Squamish hasn't had a new official community plan (OCP) since 1998 when the town was largely resource based. Since then, immense transformations have taken place, and a new OCP is now ready to reflect the times.
A public meeting held Tuesday (May 25) was the final opportunity for input before the OCP is expected to be given third reading and adopted within a few weeks.
Planning director Cameron Chalmers opened the meeting by outlining the significant changes implemented since the district's planning department started reviewing the OCP in 2003.
He said they've taken a significant amount of public consultation and called the public hearing the grand finale of a process that is key to moving forward in other important community plans, such as the downtown neighbourhood plan.
Staff and council received four late submission letters from affected parties outlining their issues with the OCP, and six people at the meeting voiced their concerns.
Janna Everett who live on Highway 99 across from Depot Road, also sent a late submission letter seeking mixed use land designation, saying she's unhappy with the current limited use designation.
BC Rail Properties also sent a letter stating land use designations on two of their sites are inappropriate. The former rail yards between downtown Squamish and the West Coast Railway Heritage Park are designated in the new OCP as greenway corridors and recreation. However BC Rail Properties is asking council to make one site industrial and one residential.
Chalmers said both Everett and BC Rail's requests to convert their land designation were presented to council last October and council decided to leave them as they are now.
"They're [BC Rail sites] adjacent to the estuary and largely outside what we've designated as our downtown," said Chalmers.
"The general approach to the whole OCP review when it came to land use designation was that we needed a compelling reason in the public interest to change land use," said Chalmers. "Every request we did receive was considered by council."
Some residents in attendance criticized the way in which changes to the document were implemented.
"I think these last-minute changes like [those presented] tonight makes a bit of a farce of the public consultation process and devalues the work that our community has undertaken to create a policy document that reflects our shared interests," said Rachel Shepard.
Shepard was upset at what she called "surprisingly last minute and not insignificant changes that have been proposed subsequent to the last public consultation meeting, to first reading and that were only put on the website about a month ago."
She said changing Edgewater land from limited use to residential and taking parts of the Cheekye Fan out of the special site area were inappropriate.
Terrill Patterson was the final speaker of the night and started off with a bit of nostalgia.
"This meeting tonight reminds me of a night 12 years ago is this plan any better?"
Patterson used props to outline what he called weaknesses in the plan. He questioned the thought put into the plan, and said if Garibaldi Estates commercial owners realized their properties would be downgraded to mixed commercial, the room would be full. Patterson suggested the designation would stop additional gas stations, hotels, bus stations, pubs and bars.
Chalmers said the move to mixed commercial allowed residential use, and it doesn't affect existing businesses.
"Our intent was not to preclude gas stations, pubs and bars. In fact we're trying to encourage uses in that area," said Chalmers.
