BANFF – The planning and development department is looking to extend the contract of one of its planners for another year to allow for critical long-range and strategic planning.
During its upcoming review of municipal services and budget later this year, council will consider the $70,000 to $80,000 request for a one-year extension to the in-house contracted position, currently held by development planner Emma Sanborn.
“Ms. Sanborn has been working hard to knock off initiatives like a series of public policy Jaegerbombs,” said Darren Enns, development services manager for the Town of Banff.
The position was initially approved during budget 2018 in order to help deal with a mounting backlog of policy development work at a time Banff’s development was also at a 20-year high.
Planning and development staff struggled to keep up with the record number of development and building permits, which led to delays in being able to do any critical long-range policy and regulatory planning.
Long-term work was needed for upcoming reviews of the community and park management plans, plus a long list of policy and regulatory work directed by council, including a bed and breakfast home review and cannabis legislation.
With the new position, outstanding issues such as apartment parking, required housing cash-in-lieu requirements, and ensuring required bedrooms provided by developers are appropriate to meet staff needs have been ticked off the list.
But it appears a large number of the 37 long-term planning initiatives will remain outstanding at the end of year, with more to be added with the upcoming review of the 2020 management plan for Banff National Park as well as other emergent policy needs.
Initiatives Sanborn is currently working on include enhanced public notification about developments; review and update of Banff’s design guidelines, a pageantry plan for Tunnel Mountain and an update of a recommended plant materials list, among others.
“There’s a series of initiatives that still needs to be addressed, which we believe are not going to move any faster,” said Enns.
Councillor Peter Poole said this request falls outside of the budget cycle, but in this case he sees merit in proceeding with some of the work.
“My normal reluctance to be allocating $70,000 to $80,000 right now is tempered by the need to get on with these things,” he said.
That said, Poole wants to see the planning department tackle some tough long-range and strategic planning issues, such as Banff’s residential population cap and pressure on the town’s housing by developments outside town boundaries.
“I’d like to see some of that being considered here to be bigger, thorny long-range planning problems,” he said.
“I’m not sure things like a Tunnel Mountain pageantry plan is really long-range planning.”
