At the April 22, 2024 Regular Council Meeting, Council approved the first reading of the Land Use Amending Bylaw 12.24.  

Bylaw 12.24 is an amending Bylaw that is intended to make changes to our current Land Use Bylaw. A Land Use Bylaw is required for every municipality in Alberta as per the requirements in the Municipal Government Act and divides the community into Land Use Districts (or zones) and regulates the development that can take place within each District. The Land Use Bylaw provides rules for the development activities for residents, businesses and landowners, and is intended to help make Drumheller a great place to live, develop and enjoy. 

A number of the changes included in the Land Use Amending Bylaw 12.24 were clerical, including capitalization, punctuation, numbering, font and formatting, in order to improve readability.  

Some of the more significant and notable changes are as follows: 

• In Residential Land Use Districts, principal buildings must be present on a parcel before an accessory building can be constructed; 
• “Tourist Dwellings” will be removed, as they are now referred to as “Short-Term Rentals” and are regulated entirely by the Business Licence Bylaw 06.23; 
• “Solar Energy System” is divided into two different categories, “Solar Energy System – Freestanding” and “Solar Energy System – Rooftop”. Both of these uses will be changed to permitted use in all Land Use Districts in order to simplify the permitting process; 
• Residential Mixed-Use Development will be added as a Discretionary Use in Neighbourhood Centre District and as a permitted use in the Downtown District; and 
• Minimum Parcel Width in the Rural Development District and the Countryside District is changed from 100 metres to 2 acres, and 30 metres to 0.5 acres, respectively, in order to reflect the irregular lot sizes in rural land use districts.  

The goals of the Land Use Amending Bylaw 12.24 are to: 

• Make the Land Use Bylaw more transparent and accessible for businesses and residents; 
• Allow the document to align with the Drumheller Municipal Development Plan (MDP) and the Drumheller Valley Housing Strategy (DVHS) 
• Increase residential density; 

• Reduce red tape, leading to the facilitation of timely approvals and a simplified permitting process; 
• Support and encourage economic growth and prosperity within Drumheller by improving development opportunities; and 
• Reflect the comments and ideas received through community engagement opportunities.  

The public is invited to attend two Open House opportunities at the Badlands Community Facility on May 7, 2024, from 12:00pm – 2:00pm, and from 4:00pm – 6:00pm. During this time, any feedback and commentary will be collected by staff. A Public Hearing will be held at the Regular Council Meeting on May 21, 2024, at 5:30pm.  

All information and feedback collected in these public engagement sessions will be compiled and analyzed by Administration and will help inform the review and update moving forward.  

A complete list of the changes can be found online at drumheller.ca.  

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