BANFF – A briefing on the ongoing process for the Town of Banff’s public input policy highlighted the importance of gaining resident feedback on projects and issues in the community.
Banff’s governance and finance committee received an update at its Nov. 27 meeting on the work, prior to it returning for council approval in 2024. The project will move into the second phase, which will establish a framework on when, how and why people should have input on municipal decisions.
Direction from the committee in late 2022 led to 40 hours of meetings involving council, Town staff and residents along with 30 hours of data analysis and a consultant putting together a what we heard report throughout 2022 and 2023.
“I really enjoyed going through this process,” said Coun. Grant Canning. “Where this policy ends up is in a great place. The reality is the whole idea of going out to public input, it’s a very different concept to different people. When it’s appropriate, the level of engagement, how you engage it and how it can change dramatically depending on even the seven of us [on council] and the community as a whole, so where this policy ended up is in a really good place.”
The first phase had a resident panel with three workshop meetings, a public drop-in session, two workshop meetings of senior staff, three workshop meetings of council and assessing principles in 10 ongoing engagement projects in the Town.
Among the topics with public input in the past year are the Heritage Resource Action Plan, Banff Community Plan engagement, Mountain Avenue express lane engagement and Future of the Pedestrian Zone engagement.
A staff report highlighted Town staff would review recent major decisions without public input to see if similar topics would need resources for potential public engagement.
“The purpose of these sessions was to use a deliberative approach where people shared different perspectives on the benefits and challenges of public input processes, principles to guide public input processes, and suggestions for the MGA required elements (above) of a policy,” stated the staff report.
Jason Darrah, the Town’s director of communications and marketing, highlighted action requests sent to Town staff, with there being 1,720 such requests ranging from graffiti, bylaw issues, garbage concerns, potholes and parking.
The second phase will have the draft policy reviewed by Town senior staff, feedback from the resident panel and opportunities for feedback online and in person.
“It will not be just bare minimum of the policy, but a lot of input that will help us guide staff and council and manage expectations of our community,” Darrah said.
In addition to the policy, which would require council approval to pass, a supporting procedures guide would be developed to outline council’s expectations and role as well as clarify Town staff’s responsibility when public engagement is needed and the process to follow issues being discussed.
The Municipal Government Act requires all municipalities to create public participation policies. Once the public input policy is approved by council, it will be reviewed once each council term.
“A public input policy clarifies obligations of the Town, options for council to request engagement on a topic, while providing residents, business owners and other interested or impacted parties with an understanding of when and how they will be engaged, how their input will be used, and the results of decisions,” according to the report.
