Had any more residents attended last week’s public information session to discuss the municipality’s draft Parks, Open Space, and Trails Plan, a larger venue might well have been needed.
Considering similar meetings in the past have been known to draw out fewer residents than officials, the turnout was encouraging to see.
More than two dozen Sundre and area residents — plus several members of council, including the mayor, administrative staff, town employees and a landscape architect involved in helping develop the plan — nearly filled up the Town of Sundre’s council chambers on the evening of Wednesday, Jan. 10.
Following a brief presentation about the draft plan, which once approved by council will provide a planning framework for future green space and outdoor recreation developments, numerous questions from people clearly keen to contribute and see results led to further discussion.
Among the concerns raised was that the plan would end up sitting on a shelf collecting dust as has happened with similar past studies. Those who attended heard that developing a new green space plan was identified last year as a priority by the previous council, which wanted to replace an older version of the document that did not provide adequate direction or detailed guidelines to ensure a level of design consistency among different projects.
However, new projects will mainly depend on partnerships and developer initiative, although the town will remain largely responsible for improving its own existing amenities. Additionally, the municipality’s financial bottom line will play a large role in determining which projects might be possible when faced with more critical infrastructure priorities.
Numerous residents were eager to see the new plan begin to bear fruit sooner rather than later, and they wanted to know whether any timelines might be in place for specific projects. But administrative staff said additional input and direction from the community is being sought before council approves a final version of the plan, which is expected to take place in the coming months.
Ian James, community services manager, told the Round Up the next step will be for administrative staff to get together to review the comments that were presented during the public information session. Afterwards, a followup meeting with the landscape architect will be scheduled to discuss possible changes or specifications to accommodate needs as identified by the community. Finally, the updated version of the draft plan will then be presented to council for approval once the document has been polished in light of feedback from residents.
Anyone who is interested still has an opportunity to provide feedback, so we encourage everyone not to wait until after the plan is approved to suddenly start criticizing council’s decision.
Those who missed the meeting can still make inquiries or offer feedback by contacting Mike Marko, Sundre’s director of planning and economic development, at the town office, which can be reached at 403-638-3551.
— Simon Ducatel is the Round Up’s editor
