It is ironic that when I realized that I was wrong and that the city’s planning engineers were right, they did a huge article in the paper.

The issue is the Molly Bannister extension. Years ago I thought the city was erring in developing the Molly Bannister extension over a creek, but through time I got to understand the necessity for it.

Red Deer needs an Arterial road every 1.6 kilometres and this was repeated by the developers at a meeting at the Bower Community Centre on January 7, 2020.

Molly Bannister would connect up with 22 Street at 40 Avenue exactly 1.6 kilometres south of 32 Street. The city understood this 20 years ago but the population was only 60% of our current population, making it easy to dismiss.

The developer would like to do away with this option, even though admitting that in the future when the population hits 180,000 and the arterial road would be needed, it would be hard to get built.

Many believe that Red Deer is at the cusp of needing it built sooner than later with the traffic on 32 Street getting so heavy and the same can be said for 19 Street, Even before the commercial centre opening and with the increased business at the Westerner.

The Bower farm comprises of 155 acres, and the Molly Bannister travels along the south and west sides. 40 acres is Environmental Reserve and 11.5 acres will be Municipal Reserve according to the same developer. That leaves 103.5 acres or about 42 hectares. The density will be 17 residential units per hectare for 714 residential units.

714 residences with average occupancy of 2.5 residents means 1785 residents. Over and above all the new residents further east as the city grows. The only way for them to go east is by going west to 40 avenue then north to 32 Street or south to 19 Street.

The developer stated that the traffic lights along an arterial road would be detrimental to wildlife but did not state how having 50 houses backing onto the creek would not affect wildlife.

I believe the city was correct in designing the arterial road to run along the south and west borders of any future new subdivision and I don’t agree when the developer says it splits his development. If the roadway disappeared the developer would make more money but the city would pay for it many times over.

Leave the option open and if it doesn’t get fully developed that would be okay too.

Besides our population has only increased by 195 residents since 2015, yet we have increased housing with 1299 more residential units, during this period.

Our real estate assessments has declined by 2% this year, do we need 714 more residences to increase supply without population growth?

The Red Deer Advocate’s poll currently run about 68% in favor of the road. In my blog, twitter, face book, Todayville.com and other social media contacts it is overwhelmingly in favor as in the thousands of hits, likes, shares, comments and e-mails I have less than ten that disagree with that.

Sorry, Red Deer City hall you were right and I was wrong.