The City’s Official Community Plan (OCP) is going to another public hearing.
At tonight’s (Wednesday) meeting, Prince George City Council made progress on the City’s OCP, implementing resolutions made earlier this year, and giving the OCP Bylaw second reading.
The updated, redlined document with the new resolutions can be found here.
“We’re not out of the woods yet, but we’re getting there,” said Councillor Brian Skakun.
It was also brought up that the City will have to do this process again in 2028 due to provincial legislation passed in recent years.
“We started this OCP process and then the Bill 45, 46, 47 changes came into effect, which is going to require us to redo the OCP by 2028,” said Councillor Ramsay.
“I’ve been sharing that information with individuals as they’ve been asking questions, but it’s not widely known that we’re going to be doing this again in 2028.”
Ramsay inquired if the City could share that information with the public, adding an info-graphic with a timeline could help.
“Just to future-proof this, in that ‘why are you doing this again in 2028 when we just did this’ because it is kind of confusing,” she said.
“Even some planners from the University have made the assumption that this is a ten-year, 15-year, 20-year plan, so just to really correct the assumption or provide to make sure that people aren’t making that assumption inaccurately might be really helpful.”
Mayor Simon Yu also took the time to remind the public that the OCP is a dynamic document.
“If anybody wanted to do certain development in the area, come up with a good neighbourhood plan that we can understand, and we go through the service study report, I think you can always bring this to the Council for consideration for change,” he said.
“OCP is an overarching guiding document, but it is not a document that we as a Council have to abide by it 100 per cent.”
Council also voted to schedule another public for the OCP, which will take place on October 1st at 6:00 pm.
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