Morgan Nagel's Vision
This Action Plan set forth in this section of my website is a deep dive on what I hope our next Mayor & Council can achieve together.
Since the Mayor is only 1 of 7 votes, I cannot guarantee that a majority of Council will support the items that I have put forward here. However, I can promise that I will work to build a consensus among our Council, Administration and Community on these important matters if you put your trust in me.
This will be a team effort, and I am asking for your support to be the Captain of that team.
Let's make Cochrane better together.
If you would like a quick overview of my positions on a number topical Local Issues, check out this page here.
Top Priorities:
01
Better Government
If I am elected Mayor of Cochrane, what excites me most is putting my business experience to work with Council and our Administration to reform the Town’s organizational leadership.
Let me tell you why.
After the last election four years ago, our municipal government held the best strategic planning sessions I’ve experienced in my 12 years on Council. After several days of working together in the mountains, our Mayor, Council, and Administration came back united with a bold set of priorities: ▪ Holding developers to to a higher standard ▪ Creating more large-lot/country residential housing on Cochrane’s outskirts ▪ Building a vibrant high-density “innovation district” downtown ▪ Ensuring we never fall behind on infrastructure planning again ▪ Pushing forward with seniors housing, a new rec centre, and expanded transit Driving home from the retreat that weekend, I had never felt better about the future of our municipal government. But within a year, frustration set in. Despite the promises, little progress was made. We were told to “just wait.” And then came more waiting. Instead of delivering on our vision, I’ve watched: ▪ Taxes rise ▪ Financial audits falter ▪ Project deadlines slip by months or years ▪ Key infrastructure mismanaged ▪ Irresponsible growth return without proper planning ▪ Council descend into unprecedented infighting At the outset of the last term, we had the right ideas, but we failed to deliver. Cochrane’s municipal government doesn’t have an ideas problem. We have an execution problem. I am passionate about building a better government – because I know that’s what’s going to get us from ideas to results. To do this, my first priority will be to unite Council, Administration, and our community around a shared, positive vision—and get our municipal government back on track. I believe deeply in representative democracy. Whoever is elected to Council will be there because the people of Cochrane gave them a mandate. My job will be to respect those mandates and help our Councillors deliver success for their constituents. That’s why I will begin my term by understanding why each Councillor was elected and how we can help them fulfill their commitments. Then, I’ll bring us together to build a shared big-picture vision—one that I hope includes slowing down growth, practicing smarter financial management, and investing in our parks and natural spaces. But after that – and this is the part that was largely missed in the last term – we are going to establish an extremely refined list of goals and deliverables for the term for us to work towards. By June 2026, I am going to have a list of Council’s specific objectives and priorities approved by a majority of Council, then I am going to literally pin them up on my office wall, and begin the hands on work of figuring out exactly how we are going to move towards that list of items. And this is where I feel my private sector business leadership is going to come in handy, because I am going to treat these items just like the projects I run in my own business. After we figure out what the list is that we are working towards, I am going to work directly with our CAO to map out a clear roadmap for each item, with scheduled check-in points beyond our regular Council meetings. Right now, many of our most important items are only being reviewed by Council a couple times per year. That’s how we ended up receiving a terrible deal to give operations of our Rec Centre to the YMCA, which was expected to be approved within about 1 week of consideration. To prevent that from happening, not only will I go above and beyond to provide oversight as the full-time Mayor, but your elected Councillors are also going to be invited to participate in executive level meetings remotely, to accommodate their outside careers and lives. I know this operational plan I have outlined here is not a typical top election promise. But I don’t plan on being a typical Mayor. I plan on treating the Mayor’s role as the President & Chair of an elected Board of Directors, who is deeply accountable to its shareholders: you, the taxpayers.
02
Slower Growth
Since the election in 2017 and the most recent municipal census in 2024, Cochrane's population has grown from 26,320 to 37,011. That's a jaw dropping increase of 40.62% over 8 years, and it doesn't even include the most recent year of growth in 2025.
Enough is enough. Cochrane’s growth is moving far too quickly. Our schools are full, our roads are congested, and our health care system is overburdened. Development has outpaced the planning and infrastructure our community needs to keep up. It's important to be fair that current Mayor—many (but not all) of the current developments were approved and already in motion. But since then, very little has been done to slow things down, and once again we’ve fallen behind on critical infrastructure planning. I have been one of the strongest voices on Council against irresponsible growth. Going all the way back to the 2013 to 2017 municipal government, I was raising alarm bells about the rate at which homes were being approved. I voted against several of the development plans that are currently overburdening our infrastructure. I was the Councillor who brought forward a motion to get our government to start actually tracking how many homes were approved and underway. Prior to that, the Town wasn't even counting. Then in 2016, I proposed a formal freeze on new development approvals, but it failed to get support. And since then, I have continually voted against most new development plans, and almost always refused increased density in existing neighbourhoods. If I am elected as Mayor, I have three key ideas that I am going to ask Council to consider: ▪ Set a clear growth target: I will advocate for a policy that limits growth to 2–3% annually, ensuring development happens at a pace our community can properly support. ▪ Lower density requirements: Instead of cramming in as many homes as possible, we need to prioritize quality over quantity—larger lots, bigger yards, and stronger, healthier neighbourhoods. ▪ Infrastructure first, through a Growth Management Overlay: Calgary has successfully used this tool to ensure infrastructure is planned and funded before growth is approved. I will bring forward a similar approach in Cochrane, so new development only proceeds when our community is ready to handle it. With smart, responsible growth, we can protect the character of our community, safeguard property values, and ensure Cochrane remains one of the best places to live in Alberta. None of this is to say that Cochrane won't continue to grow. It will. It's a beautiful town and LOTS of people want to live here. But just because some growth is inevitable, doesn't mean Cochrane should continue allowing as much growth as the development industry demands.
03
Smarter Financial Planning
I am a fiscal conservative, and I am gravely concerned about the state of our local, provincial and national finances.
The importance of keeping government spending low and empowering families and businesses to thrive in a low-tax environment was ingrained in me during my Economics studies in University and when I built my own business with my own hard-earned money.
But despite those personal values, I am not going to sugar coat it (or outright lie to you) with promises that the next municipal government will be able to lower your taxes.
It’s not a pretty picture, but I do have some real plans to deal with it.
I am going to be brutally honest: whoever wins the municipal election and is entrusted to manage the town’s budget is going to have a serious problem to deal with. We all know about the inflation that has plagued our country ever since the pandemic lockdowns and stimulus spending. Nowhere are those pains more real than in capital projects and with all the growth pressures in Cochrane, our community has an especially large list of projects to pay for. Things like Rec Centre’s that used to cost governments $50M to $100M are now being projected to cost $200M to $300M. On top of that, the low interest rates we used to depend on to finance infrastructure are now two, three or even four times higher than they used to be. To top it all off, the provincial and federal governments that we have always relied on to give us millions of dollars of infrastructure grants are scrambling to solve their own budgetary challenges, and they are significantly cutting municipal grants. To recap: ▪ Inflation has driven capital costs way higher than ever before. ▪ Interest rates for the loans we need to pay for those projects have gone way up. ▪ Other levels of government who used to give us huge multi-million dollar infrastructure grants are cutting their funding. ▪ We are one of the fastest growing towns in the whole country, and we have a huge list of projects that need to be built. ... Let the implications of all that sink in. Like our budget, this gigantic challenge needs to be addressed from two angles: Capital & Operations. First, let’s talk about Capital. The key to addressing our financial challenge is the Offsite Levy Bylaw, the tool we use to collect infrastructure funding from new homes. Unfortunately, it hasn't been used to its fullest possible effect over the past several years. This bylaw only works when two things happen: 1) The Town has planned the infrastructure we need. 2) The Bylaw has been updated to make new developments pay their share of said planned infrastructure. Right now, Cochrane is behind on both of those requirements. Council expected a full update to the bylaw 18 months ago. Instead, it’s only now coming forward—conveniently before the election—and it still falls short. We don’t have a complete plan for a new Rec Centre included as was promised and almost nothing for municipal traffic infrastructure projects has been planned and added. Because those projects remain unplanned, and the bylaw update is late and incomplete, we are potentially leaving millions of dollars on the table, as new homes are being built without paying their fair share of the infrastructure that hasn't been planned yet. I raised serious concerns about this issue as early as 2023, repeatedly pressing our Mayor, Council, and CAO on the urgency of updating the Offsite Levy Bylaw. While everyone agreed it was a priority, action has come a year and a half late and without all the projects Cochrane needs. If I am elected Mayor, this will not happen again. We will re-establish the practice of updating the Offsite Levy and a rolling 10-year capital projects list every year—something Cochrane used to do and must return to. The second half of the budgetary equation is our Operating spending. I know for a matter of fact we can find efficiency at the RancheHouse. I have seen way too many examples of projects and reports taking literal years to produce, when the private sector would expect those levels of results within months or even weeks. Moreover, whenever it is time to produce real results, we have relied far too heavily on expensive outside consultants. It’s time to set an expectation that things will be done faster and make better use of our own talent. The days of kicking projects down the road for two years and then hiring expensive consultants to do the real work need to be put behind us. We need our town’s leadership to demand greater performance and efficiency from our Town staff at every level. Salaries, wages and benefits are one of the largest financial pressures on our budget every year, and so getting more out of our internal talent is going to be key to alleviating pressure on our budget. Fortunately, we have a generational opportunity unfolding around us to find new operational efficiencies by encouraging staff members to use AI to make their work faster and easier. Things that used to take a person several hours or days to do, can now be achieved with a single prompt, and then reviewed by a human to ensure accuracy. As I do in my own business, I want Council to encourage our staff members to utilize AI to come up with creative solutions to complex problems. AI has given everyone with a computer access to a tool that is an order of magnitude more effective than Google search was 2 years ago. It’s time we start using it for very practical applications like policy research, reviewing huge bylaws or documents. Through my business, I interact with a number of high performing offices, and I have seen how the private sector downtown Calgary is rapidly improving their workflows by empowering their existing staff with AI tools. In fact, that sort of consulting is what I do in my business. All this AI and technology implementation talk may sound like a lot of fluff, but given my private sector experience, I can bring real value and insights to our town on this front. By setting a higher level of expectations and simultaneously empowering our staff with new tools, I know we can squeeze a lot more productivity out of our current team. To get there, I am going to ensure that Council is driving policies to do both. The broader reality is that Cochrane, like the rest of Canada, is facing an extremely difficult financial environment. But with my background in Economics, my experience running a business, and my years on Council, I believe I am prepared to lead Cochrane through this storm. I sincerely hope that everyone running in this election makes themselves fully aware of the work we have ahead of us on this matter, because it is not going to be simple or easy. If I become the Mayor of our Town, I am going into with the intention of wearing this burden directly on my shoulders.
04
More Parks & Green Spaces
When you ask Cochrane’s families what they love about the town, almost every reply includes some mention of our beautiful parks and access to Alberta’s mountains.
I am an environmental conservationist, and I want to ensure that our natural beauty is protected for generations to come.
Our local decisions about land use, development, and conservation have immediate and lasting impacts. That’s why my focus will be on protecting what we already have and making sure our community grows in balance with the natural beauty that defines it. I want our municipal government to take an active role in investing in parks and usable greenspaces, starting with turning the newly acquired river front lands by the Jim Uffleman Dog Park into a multi-use park and greenspace instead of building more homes on it. A key part of that vision is making this site the future home of the Cochrane Farmers Market. By combining natural park space with a vibrant market hub, we can create a place where residents not only enjoy the outdoors but also support local farmers, growers, and artisans. Imagine a Saturday morning where families pick up fresh produce, baked goods, and handcrafted items, then gather at picnic tables or pavilions to enjoy them together by the river. We can start with a seasonal market during spring and summer and grow it into a year-round destination — a permanent home that strengthens local business, builds community, and ties our love of the outdoors to our support for Cochrane’s small businesses. As Mayor, I will prioritize meaningful, local conservation: ▪ Strengthening wetland protection policies ▪ Implementing a wildlife corridor framework so animals can safely move through our community ▪ Setting firm limits on how development interacts with our natural areas Cochrane is defined by its natural beauty. Protecting our parks, rivers, and wildlife isn’t just an environmental goal — it’s about preserving the quality of life that makes this community special. With the right policies and a clear vision, we can ensure the Cochrane we love today remains just as vibrant and green for decades to come.