By Kevin J. Sabo
For the Advance
County of Paintearth administration has released the summary from the community engagement sessions held at various locations across the County last winter.
In the ensuing months since the sessions that were held in Castor, Coronation, Brownfield, and Halkirk the team behind the engagement sessions has putting the enormous amounts of information together into a 104-page document that has been released to the public.
“There’s quite a lot of data,” said County of Paintearth CAO Michael Simpson.
“It’s be quite a bit of a task getting it all categorized.”
The County of Paintearth invited community members from across the County to take part in a dialogue with council and administration as they move forward on developing a new Land Use Bylaw and Municipal Development Plan.
“This wasn’t a white-wash exercise. This is the good, the bad, and the ugly. We are bringing their comments back to the public,” said Simpson.
“We often get told we don’t listen. This is to show ‘yes, we do’.”
Various aspects of the existing Land-Use Bylaw and Municipal Development Plan were reviewed during the sessions, and in addition, the community engagement team asked questions surrounding ideas such as a landowner’s right to develop their property versus a neighbour’s right to veto any development or what public reaction would be to various businesses such as wind-turbine developments or marijuana grow facilities.
In total, 151 community members participated in the sessions, which are supposed to be the first of three rounds of engagement, however due to the current world health situation plans for the follow sessions are currently paused and will be scheduled once people can gather once again.
The full report is available for download on the County of Paintearth web site, www.countypaintearth.ca, under community engagement in the home tab.
Copies of the physical document will be available upon request once the administration building reopens to the public.