Public hearing for land swap in Picture Butte

Posted on September 8, 2022 by Sunny South News

By Kenyon Stronski
Sunny South News

The Town of Picture Butte entered into a land-swap agreement with Bryan Rudelich after he approached the Town to swap a section of his property that has a stormwater drain on it for a section of the town’s property south of the Elks Hall.

“This came to council through the land swap, and it’s been approved and we have an agreement so today is about the municipal reserve,” explained CAO Keith Davis. “Our property there has been designated as a municipal reserve, and can’t be sold to anyone, so council needs to remove the municipal reserve so that the property can be exchanged for Mr. Rudelich’s property. Once this gets subdivided, the recommendation is to then make the property we get through the land swap municipal reserve once again. The reason the Town looked at it and was open to it is because Mr. Rudelich wants to fence off his property similar to his southern neighbour. We have a storm catch basin there and it comes through his property, so we want to have control of that as well and so we thought it would be a good swap. We could maintain our current property and now the new property where we have the storm catch basin. It is land through land of equal value.”

Davis assured the property would go back into municipal reserves and the property would not be zoned for residential or sold off. However, Coun. Scott Thompson pointed out there was a line that said ‘future road’ on the new property.

“Yeah, so this is a planner thing,” said Davis. “This property (property south of the Elks) can’t be approved as a subdivision if it doesn’t have street access. So, if we designate this part as a future road, then technically it would have road access, but it just becomes Town (property). In the future, if someone wanted to do something with this property, then that road is there to allow access to both properties. Tonight, though, the step is to remove the municipal reserve designation from the north property in order for it to be subdivided and for the land swap to occur. Once the municipal reserve is removed, the subdivision can go ahead as designed and then the official land swap and changing of titles can occur at that stage.”

Coun. Cynthia Papworth stepped up to ask the next question, wondering if the lot were to be sold in the future and if it would have to come back out of municipal reserves for it to be sold once again.

“Yes, and that’s if the town wanted to do something or if we have interest in the future, but in saying that, it’s highly unlikely it would occur because we have a main storm line coming through here. This future road is a technical way to get around that — the other property needs street frontage for it to be subdivided.”

Having received no written submissions, and no in-person visitors, the public hearing was closed.