Citizen involvement crucial to OCP
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Updated: October 08, 2009 8:47 AM
City: Planning staff encourage residents to participate in survey.
It begins with a vision and develops into a framework intended to improve the quality of life for all of the community’s residents. A review of the City of Salmon Arm’s official community plan (OCP) is well underway. The first of three public information meetings-workshops was held Sept. 15. City director of development and planning, Corey Paiement said there were 107 people in attendance, not including city staff and OCP advisory committee members.
“It was a good representation of the community in terms of those who attended, including some people I’ve not seen attend other community planning events, which was good,” said Paiement.
Public involvement and input, are crucial to the OCP planning process, says Paiement, who encourages all Salmon Arm residents who have not yet done so to fill out an OCP survey, available on the city’s website at www.salmonarm.ca. As well, paper copies are available at city hall, the library, the recreation centre, the seniors resource centre and the downtown activity centre.
“The survey is key,” says Paiement. “It’s fairly comprehensive, and we’re looking for that feedback to inform the process, so the more people who fill it out, the better.”
The survey takes between 15 to 20 minutes to complete, and will be available until Oct. 16. The information from the surveys will be collated with the information obtained in the public meetings for use in an updated OCP.
Attendees of the Sept. 15 meeting studied how the general details of Salmon Arm’s OCP have evolved since the document was last updated in 2002. Afterwards they broke off into 15 groups who then set out to identify a new vision for the community and priorities to be addressed.
OCP advisory committee member Bill Grainger was pleased with the variety of critical points identified, and the process in which all at the meeting were given an opportunity to vote on which points should receive highest priority. As for a vision, he said he was not alone in thinking the existing vision statement in Salmon Arm’s OCP is already very good.
“The group that I was in was very supportive of the existing OCP vision, which is a very smart growth vision,” said Grainger. “We should have a strong, vibrant downtown, we should limit sprawl, we should protect the agricultural land reserve and those kinds of things. It’s kind of a path the city has been on, with a few exceptions.”
There was also significant focus on city greenways, which is being incorporated into the OCP review.
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