Council opted to move forward with loosening rules regarding four plexes in zones R1 and R2 zones at their Monday executive committee meeting. (Susan McNeil/paNOW)

By Susan McNeil

Zoning changes

Council moves forward with zoning changes, application for federal funding

Oct 15, 2025 | 2:46 PM

In an executive committee meeting that had only two items on the agenda, Prince Albert city council moved forward with an application for federal grant money for a wastewater plant upgrade and going forward with four-plexes as a right on all residential zonings.

Applying for up to $50 million in federal dollars led to some discussion but when the final vote was called on changing the zoning rules, eight councillors voted in favour and only one was opposed.

Coun. Stephen Ring (Ward 5), is a real estate appraiser by trade and said he was confident the impact of the changes won’t be as significant as other councillors were worried about.

“You’re not going to see these – as some people have referred to – monstrosities because they just can’t,” he said.

“The biggest one is site coverage and, number one, parking. You pretty much need a rear lane to put anything other than three units on a site in order to meet your parking requirements.”

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Zones R4 and R3 already allow multi-family units so the biggest changes could be seen in newer neighbourhoods that are zoned R2 and R1, such as Crescent Acres and Lake Estates.

Neither decision is firm yet as the votes happened at an executive meeting and must still pass in regular meetings. For the zoning changes, three readings and a public hearing must also happen but will be on agendas in the very near future.

The particular program that the city wants to apply for is conditional on municipalities allowing up to a four-plex as a right in order to get infrastructure funding. It is part of the federal government push to have more housing built and to allow more density.

Prince Albert was also identified in a recent report as being short about 1,400 housing units.

A pre-emptory motion by Coun. Dan Brown to stop the zoning changes ended in defeat when his motion to not go ahead was voted down 8-1 after a lengthy discussion.

Brown said he did not like the fact that the federal government was attaching rules to accessing funding.

“There was a reason why we didn’t do it before. I don’t like the federal government bullying us into doing something for monetary value in exchange for us changing a bylaw,” he said. “I don’t think that’s correct. I think the federal government works for us and we don’t work for them.”

In the subsequent discussion, other councillors said that while they did not like the requirement, the option of not getting the funding was even less to their liking.

The city would pay just under $3 million in interest alone on the debt required to upgrade the wastewater system. That money would have to come from the water utility and would result in increases in people’s bills.

Both Councillor Troy Parenteau and Mayor Bill Powalinsky stated all governments routinely attach conditions to grant money.

“What I will say with a little asterix, is that a lot has to be a real fair size in order to accommodate something like a four-plex,” Community Development Manager Craig Guidinger said.

He said a 30 or 40 foot wide lot would probably not accommodate other stipulations the city has, like having one parking stall per unit and the building not being allowed to take up more than 50 per cent of the lot.

Coun. Bryce Laewetz said he was worried about how the ability to add up to a four plex on any lot (except country residential) would impact some of the more unique historical homes that are on larger lots.

Demolition permits do not come to council.

“I worry a little bit that if this goes through, we’re going to see some of our older communities changing very quickly and having investors come in and level out some old beautiful character homes or war time homes just to utilize that lot size,” said Laewetz.

The second part of the adopted motion to move forward was that council instruct staff to minimize the impacts of increased density where possible.

First reading of the bylaw is to be on the October 27 regular meeting and the public hearing will be on November 17, along with second and third reading. The deadline to submit the application for infrastructure money is November 28.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com

On BlueSky: @susanmcneil.bsky.social