The City of Edmonton and Leduc County have reached an agreement on the city’s application to annex lands in the county, proposed to take effect on Jan. 1, 2019.
The Annexation Agreement, signed this morning at Edmonton International Airport (EIA), details an uncontested annexation area of 6,235 hectares (15,400 acres) of land west of the Queen Elizabeth II (QEII) Highway and 2,625 hectares (6,485 acres) of land east of the QEII Highway (see map).
“The past three years of negotiations have not been easy and both municipalities worked extremely hard to come to an agreement that would benefit our residents and the entire Edmonton metropolitan region,” said Leduc County Mayor John Whaley. “Our positions on annexation evolved into collaborative conversations that took into account the bigger picture and how this decision would affect not only us but our municipal partners and EIA. I’m proud to say our collaborative approach to this annexation agreement will benefit the entire region and has paved the way for future regional partnerships.”
“The agreement is a significant achievement for the City and the County in demonstrating that a collaborative outcome can be reached in spite of the scale and complexity of the decision to be made,” said Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson. “Functioning effectively as a region, to me, is about working together for the greater good and supporting the health of our whole regional economy. This Agreement has led to a deeper understanding that future collaboration needs to consider sub-regional interests, like EIA, rather than those of individual municipalities alone.”
The agreement also details that the city’s boundary will not shift further into Leduc County until joint planning for that area has been completed. Furthermore, the two municipalities agreed to a 50-year tax protection provision for residents, a one-time compensation amount of $3.2 million and 10 annual payments of $530,000 to be paid to Leduc County.
While both the city and county reached an annexation agreement, the city must still submit its annexation application to the Municipal Government Board for the Government of Alberta to make the final decision. In addition to the annexation agreement area, the city’s application will include nine quarter sections on the east side currently in the jurisdiction of the Town of Beaumont, which are subject to negotiations between the City of Edmonton and the Town of Beaumont.
