Olds council gave the thumbs up to a M-D-P amendment and the new L-U-B during this week’s meeting.
The Municipal Development plan is the overarching document that lays out what future growth in town looks like. The Land Use Bylaw is the document that basically explains to people what they are, or are not allowed do on their property in town.
The Town’s planning and infrastructure staff have been working on it for over a year, and Chief Administrative Officer Brent Williams points out that the existing Land Use Bylaw for Olds was about 24 years old, it was very contradictory and ill fitting in a lot of places, and needed an update.
Williams states that coming out of the first draft and first reading on August 25th and into the public hearing on September 8th plus various feedback and a council meeting since then, the main amendment for the final reading involved what we used to call our R1 District – low density single family residential. According to Williams, it will now be called RDL – Residential District Legacy. He says “to put it simply, council heard from the community that they wanted to protect current single family communities from increased density. So no changes were made to those R1 communities, essentially. What existed with our previous bylaw yesterday and 10 years ago will exist tomorrow, in terms of density and types of housing allowed built in our current R1 Districts.”
He adds, it is important to note that Land Use Bylaws are living documents and future councils – whether it be next week or next year – can amend it if they believe that the community wants something different or that the province is putting enough pressure on the Town to build housing faster and in more diverse settings. Williams says “I do believe it is important to achieve what council asked us to do and getting more efficient in our land use and development approvals, while planning for the future and what housing has to look like for people to be able to afford it.”
Williams thanks everyone who engaged in the process. He says “whether you agree with the outcome or not, that is the important part of all municipal decisions but certainly statutory plans like Land Use Bylaws. It is great to see the interest from people and I think we all have the same goal here is to make Olds the best place it possibly can be to live, work, do business and study in today and into the future. We only do that through talking through problems and resolving our disagreements.”
Second and third reading of the new L-U-B were granted by council on Tuesday, October 14th. The document is expected to be available to view on the Town’s website before the end of this month.
