The Rural Municipality (RM) of Corman Park is in the final stages of mapping out its long-term vision for land use and development.
Residents of Corman Park packed an open house event at the Village at Crossmount south of Saskatoon on Thursday, May 9 to view the most recent draft of the Corman Park Official Community Plan (OCP).
The OCP provides a framework for municipal planning and policies related to land use, economic growth, transportation, culture, utilities and recreation.
The open house featured the latest draft land use map for those areas of Corman Park which are outside the boundaries of the Partnership for Growth (P4G) region. (The P4G region, which includes portions of Corman Park adjacent to the urban municipalities of Saskatoon, Warman, Martensville and Osler, has a separate OCP, which was recently finalized.)
The Corman Park OCP open house May 9 was held in conjunction with an information session outlining the partnership between the Des Nedhe Group and Epcor to provide water and wastewater services to residents and businesses in south Corman Park. Des Nedhe is the commercial arm of the English River First Nation; and Epcor is an Alberta-based utility provider which builds and operates several large projects in western Canada and the United States.
Corman Park Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Kerry Hilts said the OCP is an important tool for municipal planning and policies.
“This provides a framework for the future,” said Hilts. “There are many different demands for land use in the RM, and it’s important to reduce the possibility of land use conflicts as much as possible.
“We want to ensure we have compatible land uses within the RM, and also with our other municipal partners.”
Corman Park Director of Planning Jim Charlebois said the process of reviewing and updating the OCP has been ongoing since the summer of 2021. Ratepayer surveys and open houses have helped RM officials fine-tune the plan, with the objective of finalizing it by this summer. He noted that the OCP focuses on a ten-year time line.
While it provides a blueprint for planning, it also has to be flexible enough to handle the pressures that accompany growth.
“This open house is our last formal public engagement session,” said Charlebois. “The next step is to bring it to a special Corman Park council Planning Committee meeting on May 30.”
Depending on feedback from councillors at that meeting, the OCP could require additional adjustments. But, at the present time, the goal is to have it finalized by the July 8, 2024 Corman Park Planning Committee meeting, said Charlebois.
He noted that one of the big changes in this draft OCP is a new land use designation for Division 8, which includes the western part of the RM.
“We’ve introduced a rural residential land use in that division,” said Charlebois.
“Last summer, council provided direction that they wanted to see more options for residential development in that area. As a rule, the soil quality in Division 8 is poor for agriculture, and that’s why council asked us to come up with some alternatives.”
Another change involves mitigating possible land use conflicts that could emerge if country residential development bumps up alongside intensive livestock operations (ILOs), which include dairy, poultry and hog enterprises.
“ILOs are such a foundational economic driver for the RM in Divisions 5 and 6 (the area north of Saskatoon around Warman, Martensville and Osler),” said Charlebois.
“We’re really trying to ensure that remains intact. There aren’t really any land use conflicts now because we had those policies in the OCP already, but we’re just taking one more step forward in formalizing that, so that the agriculture industry can continue and not be fragmented by residential development.”
Additional information on the Corman Park OCP and the draft land use map is available online at the Corman Park website (rmcormanpark.ca).