County of Forty Mile passed Sunrise Panels development permit request

Steve Wikkerink

By Justin Seward

Commentator/Courier

Sunrise Panels owner David Klassen was a delegate at the County of Forty Mile’s council meeting on Oct. 14.
Klassen wanted to get council’s approval of a development permit for the construction of a 7,000 square foot shop for manufacturing purposes.
The parcel is in the direct control zone, where council determines what goes on the land.
Under the Land Use Bylaw it considers “accessory buildings over 111.5 metres squared (1,200 square feet) and light industrial buildings as discretionary uses.”
“His business there, Sunrise Panels, is getting quite busy and sounds like he is going to expand what he is doing at his facility,” said Steve Wikkerink, county reeve.
“ He is asking to put up a quite bit bigger building than what he’s currently got for a welding shop and because that’s a Direct Control district- council controls what’s in that district- and so any leeway outside what our Land Use Bylaw says- then council has to say ‘yay or nay.’””
Wikkerink says he’s going to be building a shop that has little bit bigger square footage than our policy say.
“But because of where it is and also the type of people he’s looking to attract to build into that subdivision, then we went ahead and approved it.”
Police Advisory Board survey
Council was sent an Interim Alberta Police Advisory Board survey from the Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA).
The survey was three pages of questions.
“It was kind of talking about putting additional money that we have to pay (and) what we thought that was going to show for added benefits for our ratepayers,” said Wikkerink.
“And it also asked us to rank different types of things of what would be a higher priority than others. For example, would anything to do with family or social issues rank higher than handing out a speeding ticket? Would drug enforcement be more important than running a stop sign?”
Another part asked the county would they anticipate to see anymore additional officers around based on the funding they have to pay.
“It was OK,” said Wikkerink.
“Some of the areas where you had to rank priorities one to 10, we felt in some of those, probably five of the 10, could all be classified as number one- family, violence, sexual harassment, mental health issues-anything that affected people directly.”
On an another policing note, Wikkerink says with everything heard about the new police funding model that the County of Forty Mile is not going to see any additional resources towards staffing.
“For us we have an $85,000 bill the first year and we’re not going to see anything out of it,” said Wikkerink.
Bow Island RCMP Staff Sgt. Neil Bailey told the county that their detachment is fully staffed.
Burrowing Bylaw
Council passed second and third reading on the Burrowing Bylaw.
The bylaw is in place so if municipalities get into burrowing money, then the Municipal Government Act requires a policy to include that bylaw.
“We just felt it was good timing with a lot of this stimulus funding going around to get people back to work,” said Wikkerink.
“And after the COVID thing, we just thought it was good timing to maybe go after getting an upgrade on our office buildings and moving our Ag department down to public works. To do that, you have to have a policy and make sure that the public has had a chance to say if they agree with it or not.”

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