Our OCP Update Committee has released a draft of our new Official Community Plan and in most respects I think that it captures our collective aspirations quite well. The committee working on the Plan spent a lot of time consulting with community groups about what should be included in the update and they included a [...]
Also tagged Municipal Politics, Snug CoveThis week’s column is a summary of a submission I made to the OCP Update Steering Committee
This letter hopes to challenge some of the basic assumptions surrounding OCP density, density trading and future zoning.
The first assumption is that our OCP is our vision, as a community, of where we wish to go.
Separating issues from distractions is sometimes necessary, particularly when dealing with Bowen politics. This week I’m trying to sort out a few of them.
Also tagged Island Life, Snug Cove, Surplus Lands, waterThe committee steering the Official community Plan (OCP) update has put out a number of background papers.
Paper #1 asks why we’re doing an update instead of a full review. It’s kind of funny.
A Brief History of Bowen Island – In the spirit of brevity I will start in the 1970’s. At that time the local Highways Department foreman approved subdivisions and you could purchase your Gulf Island summer get-away lot at a booth at the PNE. Then the provincial NDP party replaced the Social Credit party and [...]
Also tagged Eco Alliance, Improvement Association, Island Life, Islands TrustThe committee that’s working on updating our Official Community Plan (OCP) asked all of the various groups on the island to submit ideas for a forum that they held a couple of weeks ago. More than twenty submissions have been posted on the bowenocpupdate website. Taken as a whole, they provide an excellent insight into [...]
Also tagged Municipal PoliticsAs we move along with the updating of our Official Community Plan (OCP) it is probably worthwhile to look back on how well the plan has served us to date and what we might to do to make it more usable in the future. The first thing that we have to acknowledge is that there [...]
Also tagged Housing, Municipal Politics, Snug CoveOur Official Community Plan (OCP) update process is officially off and running. Looking over the existing plan, I realize that the world has changed a lot in the last 15 years but I wonder how many of the old assumptions that framed so much of the very earliest community plans will be accepted again without [...]
Also tagged CO2 EmissionsMost communities fall into one of two camps. Either – we’re being overrun and need to enact policies that will curb undesirable development or – this town is dying, we need to attract some business. Bowen doesn’t really fit into either group. We’re considered in the wider world to be a suburb of metro Vancouver. [...]
Also taggedOur Official Community Plan (OCP) update process is about to start. So I’ve been chatting with people who were involved in the process the last time around in 1992. Apparently things started off very well.
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