Kimberley City Council heard two delegations at their regular meeting on Monday, Sept. 11, the first being a presentation from Steve Slawuta and Fiona Bell, project consultants for RC Strategies on the city’s Parks and Facilities Master Plan.
This was the first opportunity for Council to get a view on where the project is going, according to Mayor Don McCormick.
READ MORE: Public input period on Kimberley Parks and Facilities Master Plan underway
Slawuta said the purpose of the presentation was to give Council an introduction to RC Strategies as their project team and it was their first time coming before Council in-person.
They provided a refresher on the project’s objectives and process and an update on what they’ve been working on. Sawuda said quite a bit of work has taken place in recent months as they’ve kicked off the project and are in the midst of launching the engagement phase.
They also provided an introduction to RC Strategies, which is a parks, recreation and community services-focused planning firm, based out of Alberta and B.C., but have worked in 10 provinces and territories across Canada, with a team of 13 full-time staff.
Other team members work on specialties, engagement, GIS, mapping, graphic design.
Some other projects they’ve done include: Regional District of Nanaimo’s Parks and Recreation Master Plan, Town of Smithers Parks and Recreation Master Plan, Vancouver Park Board Sports Field strategy and the RDCK Parks, Recreation and Culture Master plans.
The Parks and Facilities Master Plan will first access the current state of parks in the community, Slawuta said — “the good, the bad, and the ugly.
“We need to understand that at a very thorough and comprehensive level. Then we can use that to recommend priorities and focus areas. Everybody usually things about facilities and capital-related items and that’s certainly part of it, but the master plan will also be an opportunity to provide some guidance around things related to service delivery partnerships, programming, how are you best to deliver services to residents, policies that maybe need to be updated.”
Ultimately the plan will serve as a resource that City Council and staff can use to inform decision making in the future.
“Obviously you have limited resources and you have to make decisions, considering a bunch of different service areas and a bunch of different things people would like to see in the master plan can ensure that those decisions are informed and that you have a point of reference to make those decisions.”
The Master Plan project process is broken into four phases. The first phase was the project’s launch and took place this past May to August. It consisted of gathering a large amount of information from staff and doing background research.
The second phase, research and development occurred from August to October and now they are in the midst of the community engagement component of that, which is incredibly important to the community, Slawuta said.
The third phase, set for November, will consist of gathering all the information they’ve taken in, making sense of it and then beginning to envision what some of their recommended focus areas and priorities will be in the fall.
From the end of this year into early 2024 will be the final phase of their process, creating the final draft of the master plan for Council consideration.
RC Strategies has been learning about Kimberley parks and recreation, first and foremost through community engagement, but also through facility visits
Review of previous planning and other documentation benchmarking — comparing Kimberley to other similarly sized jurisdictions, spatial analysis — mapping to understand are there areas where residents don’t have as much access to recreation as others.
They’ve also done a review of broader trends and best practices and analyzed the population and demographics of Kimberley.
They’ve employed several methods to garner community engagement, including online crowdsourcing and other feedback opportunities made available through engagekimberley.ca
They started a resident survey that was launched last week.
“It contains a unique access code help with ensuring that we don’t get a flood of responses from one specific group,” Bell said. “So pickleball can’t come out and say ‘more pickle ball courts’ and overwhelm all the responses. We get everyone’s perspective and we can kind of control how many responses each individual gets to input.”
Other methods include a community group survey, a youth questionnaire and an open house event, which took place on Tuesday, Sept. 12 at Centennial Hall.
The next steps are to complete the community engagement and research period and begin their strategic visioning and direction setting, before they can start to develop the draft of the Master Plan, at which point they will re-engage with the community. Council will be engaged and updated at key points throughout the process.
paul.rodgers@kimberleybulletin
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