CANMORE – Canmore residents are being asked to offer their two cents concerning the future of one of the community’s most important planning documents – the Land Use Bylaw (LUB).
Over the next several months, the municipality’s planning department is going to work on bringing back major changes in the planning legislation for council’s consideration.
Manager of planning Lee Prevost was in front of council in April with an update on the public engagement process to go out to residents for input on how the bylaw should be changed.
He said community engagement is set to begin in May, followed by a draft bylaw for first reading in July, a public hearing and more consultation followed by second reading in November.
“The project will begin at the start of May with a six-week initial community engagement session which is intended to introduce the topics that are under consideration for revision as part of this new bylaw,” Prevost said.
“We expect to present a staff report with draft recommendations for first reading in July and we have purposefully chosen a tight timeline up front because we want to have plenty of opportunity to gather stakeholder feedback on the changes we make and propose to council.”
Prevost added that if significant changes are being considered to what was proposed at first reading, a second public hearing could be held.
One of the key reasons for major changes to the Land Use Bylaw is the last council adopted a brand new Municipal Development Plan, and the two pieces of legislation must align with each other.
“As part of our review, we have identified about 20 individual topics that are on the table for updating,” Prevost said. “In many instances, those topics don’t exist in silos and, when we make changes to one, we can impact several others.
“So for that reason, we are going to group topics into relevant themes that are based on activating public spaces, improving access to housing, refreshing design, form and function of buildings, and updating the land use districts that address public areas.”
The use of themes, he added, also simplifies understanding of the bylaw. The format choice is also based on a hope that it will spur engagement in the community.
When it comes to street life, Prevost said impacts to parking should be considered, along with how the transportation network evolves. With housing, he said, there are links between employee housing, tourist homes, visitor accommodation and bed and breakfasts, so community priorities and effects are important to understand when making changes.
“For something like development, architectural design choices can have impacts on roof heights, privacy and building massing. We want to understand where our bylaws can be improved so both neighbours and developers have a reasonable expectation of what the outcomes would be and how we would review their application regardless of the design choices they make,” Prevost said.
He called the engagement process a “choose your own adventure” style, where the public can provide feedback on topics they are interested in.
There are three tactics being used – online survey, sounding boards and pop up events – with the goal of attracting a broader range of engagement.
Easily accessible and available public spaces will be used for the sounding board style engagement, and involves topic cards to introduce the intent of the bylaw section being addressed and asking questions.
“We are going to have a topic card for every item that is up for discussion and we can add new ones as we gather feedback throughout this process,” Prevost said. “For those that are more interested, we will also have handouts that dive a little bit deeper into the discussion.”
Mayor John Borrowman expressed his excitement at getting the community engaged on such an important discussion.
“The Land Use Bylaw is a critical planning tool that affects every aspect of our community’s life,” he said.
The mayor said a lack of employee housing, for example, is a critical issue for the community and he would like to hear from residents and the business community on ways to use the bylaw to address it.
“It is a priority for this council to increase housing options,” Borrowman said. “Before we move ahead, we need a new high level policy document with strategic outcomes.
“We are trying to support a strong business environment where employees can afford to live.”
