City council passed first reading of a bylaw that will amend Prince George’s official community plan at its Monday, Feb. 3 meeting but held off on approving a public hearing until councillors have a chance to propose amendments.
BC law requires municipalities to have official community plans outlining their long-term goals and how planning and land use rules will be shaped to fulfill them.
Prince George’s existing OCP went into effect in 2012. Director of planning and development Deanna Wasnik said that they used to be updated every 10 to 12 years, but municipalities are now required to update them every five years.
Work on the plan has been ongoing since December 2022, when council directed city staff to update it.
The updated OCP projects Prince George will have 100,000 residents around the year 2040 and 110,000 residents around 2050.
Since then, staff and consulting firm Urban Systems have been developing an updated version of the plan, which led to public consultation including a round that ended in November 2024 focusing on the plan’s first draft.
At the beginning of the proposed amended OCP is the following vision statement:
“Our community is the 'Gathering Place' of the north, specifically a confluence where people, cultures, regional economies, transportation, and river systems come together. In 2050, the City of Prince George will be rich in cultural diversity, honour our heritage, and celebrate a high quality of life surrounded by natural beauty.
“Our community will have a vibrant urban core, and a diverse local economy that attracts new businesses, amenities, and emerging technologies. This community recognizes that to ensure resilience, we must collectively protect our environment, strategically invest in cost-effective infrastructure, and manage growth. This will assure us to be the “Gathering Place” and a confluence of the north.”
To accomplish that vision statement, the plan set out these five long-term goals:
- Create complete communities that meet residents’ daily needs, including a wide range of housing options,
- Protect, enhance and build trails in parks and open spaces,
- Invest strategically in existing and cost-effective infrastructure to serve current and future generations of residents,
- Maintain a strong, diverse and flexible economy with mixed-use developments and
- Be an environmentally conscious and responsible city that integrated climate projections into its approach for land use, servicing, development and transportation.
Presenting on the public consultation via Zoom was Kelsey Schaumann of Urban Systems, who said during that process, objectives to achieve all those goals were laid out and then residents were asked whether they thought those objectives would help the city achieve those goals.
She said residents generally agreed that the objectives and the goals were aligned except for the fifth goal, which had a mixed bag of responses.
Of the 152 people who chimed in on the fifth goal, 23 per cent were neutral while 28 per cent either disagreed or strongly disagreed that they were aligned. Another one per cent said they were unsure of whether the objectives and goals were aligned.
In general, residents expressed a desire for more protection for natural spaces like Ginter’s Green, for the city to address lack of infrastructure, transit and transportation access, and to examine the potential impacts of new development on the environment
Mayor Simon Yu said that the province’s legislation on small-scale and family housing recognized that BC has a missing middle-range in its housing supply. He asked if it would be possible to recognize this in the OCP by outlining that a mixture of housing types is needed in various neighbourhoods.
Wasnik said that she thinks the new OCP as well as the associated complete community assessment account for the need for mixed-use housing and it is certainly something that can be reflected in the documents.
Coun. Trudy Klassen noted that the public wanted more partnerships with Indigenous groups and asked for more information on what that could entail. Schaumann said the elements relating to reconciliation were handled by the city and not her company.
Wasnik said she was part of the team that met with Lheidli T’enneh First Nation, making a similar presentation regarding the OCP that Urban Systems did. She said she did not have results on hand but that she could get them for later in the OCP review process.
Coun. Tim Bennett asked whether the public feedback led to any changes in the final draft being presented to council.
Manager of development services Mandy Jones told Bennett that more items on the environment, climate and agriculture were added following consultations with the public — including specific protections for Ginter’s Green. Wasnik said the city is already doing some work on the environmental front that it could better communicate with the public.
Out of fears that the meeting might run too long and citing a closed meeting that still needed to take place, Yu moved for the scheduled first reading of the bylaw amending the official community plan be deferred to the Feb. 24 meeting.
However, that motion was defeated with only Yu, Frizzell and Klassen voting in favour. Council then voted to extend proceedings past the 10 p.m. time limit.
Later in the meeting, after the Urban Systems report, Jones returned to the centre table to give staff’s presentations on the OCP changes.
Jones noted that while the document informs land use and zoning decisions, amending the OCP does not change any of the city’s zoning regulations. The document is informed by other city plans, like its active five-year housing plan, the regional solid waste management plan, neighbourhood plans, the recently presented complete community assessment and the myPG Sustainability Plan.
She said the OCP needs to be updated to reflect trends that have changed in the last 13 years, like different housing needs.
Addressing the population projects, she emphasized that they are estimates only.
Beyond the public consultations and other municipal plan, she said the OCP is also shaped by city council’s resolutions and provincial legislation.
One of the biggest items in the OCP, Jones said, is growth management. She said it emphasizes thoughtful land management to avoid urban sprawl, like supporting infill developments. This is important, she said, given that Prince George has to manage growth over 329 square kilometres.
Showing a comparison between the growth management maps in the 2012 OCP compared to the new proposed one, Jones said the number of land designations have been reduced to just three for the sake of simplicity.
The number of land uses under the new OCP has been reduced from 19 to 15, partially to align with provincial housing legislation and promote a mix of housing types.
The number of designations for development permits has been increased, she said, to account for erosion in areas with significant slopes. Currently, exemptions for development permits are split between the housing bylaw and the OCP. The new OCP would incorporate all the exemptions.
To implement the 2025 OCP, amendments need to be made to the zoning bylaw, the subdivision and development servicing bylaw, the tree protection bylaw and the development procedures bylaw.
However, because of the new OCP going into effect, the city must also undertake further reviews of those four bylaws as well as the tree protection bylaw. Some of those reviews and resulting changes may extend beyond 2025, Jones cautioned.
A couple of planned road expansions in the 2012 OCP, southwards on Foothills Boulevard and the expansion of Massey Drive from Foothills Boulevard to Tyner Boulevard, are no longer listed in the 2025 OCP.
Coun. Cori Ramsay asked how staff will be communicating its progress towards the objectives laid out in the OCP. Jones said she could see the city’s departments working together to create report cards and then working with Wasnik to communicate the results to council.
She said small businesses frequently don’t have the resources to apply for OCP amendments and wondered about considerations for that.
Following up on Ramsay’s line of thought, Coun. Trudy Klassen said she thought there should be more designated neighbourhood corridors in the plan, especially in the Hart.
Klassen wondered why the OCP has a line discouraging residents from planting fruit trees. Wasnik theorized that was in response to conversations about how to mitigate bear risk, saying that it wouldn’t be a regulation, just a general principle.
Coun. Kyle Sampson said he thought the new OCP is much more people friendly and less centred on trying to push through traffic.
He also asked why a bridge connecting the BC Rail Site with the western part of the city isn’t included in the OCP, even if it does require funding from higher levels of government.
Wasnik said the OCP is concerned with what can be achieved for the road network within the next 20 years and such a project is beyond that scope.
Bennett expressed concern that Prince George wouldn’t be able to pay for the capital projects the OCP lays out.
At the end of discussions, Yu said he didn’t think the draft OCP was ready to be presented to the public because of its relationship to the capital plan. While there are some tweaks, he said, it doesn’t tie in the fundamental infrastructure projects needed to enact real growth and change.
Expounding further, he said he didn’t think the document is presented in a way that will grab the attention of the general public, even if there is an upcoming public hearing.
He said he didn’t think the document was a plan to turn Prince George into a great city.
Council finally started voting on administration’s recommendations about the OCP at 11:12 p.m., after voting unanimously to extend the meeting length for a second time.
The first recommendation was to grant first reading of the OCP bylaw. The second was to consider the OCP in conjunction with the city’s current financial plan. The third was to consider the OCP in conjunction with the regional district’s solid waste management plan.
The fourth recommendation was to consider the OCP in conjunction with the city’s strategic framework for a sustainable Prince George. The fifth was the grant second reading of the OCP bylaw.
The sixth recommendation was to give notice of a public hearing while the seventh was to add a special council meeting on Feb. 26 to hold the public hearing.
Yu was the only councillor to vote against administration’s first two recommendations. The third recommendation passed unanimously while both Yu and Klassen voted against recommendation four.
Consideration of administration’s fifth through seventh recommendations was delayed until the Feb. 24 regular meeting, meaning that the public hearing for the OCP will not be held this month.
As amendments cannot be made after a public hearing for the OCP is concluded without holding another public hearing, this means that council still has time to present amendments before residents have a chance to weigh in.
Once a public hearing concludes without further amendments, council would then vote on whether to grant final passage of the OCP at that same meeting.
