The vision about how land can be used and developed at Jumbo Glacier Mountain Resort Municipality (JGMRM) is still in the works.

Council unanimously accepted the second reading of JGMRM’s Official Community Plan Bylaw No. 0013, 2015 at the regular May 19 meeting and scheduled a 9:30 a.m. public hearing (on the bylaw) in the Village of Radium Hot Springs council chambers on June 16.

The action to revise the official community plan stems from OCP Avalanche Materials. “Primarily, there were revisions done to reflect the new avalanche protocol that has been adopted by the people in that profession since the original master plan agreement was negotiated between the province and the proponent,” said Jumbo mayor Greg Deck. “Our requirement, as a municipality, is to make sure that we don’t do anything to contravene that master plan agreement. We’re expecting amendments to it, so we need to be sure that our translation of it into a municipal bylaw is accurate and reflects any of the latest changes on their side.”

Council is opening the doors to the June 16 public hearing to the surrounding communities to ask questions and make comments about the bylaw.

“I think we have a moral obligation, quite frankly, to take comments from people who believe they are affected by the bylaw,” said Deck. “What’s a little bit different in the case of our municipality is that there aren’t residents up there whose interests are affected. This legislation and this form of governance is typically designed for settled areas where you are changing something next to other people who own property or who live or work next to the property in question… it’s not applicable our municipality, but it tends to attract folks from a lot further away than you would normally see for a rezoning or an OCP.”

The biggest challenge of governance for the JGMRM remains making decisions that have the ability to influence future generations in a positive light, Deck added.

“Frankly, I think the challenges are much easier than they are for a typical municipality where your planning has to take into account all of the historical construction that predates current planning efforts or planning philosophies or frankly, probably even happened by accident,” said Deck. “We have the luxury of starting with a clean slate so we can take the best engineering and design practices that exist currently and work on a greenfield site within all of the natural perimeters that are part of that rather unusual piece of terrain.”

Deck added the council will be taking the public hearing seriously and expects to spend a great deal of time working toward an outcome that accommodates others. “A lot will depend on how many comments we receive,” said Deck. “We may need to delay that meeting or have another meeting shortly after the public hearing to give us time to review the comments. Much will depend on how much new material this is.

“This will be the third public hearing we’ve had and not much is changing, so there isn’t a great deal of new material that we’re hearing. I’m not expecting anything completely unforeseen.”

For more information about the public hearing, visit www.jgmrm.ca/documents.