Rimbey town councillors has given the green light to an expenditure of approximately $10,000 which will provide them with an updated professional municipal development plan.
Council agreed to hire the in-house contract development officer, Liz Armitage to prepare the municipal development plan for a fee of $100 per hour. Tagish Engineering Ltd. fee proposal of $1,922.40 to provide the mapping and engineering review of the plan was accepted by council.
The targeted date for completion of the new municipal development plan is January, 2016.
As part of the background work of the new MDP, Armitage will review all existing statutory documents including the existing plan, the draft municipal development plan prepared by West Central Planning Agency, the area structure plans and the land use bylaw.
Once reviewed, she will highlight all discrepancies and provide a list of policy gaps.
After first reading is given to the plan, an open house will be held to give the public a chance to provide input regarding changes and the vision presented in the new plan.
A public hearing will be held prior to the second and third readings.
In a letter to Donna Tona, interim CAO for Rimbey, Armitage said the new MDP will include development objectives and policies. The scope of these will include residential, commercial, industrial, agriculture, recreation, institutional, transportation and utilities, environment and inter-municipal cooperation development.
Council agreed spending $10,000 on a new municipal development plan was money well spent.
“It’s quite a reasonable fee,” said Tona.
“$10,000 is a bargain,” added Coun. Paul Payson.