After a year-and-a-half of stops and starts, the North Saanich council approved a new timeline to update the district’s official community plan (OCP).
Work on the OCP – which outlines the direction of the community and guides future rezoning decisions — stalled after an outside consultant quit working on the document last March. Since then, the district has hired a new director of planning, Felice Mazzoni, who in turn hired a planner to focus solely on the new OCP.
The goal now is having the OCP ready for adoption by February 2025. Community engagement efforts are to take place through July.
Mazzoni said these engagement efforts will be aimed at hitting a wide range of demographics by holding sessions in a variety of venues and at different times, including weekends.
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This will ideally invite participation from everyone ranging from children to seniors.
“We’re trying to get a really good cross section of the community,” he said.
Mazzoni presented the new timeline to council on Feb. 12 with a few changes from the last update in June.
At that time, the timeline was shorter with less money spent, but difficulties hiring staff and newly announced housing-related requirements by the provincial government upped costs and pushed things back, Mazzoni told council.
Not every council member was happy with the news. Coun. Jack McClintock took the opportunity to grill Mazzoni about increased costs, questioning him about promises made to spend no more taxpayer money.
“There were some assurances that we’d be well on the way, if not completed by now,” McClintock said. “I’m quite frustrated,” he later added.
McClintock also questioned what parts of the work done by MODUS Planning, the former consultant, was being used for the current effort, and what wasn’t.
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Seemingly unsatisfied with the answers he was hearing from Mazzoni, McClintock brought forward a motion to post all of MODUS’ North Saanich OCP work on the district website. This passed after other councillors insisted a disclaimer was put on to note that the work did not represent a final product, and that some of the documents were only drafts.
Mayor Peter Jones took issue with McClintock’s comments, saying he had full faith in the new planner’s work so far.
“I’m also concerned about the — I’ll call it the ‘attitude’ — shown by Coun. McClintock to this,” Jones said.
In March when MODUS ended its contract with the district, reasons included “a deep sense of distrust” councillors had shown toward the firm.
This time around, most councillors seemed keen on making sure they do not derail the process.
“I’m fully confident that we will have something we can be proud of and that our timelines will be met,” Coun. Irene McConkey said.
