The public has until Monday, October 19th to submit their thoughts and feedback on the Steamboat Jubilee Mountain Official Community Plan (OCP) and what they would like to see in the important “guiding document” for the area.
A series of open houses were held by the Regional District of East Kootenay (RDEK) leading up to the release of the draft OCP, but now the public comment period is open for those that may not have shared their opinions with the regional district.
“Our final meeting was to present the draft OCP and that happened over two days, so September 16th and 17th we had four meetings over the two days. We had a pretty good turn out, we had about 50 people show up,” Michele Bates told MyEastKootenayNow.com, RDEK Planner. “Now for the next month we’re just looking for comments on the draft OCP, so hoping people can have a review and a read and then let me know their thoughts and concerns.”
Although the OCP has been in place since 2006, the new revision of the Official Community Plan looked at differing development permits, as well as to ensure residents were still happy with the current guidelines in the document.
“The goals of this OCP was to implement some environmentally sensitive area development permits as well as wildfire development permits and just to touch base again and see if the existing land-use policies are still relevant,” said Bates.
The public comment period can include submitting feedback online or in-person with written submissions. Regardless, either comment form needs to be handed into the RDEK by Monday, October 19th.
MORE: Steamboat Jubilee Mountain OCP (RDEK)
“We’re going to have a look at that feedback, see if there’s any revisions that need to be made to the OCP,” Bates told MyEastKootenayNow.com. “If there’s revisions, we’ll do that, and then it will go to our regional district board for first and second reading prior to the formal public hearing.”
The RDEK expects the revised OCP process should be fully completed by early 2021, pending final approval from the RDEK Board of Directors.