The City of Thompson's development review committee in its Aug. 10 report to council touched on issues such as proposed amendments to the City of Thompson boundary, a community sustainability plan and property standards.
The committee, which meets every second Friday, is made up of Mayor Tim Johnston, city councillors Harold Smith and Stella Locker, as well as outside appointee Keith Burak, and contributed to by Kate Cruickshank, planner with community planning services from the Manitoba Department of Intergovernmental Affairs Mark Matiasek, Thompson Unlimited general manager, and Hugh Fraser, superintendent and chief executive officer from the School District of Mystery Lake.
City of Thompson director of planning and community development Gary Ceppetelli and administrative assistant Tammy Parobec provide staff support to the committee.
Smith filled in members of city council at the last council meeting about the committee's ongoing activities, as well as its current projects. He says the committee regularly provides advice and guidance to administration in the development of policies and procedures to promote and regulate community development, including land sale practices, bylaws and development policies that are later recommended to council.
"I think it's been widely agreed that that's a better process, to have a committee look at them before they come into council," Smith says, expanding by adding that administration briefs the committee on the status of all potential new developments involving city land.
Smith notes the committee and administration have also reviewed a large number of variance applications to make sure that important information is included in them and to provide a joint committee/administration recommendation on all variance requests.
The development review committee is currently working on three specific projects, including the proposed amendments to expand the City of Thompson's boundaries. He says the committee is waiting for a response from Vale Inco regarding potential lands that may be included in a minor amendment to the city's boundary, and is hoping the company gets back to the committee shortly. Ceppetelli says that although the committee has certain parcels of land they'd like to see expanded, the locations aren't being made public until Vale Inco has reached a decision about the land.
The committee has also looked at five different proposals for the development of a community sustainability plan. Smith says the committee is recommending a Fortune 500 company called AECOM, a global provider of technical and management support services to markets such as transportation, facilities, environment and energy. AECOM currently has clients in more than 100 different countries and had a revenue of $6.1 billion during the 12 month period that ended June 30, 2009, according to its website, www.aecom.com. City council had earlier passed a resolution to accept AECOM's proposal."We're very happy with the community sustainability plan. It's been through council now and our committee worked on that, and I'd like to give special recognition to Kate Cruikshank who gave all of the proposals a very thorough reading and helped the committee tremendously in evaluating the different proposals," Smith says.
"We're very pleased that our city is taking that step of going through a formal process of a sustainability plan that is long-term in nature and that is going to encompass growth scenarios, our need for land, our opportunities for developing land in a sustainable fashion as well as a review of our mater parks plan." He adds AECOM will work together with the recreation services committee who has a special interest in the parks plan.
The committee's property standards plan was tabled at city council in the spring, and Smith says the follow-up presentation to the Chamber of Commerce was well received. The committee is planning to track the City of Thompson's efforts in implementing the plan and will include a summary in the next committee report.
"I think it's important that during the tabling of that property standards plan we come back as part of our regular reports to let everybody know how that's going," Smith says. "I was very pleased to see, when I came back from vacation, the new entrance to the Thompson Plaza property. That's, I think, one of the areas in that property standards plan about safety in parking lots or pedestrian traffic and vehicles that was very high up on this list."
Smith says other areas that are a top priority for the property standards plan include the Public Square parking lot, also known as the Canadian Tire parking lot and the City Centre Mall parking lot.
