The County of Grande Prairie will be losing about 700 residents in the New Year. The province has approved the City’s full request for annexation, meaning it will get 6,316 hectares of land from the County on January 1, 2016. Reeve Leanne Beaupre maintains the County has always supported the City’s need to accommodate growth, but doesn’t agree with all of the conditions in their application.
“This annexation obviously gives them that ability to make sure that they have that right to grow. We are disappointed that many of these concerns of our landowners were not addressed in the province’s decision, but we appreciate that these landowners will be impacted and that they have quite a bit of uncertainty ahead of them.”
The County had hoped the province would consider approving a smaller land mass with a later effective date. However, Beaupre says she is happy to see that the Municipal Government Board considered their position on the switching over of taxes.
“It wasn’t what we had applied for or what we would have liked to have seen, but it certainly was a step in the right direction for rate payers, both on the farm land transition and the non-farm land transition.”
People who own farm land will pay based on the County’s mill rate for 30 years, with a five year transition period after that. Non-farm land will see its five year transition after 20 years.
Anyone with questions about the annexation is encouraged to contact Baily Nagy in the planning department at 780-513-3950 or at [email protected].