Martensville’s new Official Community Plan (OCP), officially adopted during a meeting May 18 by Martensville City Council, provides a solid foundation for the municipality’s future growth.
Martensville Planning Manager Bonnie Gorelitza said the new OCP represents an “extensive update” that brings the city into compliance with recent changes to provincial legislation governing cities.
It also fills in a number of “gaps” that were missing in the current OCP, including alignment with the city’s master plans for transportation and parks; as well as new sections on environmental protection, sector planning and concept planning.
At the same time, she added, it retains the vision and direction of the city’s current OCP, originally adopted in 2008.
Martensville Mayor Kent Muench said the new OCP is a “foundational, visionary document” that spells out in plain English how the city aims to achieve and maintain a high quality of life for residents while continuing to attract new investment.
“The most noticeable change is the document itself,” said Muench. “It’s much more friendly to the lay person; those of us who are not professional planners, but who have an interest in making our city a vibrant, safe, beautiful and dynamic place to live.”
Muench said he hopes the new OCP provides a vehicle for people to become better informed about the city’s plan to manage growth, and also to become more engaged in the civic democratic process.
All municipalities in Saskatchewan are required under provincial legislation to have an OCP, and to update them every few years, in order to manage development in an environmentally-sustainable manner.
Martensville city administration began the process of updating the municipality’s OCP in 2019. It contracted with Wallace Insights, V3 and Trace Associates to complete the review and develop necessary amendments An initial open house to gather public feedback on the new OCP was held in 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since then, public input was received through online consultations and direct mail contact with businesses, residents, landowners and other stakeholders, according to Gorelitza.
“We did have some changes as a result of that,” said Gorelitza. “But overall, the majority of comments from people said we were going in the right direction.”
Gorelitza said the new OCP is designed to guide Martensville’s growth from a small city to a medium-size one.
“The principles and policies, along with the master plans and urban design standards, all contribute to the overall vision of what the city will look like,” she said. “ It’s a living document and is designed to be able to adapt too changing needs and new circumstances that come up.
“For example, right now we aren’t anticipating or planning for any mass transit system, but the foundation is there for one if at some point in the future it’s needed.”
She said while the document doesn’t specifically address “interrupters” such as AirBnBs and autonomous vehicles, it provides flexibility as these evolve in the future.
Gorelitza said the revised OCP is a big step forward that provides direction for the city’s growth over the next 20 to 30 years.
The document is also designed to be widely accessible to the public through the use of plain language.
“It’s not written like a bylaw or a legal document,” said Gorelitza. “Traditionally, OCPs haven’t been very riveting as far as reading material goes. But this one is different because it has interesting facts sprinkled throughout it along with colourful photos and graphs that really provide good information about the city.
“It’s a relatively new format,” she added. “Martensville is not the first to adopt this type of document, but we’re in the forefront.”
The OCP is available online at the city’s website at www.martensville.ca .