Council Votes To Allow JGL To Annex Adjacent Stockyards
Getting rid of the stockyards may have been included in resident submissions when drawing up the community plan for South Hill but on Monday night Council voted in favour of re-zoning the present stockyards in part of a move to protect their longtime future within the city.
In a unanimous vote Council voted to approve a sub-division of the property which will expand the South Hill operations of Jameson Gilroy Limited (JGL) to take over the adjacent stockyard used by Heartland Livestock. Heartland Livestock is owned by beef industry giant Alberta-based Nilsson Brothers Inc..
JGL’s re-zoning application is to join their parcel at 780 Home Street West to the land at 678 Home Street West presently used by Heartland Livestock.
The move will not see an expansion of the present operations at 780 Home Street which can handle 1500 cattle per day. Animals are shipped out within 24 hours.
But it will allow one grandfathered operation to expand and take over another operation whose operations themselves are grandfathered.
Stockyard operations on South Hill - MJ Independent photo
“It is not a standard request, this is more of an existing use and consolidating together,” city manager Jim Puffalt said when introducing the proposal to Council.
JGL has applied for rezoning which will allow them to expand their existing livestock stockyard operations located at 780 Home Street to include the stockyards controlled by Heartland Livestock adjacent to them.
“JGL has been operating as well as Heartland (Livestock). JGL is purchasing property from the CPR for their operation,” economic development manager Jim Dixon said. “We are really just approving an existing use.”
Despite qualifying as an intensive livestock operation under both civic and provincial definition - and therefore not allowed in the city - a report from Administration said the re-zoning application to add lands owned by the CPR is allowed under both municipal bylaws and provincial legislation because of the existing livestock operations.
“The land in question is already used by the livestock operation and would be considered as “grandfathered”, so expansion of the parcel is not considered to contravene the City’s bylaws or provincial legislation,” Administration’s report to Council read going on to add “City Administration is proposing amendments to the Official Community Plan and Zoning Bylaw to better regulate new and existing development within proximity to existing livestock operations.”
“The Province has no issues with that they are proposing here. So I think it will continue to operate as is and it is cleaning up a problem in the existing Official Community Plan (OCP),” Dixon told Council.
Before making the motion to allow the sub-division to occur Crystal Froese, who is active with the South Hill Community Association, was told by Administration that the sub-division would not increase the overall operations.
At the present time the Official Community Plan does not allow development - residential within 1200 meters of the intensive livestock operations and new commercial with 4800 meters of an intensive livestock operation the size operated on Home Street West.
Simply put under the OCP if a residence were to burn down and needed to be rebuilt within the exclusionary zone surrounding the stockyards it would not be allowed to occur. Granting the special definition for the existing stockyard operations would allow the OCP to be changed and thereby allow residential and commercial development in the areas presently not allowed in the OCP.
In an effort to alleviate the conflict with the Official Community Plan there has been work going on between Administration and the Province to change the definition of the Home Street stockyard operations.
Once the Home Street livestock operations are granted this special definition plans call for the Official Community Plan to be changed to accommodate both residential and commercial development closer to the Home Street stockyard operations which will be operated by JGL.