After taking inventory of all that the community has to offer, professional planner John Ingram speaks with the public at an open house where an update to Oliver’s Official Community Plan (OCP) was discussed on May 25. The updated OCP will be partially shaped by the 50 people who shared feedback at the community centre. Photo by Dan Walton
The Town of Oliver is putting out an all-points bulletin in a bid to solicit ideas for its Official Community Plan (OCP) review.
Official Community Plans require thorough consultation with the public to amass a collective vision of the values, priorities and possibilities that exist within a community.
“It’s the big picture issues the OCP tries to address,” said planner Graham Farstad with the Arlington Group.
Ongoing engagement with the public is currently underway to update Oliver’s OCP, which was last revised in 2004.
The public was invited to an informal coffee meeting on May 24, as well as an open house at the Oliver Community Centre on May 25, where more than 50 people dropped in to share ideas about the community to gauge the foundation for the updated OCP.
Jim and Midge Wyse, who moved to Oliver in the late 1990s, both had a few ideas to share with the Town at the open house meeting.
“We all want to see a better downtown but that may be wishful thinking,” Jim said. “Unless you have an economy you’re not going to have business, so that’s a problem, but I think the municipality has the right zoning in place.”
“The economy is a problem so I don’t really know what effect our ideas are going to have,” said Midge.
Although they aren’t fully optimistic about the OCP enticing more business in town, Jim believes the process is valuable, and his ideas weren’t limited to local issues.
He feels that solar panel incentives for local property owners would provide the community with economic and environmental benefits, and said Oliver is well situated to play a leading role in the fight against climate change.
“There’s no real push here towards solar yet we’re one of the sunniest places in the country,” he said. “With new housing and any new industry, there should be some requirements for solar installations. It’s something a municipality can do.”
Even if a municipal council doesn’t apply its OCP proactively, Jim said the document can assist the public in vetoing decisions that contradict the plan. Last year, he recalled the Town’s OCP being cited to overturn a rezoning application.
“Council had tried to zone something that wasn’t in the OCP,” he said. “We held them to task and they eventually reversed it.”
Midge isn’t counting on subtle suggestions to boost the local economy, instead, she believes the establishment of a national park would offer Oliver substantial economic stimulation.
“A national park would do a lot for this town. We would really start to grow,” she said. “The value in being internationally recognized as a national park maybe isn’t understood by some people. It’s a huge reason for people to visit a region; some tourists only visit places with national parks.”
The outgoing OCP, adopted 12 years ago, estimated that Oliver’s population would experience healthy growth and exceed a population of 5,000 by 2015. The most recent census proved those estimates wrong, and instead indicated a slight drop in population since 2011.
The Town is still collecting input through an online survey at fluidsurveys.com/s/oliverOCP.
Hard copies of the survey can be filled out at the Town Hall, the library and the Oliver Recreation Centre office.
By Dan Walton
