listened to. While our elected officials may not vote the way that we want, I can genuinely say that our voices were listened to with open ears and our concerns have been heard.

A huge thank you to everyone for taking the time to get informed and engaged on this topic. Communities cease to be communities without people caring about each other. I encourage you to keep caring about your families, friends and neighbours.

Matthew Guilherme
President, Rosemont Community Association
info@rosemontYYC.com