After another debate on whether or not to postpone, Prince George City Council has given second reading to the Official Community Plan Bylaw.
The bylaw came back for second reading at tonight’s (Monday) meeting, after City Council had postponed the vote at the meeting held on February 3rd.
Councillor Trudy Klassen suggested postponing again to allow for more consultation with a list of community groups and organizations, such as the Airport Authority, School District 57, the Regional District, and several others.
“I think the number of emails we’ve gotten make the case in themselves,” she said.
“We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that these are just people that are complaining, I think what we need to do is look at it and go, these people are really involved in our community, they really care and they’re obviously still feeling that they haven’t quite been heard.”
Councillor Cori Ramsay disagreed.
“I have sat on many a board where you have a strategic plan and it just sits on the shelf and it becomes dusty because it’s not looked at regularly, and I don’t think that that is what’s going to happen with our Official Community Plan,” Ramsay said.
“I firmly believe that it is going to be a living, breathing document that changes and grows and directs the growth of our community.”
Ramsay noted they’ve already done two years of consultation and engagement on the document already.
“We’re not going to hit every single person, we know that, and as staff have admitted, it’s not going to be a perfect document, but we can strive to continue to make it perfect as we go,” she said.
After Ramsay spoke, City Council paused debate on the item to hold public hearings.
After Council resumed debate on the item, Councillor Brian Skakun, who was appearing at the meeting via Zoom, said he supported postponing, and he would be bringing back many amendments on the document.
A public hearing on the document will be held in March. If Council were to make amendments to the OCP after that public hearing and prior to third reading, a second public hearing would have to be held, and a third if more amendments came after the second.
“There’s still time for my colleagues to make those amendments and put those forward, and if the public hearing takes one or two meetings or three meetings even to get there, then that’s what it’s going to take. I will sit here through 18 hours of budget, so I’ll sit here through however long the public consultation takes for the OCP, but we are timebound on this,” Ramsay added.
“This is an opportunity to move forward with the public hearing. I personally really want to hear what the public is going to say when we go to the public hearing.”
Mayor Yu said the list of groups Klassen presented “represented a huge chunk of the public.”
“These are the people, they are the decision makers as well for our city, so their opinions are a little bit more important, as an organization message, from their CEO, from their Board,” Yu said.
“They might only take two minutes, say “it’s fine, I can change it later, the way it is, it’s fine,” I want to hear that.”
Yu added he wants to get the document right as much as possible.
“This is a document that belongs to the people of Prince George, it does not belong to our planning department,” he said.
Councillor Ron Polillo said he doesn’t see it as meaningful engagement.
“We started this process, Council directed staff to start this process in December of 2022, we are two-and-a-half years into this, actively, it was spring of 2023, we’re approaching almost two years of the active phase of this,” Polillo said.
“I believe we’ve had significant consultation. Is this document perfect? No, but as we’ve heard, this is a living, breathing document, a dynamic document that will change. We don’t have the resources, time is an issue, respectfully, we don’t have the budget for it, but this is another step in the process to move us forward. Councillor Ramsay is right, we still have to do public hearings, any of these groups could come to the public hearings. Who knows? We may have two or three, Councillor Ramsay is right, maybe we have to have two or three meetings. I’m not sure if that’s the case, but to me, that’s significant consultation.”
Councillor Kyle Sampson said Klassen’s motion is “an ambiguous plan.”
“Before we had a profound, laid out consultation plan, we went out and consulted with the community, with special interest groups, with stakeholders, and we went through a multi-year consultation process,” he said.
“This just lists a bunch of organizations and says we’re going to talk to them further. There’s no plan, there’s no consultation model, and it just says ‘identified through the process’, it doesn’t define what the process is.”
Klassen’s motion to postpone was ultimately defeated, and second reading passed.
Additionally, Council approved a special meeting to hold the public hearing on March 19th.
Other items discussed tonight included the snow and ice control policy, and a bid for the 2030 Special Olympics Canada Games.
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