From housing prices to the push for street performers, laws governing development and expansion are an inescapable and omnipresent part of life in Jasper. Looking at Land Use provides an in-depth exploration of how those laws impact the lives of the park’s citizens, business owners and government—untangling the complexities of the issues and exploring what they mean for Jasper as it heads into the future.
Development regulations hampering municipality
There’s logic to the way laws are made. The federal government gives some of its power to provincial governments, which are smaller, and better equipped to deal with certain issues. In turn, provincial governments give some of their power to municipal governments, which exist to deal with the day-to-day, small-scale issues that larger government bodies are too big to deal with.
In normal municipalities, land use planning and development falls squarely into that category, as most planning issues require technical, local knowledge.
But in Jasper this is not the case. Although municipal staff certainly have the necessary knowledge to oversee land use issues, Parks Canada chose to retain those powers when the municipality was incorporated in 2001.
Municipalities inside of national parks are extremely rare—there are only seven in the entire country—so parks has limited experience managing them.
Parks’ realty and municipal manager Cathy Jenkins said that, at the time of the municipality’s bid for local governance, the federal government thought “that it was more appropriate for [land use planning and development] to remain in the purview of Parks Canada.”
According to many—including Mayor Richard Ireland—the decision stemmed largely from the fact that Parks was troubled by the exponential growth Banff experienced after being incorporated as a municipality a decade earlier. By keeping development decisions in Parks’ hands, the government hoped to keep Jasper’s development in check.
Parks’ control over such an integral aspect of the municipality’s development— especially when the municipal council and town administrators are more familiar with both the general principles of running a municipality, and the specifics of managing Jasper—seems counter intuitive, to some.
“I think there’s a feeling that if [the municipality] was in charge of land use and planning ourselves we could be more creative,” said Jasper’s Chief Administrative Officer Peter Waterworth.
Waterworth pointed to the two lots recently occupied by gas stations. What eventually happens to the lots will dramatically affect Jasper as a town, and yet Parks has control over how that land is zoned.
If the lots are left zoned for the operation of gas stations, they may sit empty for years, creating an eyesore and taking up prime real estate in a town with little to no land available for development.
If, however, those lots were zoned for hotels, they could significantly boost Jasper’s visitation and commerce.
In the end, Parks will decide what happens with the land. Some argue that the municipal council is elected to represent the interests of Jasperites, and it should be the body making decisions about the future of the town.
But Jenkins pointed out that Parks has a significant local presence in Jasper, with their land use and planning shop and development officer located right in the municipality.
“I think we do have a handle on current situations and things that are going on,” she said, pointing out that Parks has just as much interest in seeing the town of Jasper thrive as anyone else.
She also said, just like Parks, municipalities also operate under restrictions from the legislation governing them.
Waterworth agreed that Parks almost certainly has Jasper’s best interest in mind, but said he still believes the municipality needs more control over land use and development.
Under the current system, both the municipality and Parks have responsibilities in the process and sometimes those responsibilities overlap. This means developers need to navigate between the two organizations to get anything approved.
And while inefficiencies are difficult to deal with, Waterworth pointed out that Parks’ control over development decisions also weakens the municipality’s position with contractors and developers. When developers know that ultimately Parks is the planning authority, they might not feel as inclined to engage with the municipality.
Confusion aside, Waterworth said that at the heart of the issue is the fact that without control over how the land is developed, the municipality can’t establish an effective long-term vision for Jasper.
“What a municipality does is provide the basic services for its jurisdiction—and the planning suture of that town is fundamental to that view,” he said.
The fate of former gas stations is just one small example. The total population of the town, the density of residential areas, the composition of the business district, and even the location of dog parks and the intensity of streetlights are all affected by land use planning and development.
Without firm control over how decisions surrounding these things play out, it is difficult for municipal managers to plan for the long-term future of the town because they simply don’t know how things will look 10 years down the road.
Not directly related, but still tied into this is the fact that land use planning and development regulations are creating financial strains that ordinary municipalities don’t face.
Although the municipality owns many of the buildings in Jasper, along with the infrastructure that supports them, the land itself belongs to Parks.
Technically, the municipality leases the land from Parks, paying more than $500,000 in land rent each year. That’s a sum Waterworth admitted is “a chunky amount of money” out of the municipality’s budget.
Since the municipality doesn’t own any of the land, it also can’t make money from leasing or selling it to developers—traditionally a significant source of municipal income (although Waterworth stressed that such practices aren’t sustainable in the long run).
Waterworth said although the municipality is paying rent, that cost isn’t being passed down to municipal taxpayers.
Over the past decade, the average tax increase in Jasper has been just over four per cent a year. That’s an amount that is “not unheard of,” but leans strongly toward “the upper end of normality,” said Dr. Patrick Smith, a Simon Fraser University professor specializing in municipal government.
Last month the municipality agreed, in principal, to pony up half of the cash for the first steps of a review of land use and development in Jasper, with the other half coming out of Parks’ coffers. The hope is that the review will trigger reform of how land use and planning is administered in Jasper.
Both Jenkins and Waterworth agree that the current system is inefficient—especially where there is overlap between Parks and the municipality—and changes need to be made. Waterworth said that while he has no idea where negotiations will lead, he is encouraged that Parks so willingly came to the table.
The easiest way to stall a negotiation is to argue about procedure rather than the issues at hand, he explained. The fact that Parks did none of that signals to him that the organization is prepared to have an honest discussion.
Jenkins said that the transfer of some responsibilities from Parks to the municipality makes sense, but said she doesn’t want to speculate on what that might look like until the review is complete.
In the next installment of Looking at Land Use, the Fitzhugh investigates how efforts to control development in Jasper have impacted where residents live, how much they pay to live, and whether or not they’re even allowed to stay. Check next week’s issue for the story.
Trevor Nichols
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