City of Powell River council will consider an initiative to conduct a Townsite neighbourhood review of city-owned lands.
At the April 13 committee of the whole meeting, senior planner Daniella Fergusson said the purpose of her report is to seek city council’s support to begin early and ongoing engagement in alignment with Local Government Act requirements for changes to the official community plan for city lands in Townsite. She said since the sustainable official community plan (SOCP) was adopted in 2014, the city has acquired about 230 acres of former mill lands. Those lands are currently designated in the SOCP as: employment centre, resource and agricultural use.
“Although the official community plan as a whole is not very old, it still can be updated to reflect changing community conditions,” said Fergusson. “Recognizing the city now has an asset of land in the Townsite neighbourhood and that there are aspirations for people in Powell River and the Townsite neighbourhood specifically for what these lands could do for all of us, today and in the future, it makes sense to have a public consultation process on those shared visions.”
Fergusson said some stringent requirements need to be met for any consultation, so staff is suggesting the city goes out and does early and ongoing consultation before drafting any bylaw changes.
“What we are proposing is this neighbourhood review consultation that focuses on the city-owned lands,” said Fergusson.
The review would not include Tla’amin Nation-owned lands, City Transfer lands or Catalyst Paper Corporation lands in Townsite.
Public engagement on to-do list
In terms of the engagement process, Fergusson said this has been on council’s to-do list for some time. With COVID-19, it is challenging to undertake public engagement, but the city would do the best it can, she added.
“We are planning to do the engagement in a three-phase process, starting out more broadly and getting more narrow,” said Fergusson.
Engagement would start out with discussions about future land uses, what’s working well on these lands, and what people would like to see done differently, said Fergusson. This engagement would be done mostly online, using the participatepr.ca platform. Fergusson said the platform has a great mapping feature so people could put their ideas on the map. Where possible, when COVID-19 allows, the plan would be to also meet with people face-to-face outside when the weather gets better.
Fergusson said that would be followed by staff taking feedback from public engagement and coming up with proposed directions or options. Staff would prepare a draft map, and draft policy and objective changes to complement that.
Then, the process would wrap up with an SOCP amendment process, which has to be followed according to Local Government Act requirements. There would be a public hearing on top of that.
“Throughout this process we’ll have to make sure to consult with the qathet Regional District, Tla’amin Nation, School District 47, as well as people in our community, especially Townsite residents, who use and love and have vision for the land,” said Fergusson. “We also need to consult with the Agricultural Land Commission because some of the land is agricultural.”
Councillors rave about project
Councillor George Doubt said he is happy to see this because he knows both Townsite ratepayers groups have been wanting to see this happen, and it’s exciting to see it getting underway.
“For people in Townsite and people who are interested and all of those who love our community, and care about the development, it’s good to see this going ahead,” said Doubt. “I like the plan and I like the target of being done by the end of this year as far as the basics go.
“Something I would like to see is some online community hall-type forums that we haven’t been using. Participate Powell River is becoming more popular and it’s valuable, but I think some kind of online platform that would allow the community hall setting that could take a couple of hours would allow people to hear a presentation to express their points of view and also to listen to others’ points of view.”
Councillor Cindy Elliott said she is a huge fan of this project. She said she had been hoping it would come forward and is happy to see it in front of council.
The committee voted to send the matter to city council so councillors can direct staff to conduct early and ongoing consultation to inform an SOCP bylaw amendment pertaining to the land use designations and policies relevant to the Townsite neighbourhood, with a specific focus on city-owned lands.
