No longer a draft, Port Moody's official community plan is finally, well, official.
And while Mayor Mike Clay now aims to tackle other city business, his challenger in the mayoral race, Gaetan Royer, is planning for a different future.
"It's great to have it done. It's been eight years. I've been working on this since I got on council," Clay told The Tri-City News after Tuesday's council meeting, referring to the city-wide OCP update initiated in 2006.
With the Evergreen Line under construction a few years later, council kicked off the latest update process with a public input session in the spring of 2012.
Since then, there have been design charrettes, public consultation sessions, online surveys and feedback, town hall meetings, committee reviews, a public hearing and council meeting discussions. Still, Clay acknowledged there will be people who don't support the plan.
Even so, he said, many more are on board with the OCP. Residents and property owners anticipating the Evergreen Line want to know how the city plans to move forward, Clay added, and without a plan. The city will end up with a "hodgepodge of random applications." That plan provides the city with a vision for its potential growth over the next 30 years.
But Royer, a former PoMo city administrator, said as it stands, the OCP does not contain the kind of limits on development that are needed to protect residents.
"They would tell the residents, the taxpayers, what it is they're getting right now but that document doesn't tell them anything," he said.
Royer suggested the OCP should have addressed concerns about building heights and density in some areas.
"Developers are going to come in and propose what they figure is best for Port Moody, as opposed to Port Moody deciding that a certain amount of density would be what's best for the residents," he said.
Clay had a different take, noting that sites designated as special study areas, particularly the Mill and Timber (the mill next to Rocky Point Park) and Andrés Wine sites, do not have specified heights or densities so that "there's no obligation on anybody or no inference of an obligation to meet those numbers," offering the city greater flexibility.
Responding to concerns that the OCP would bring a sudden influx of unprecedented growth, Clay said the plan anticipates a growth rate of 1.4% per year over its 30-year lifespan - the lowest in 25 years.
But Royer said the expected population increase, from the current 35,000 to nearly 50,000, will bring with it issues that he doesn't feel are addressed in the OCP.
"The recreation centre is at capacity, the library needs to be renovated and expanded, so this OCP is going to make things worse," Royer told The Tri-City News. "Our roads can't handle more traffic. This is the wrong form of development."
He suggested the OCP should be more employment-focused to widen the tax base.
"These plans evolve and they change with time," Clay said. "Ours hasn't been updated really since 2000 and it needs to be. That's why it's such a big deal, because there's so much change, but it reflects the amount of change that's gone on in Port Moody.
"There's very little else that's been accomplished because we've been consumed by this," Clay added. "There are too many great things in that plan to keep deferring and delaying it."
Royer said he would have preferred that the OCP had been delayed until after the election, though he wasn't too upset with the results.
"In a way, I'm happy because it creates a clear choice [in the election]," he said. "The first order of business for me [if elected] is to re-open the OCP and provide the kind of protection that would help create a great community, as opposed to no protection and no number.
"All those things have to be spelled out because they're not going to be offered by the development community."
