Sturgeon County is looking for public input on a major planning document with two public meetings this week.
Strugeon’s municipal development plan (MDP) was the subject of discussion at three open houses last week in Cardiff, Villeneuve and Coronado and one in Mearns last night. The county is hosting another meeting tonight at Namao Hall and one Thursday at the Sturgeon Valley Golf and Country Club.
A MDP is the top planning document of any municipality and sets out the long-term growth plan and broad direction for Sturgeon County.
Senior planning officer Luis Esteves said Sturgeon’s existing plan has to be brought in line with where the county is now headed.
“It is a bit of an outdated document. It is 14 years old and things have changed in the region that really needs to be reflected in the document.”
He said it is important to have a plan for the county’s future.
“We need to plan for the growth of our community in a responsible and sustainable way.”
One of the major changes in the region over the last year has been the broader plan introduced through the Capital Region Board. It requires municipalities in the region to plan denser, more transit-oriented communities and Sturgeon’s MDP will have to follow those guidelines.
Esteves said the direction from the regional board is just one of several factors that will have to be incorporated into the new plan.
“We are going to have to address the ideas that are contemplated, things like a reduction in sprawl and that sort of thing.”
While the board’s land use model is different from what has traditionally been built in the county, Esteves is confident Sturgeon can find a way to integrate new direction.
“It will be a bit of a challenge to accommodate things like that, but that is where creativity comes in,” he said. “We have to take what the community’s vision is and try to make it work with what is legislated.”
At this point planners want residents to provide very general ideas about the future of Sturgeon County so they can use them to draft the broader principles of the MDP.
“The idea is to see what the community really wants in the next 30 years and we will develop a vision surrounding that.”
Further public consultation is planned in June and Esteves hopes to have better ideas on what the plan could look like by November, with a final draft going before council in September 2011.
The cost of fully updating the MDP could be as high as $270,000, with $220,000 budgeted in 2010. Esteves said that cost is needed to get all the necessary information.
“Some of our supporting studies are quite outdated so we are doing some of those again to give some support to the document.”
Both meetings this week run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The county is also hosting a drop-in session at the golf course from 2 to 4 p.m.
