It's time to move on, Port Moody council said Tuesday night, as it approved the official community plan that will guide the city's growth over the next three decades.
Most council members, some of whom have been shepherding the OCP through various stages since a city-wide update started in 2006, said they were elected by residents in 2011 to develop and approve a plan.
That the approval comes a month before the municipal elections means, for better or worse, that the current council will be held particularly accountable for the decision.
"We have spent years discussing this particular OCP and I feel the public has a right to know how this council feels about it," said Coun. Gerry Nuttall, who is running for re-election.
"To defer it to a future council and put it in the hands of perhaps people who haven't been through the process that we have is unfair to them as well as to the residents of Port Moody."
Speaking to the group of about 20 spectators holding OCP protest signs, Coun. Rosemary Small, also running again, said council has listened to the input and included a number of recommendations, and the resulting plan is one that the majority will support and that preserves the city's small-town charm.
"I fully believe this council wants an OCP that does address that," Small added, noting the concerns over the lack of floor space ratios [FSR] in the plan are misguided. "We've been advised by... staff that this is not a good outcome, that it could set ourselves up for litigation. As long as our bylaws address the numbers, I'm not concerned they're not in the OCP."
Councillors Rick Glumac and Zoe Royer, both of whom voted against adopting the OCP (and both of whom are also running for re-election), had earlier raised the issue of density numbers - or lack thereof - in the plan.
"The OCP has no limits on density and, in some key areas, no limits on heights," Glumac said. "This gives the developers the opportunity to come forward with proposals that may be out of character for the community."
Citing the Local Government Act, Royer stated the OCP must "include statements and map designations to do with the location, the amount and the type of density of residential development."
The OCP includes specific building heights for all of the development areas except for those listed as Special Study Areas (Andrés Wine, Mill and Timber and Ioco), which will require further analysis and comprehensive development plans, but not FSR numbers. Staff have stated the zoning bylaw is the appropriate place for those figures.
"As the OCP is drafted now, it deals with density through different land use categories," said James Stiver, the city's general manager of planning, adding the OCP does satisfy requirements of the Local Government Act.
Royer asked that the OCP be deferred so that a future council could bring PoMo's regional context statement into alignment with Metro Vancouver's regional growth strategy.
"Don't get me wrong, there's some good things in the OCP," she said. "But if we chip away at the public good in all of this, if we self-regulate as communities, something is lost."
Coun. Diana Dilworth, another incumbent running again, acknowledged she didn't agree with everything in the OCP but the level of public input - estimated at about 1,000 residents - was the largest she's seen, and the resulting plan incorporates that input.
"This is a 30-year plan... that provides broad guidance and direction based on input from council and residents," she said, noting it is similar to previous OCPs that resulted in award-winning developments like Newport Village, Klahanie and Suter Brook.
"One of the most positive attributes of the plan is that it provides flexibility for future councils and future residents to amend or change the direction," she said.
And whatever the OCP may say - or not say - several members emphasized future councils will be free to turn down any development proposal that doesn't fit with Port Moody's character.
