Development of an action plan is the next phase in advancing sustainability strategies for the City of Powell River.
Dan Wilson, sustainability planner and tourism specialist from the Centre for Sustainability Whistler, appeared before the City of Powell River and Powell River Regional District committees of the whole, Tuesday, February 19, and at a community open house on Wednesday, March 11, to outline progress.
At the city’s committee meeting, Wilson said he was appearing to provide an update on the Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP) process.
“It typically tends to be an overarching plan for a community, which eventually guides all other planning,” Wilson said. “Powell River has a sustainability charter that had lots of great input a couple of years ago with lots of partners. You also recently integrated a Sustainability Official Community Plan (SOCP). Those two documents hold quite a lot of the community’s ambitions and aspirations about where you want to be. Those two documents were pretty critical driving the vision within the ICSP.
“Really, the ICSP, to some degree, is a child or an executive summary of those two documents at the highest level of the planning structure.”
Wilson said, eventually the ICSP will guide future plans when they are created, he added.
The highest level of the ICSP is the Powell River vision statement that is taken right from the Official Community Plan (OCP).
“There are sustainability principles right there in the charter,” he said.
Wilson said the process is now examining strategic direction. He said looking at the landscape, there is focus on what are the best places to direct energy and action.
As lead-up to the current process, an open house was held in Powell River on September 17 last year where an estimated 50 to 70 people attended, Wilson said. A survey was also conducted in the fall with about 200 participants, which Wilson termed as a good sampling. He said the city’s sustainability steering committee has met and interpreted the information and input from the public and incorporated it into the committee’s conversation.
In the survey, participants were asked to prioritize the goals given Powell River’s current situation. With the information at hand, summaries were compiled to collate the strengths in the community in a number of different areas with respect to community vision.
“That helped us hone in on direction,” Wilson said.
Contact is being made with some community organizations or partners with the sustainability charter to solicit more input and gain understanding of some actions they may have coming up in the next couple of years that relate to the directions outlined in the process.
“We are trying to align planning and get some action, not just from the City of Powell River, but also from partners,” Wilson said.
The next phase will be an action plan developed from broadly-based input. Once the suggestions have been reviewed, Wilson said they can be taken back to the public at another open house. That input will help finalize the ICSP’s actions.
Mac Fraser, the city’s chief administrative officer, asked when city council would give the nod yay or nay to the work that has been done.
“We are getting into greater detail and I would hate to see energy misspent if council did not support some of the things,” Fraser said.
“The risk is that council as a group may not support all of the issues,” he said. “On behalf of council we have to make sure the public understands that there is still a review by council.”
The posters at the March 11 open house for the public to provide input into priorities will be displayed at Vancouver Island University in the hallway until the end of this week, then at Brooks Secondary School, before they are removed at the end of the month and Wilson will compile the information for the April sustainability steering committee meeting.
