The City of Salmon Arm now has one plan to rule them all.
On Nov. 18 council approved adoption of the city’s corporate strategic plan.
Sitting above the official community plan, the strategic plan is described as an overarching document that sets priorities dealing with projects and planning over the short, medium and long term.
Urban Systems’ Therese Zulinick, who assisted in creating the strategic plan, said it will provide guidance in the allocation of staffing and financial resources and on how to react to the interests and needs of the community.
“A strategic plan helps to avoid ad hoc decision-making,” said Zulinick. “Sometimes there will be funding available or special interests, and the strategic plan is a balanced approach to ensuring that decision-making is well planned out and well thought out…”
Zulinick said the process of putting together the strategic plan began in 2012, following the adoption of the OCP. She said a lot of the consultation that went into the OCP went into the strategic plan. Community input opportunities included two surveys. One for residents had 308 replies, and one for businesses had 58 replies.
One of the key features of the resulting strategic plan is a breakdown of 17 projects into lists of short-, medium-, and long-term priorities. Listed alphabetically, the short-term list (2014-17) includes Blackburn Park upgrades, a communications strategy, a Fire Underwriters survey update, a long-term financial plan update, developing a servicing philosophy for managing development, a stormwater management plan update and transit improvements.
Medium priorities (2018-20) include airport improvements, a downtown parking plan, environmental protection bylaws and development permits update, a fire services review, a re-development plan for the area where the city’s recreational facilities are located, trails and greenways connections, the Trans-Canada Highway/20th intersection, a wastewater pollution control centre relocation assessment and a water metering cost/benefit analysis.
Long-term priorities (2021-23) include the Auto Road connector, Canoe waterfront access redevelopment, CPR 17th Avenue NE pedestrian overpass, a downtown waterfront access management plan, industrial park servicing and infrastructure improvements and redevelopment plans for Klahani and Little Mountain parks.
Zulinick noted the strategy could change as community priorities change and funding becomes available.
“It’s not the intent that this stays a static list for the next 10 years, but it actually evolves as new information becomes available and as priorities change,” said Zulinick.
Coun. Chad Eliason said he thought this important, that the strategy is flexible and can be changed.
“If another project that is of importance or important to the community, and meets all the criteria in the checklist or becomes a community priority, that can be substituted in here…,” said Eliason.
Coun. Alan Harrison commented that the strategy’s creation was an objective process. He noted the swimming pool, a topic of high interest during the process, is imbedded as a medium-term priority. He also emphasized how some of the more costly priority projects, which may require the city borrowing large amounts of money, would first require the assent of voters before they could proceed.