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Mayor Naheed Nenshi was so keen to wade in on Rocky View County’s proposed growth plans east of the city that he skipped the first part of this month’s secondary suite hearing in his own chambers.

He didn’t so much wade as splash around.

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“Yeah, you can throw up your hands at me,” Nenshi is heard telling Councillor Greg Boehlke in an audio recording of the meeting. “You can pretend…”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Margaret Bahcheli, the county reeve, tried to interject during the fractious exchange about rural growth.

“You can pretend that the needs of 1.2 million people don’t matter at all,” Calgary’s mayor continued. “You can keep pretending that, and I‘d love to see you make that argument to the provincial government.”

At stake at that county hearing was Rocky View’s plan to expand the tiny hamlet of Conrich into a 10,000-person neighbourhood over 30 years — near the northeast edge of a city that grows by that many people every three or four months.