The Village of Telkwa was recently awarded a grant towards what has been called an ambitious sustainability planning project. The planning project combines an Integrated Sustainability Plan (ICSP), an Official Community Plan (OCP), a zoning bylaw and an affordable housing needs assessment and action plan.
The grant, announced late last month, comes from the Green Municipal Fund, run by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the federal Ministry of Natural Resources, and has a dollar value of $66,725. The Fund is directed towards the sustainable community development needs of municipal governments.
Telkwa is too small to have a municipal planner, and the formal process of an OCP doesn’t leave much room for community input, so including the ICSP into the process will allow the Village to include more public consultation in the planning process, so homegrown solutions can be included in the OCP, ICSP and zoning bylaws.
Mayor Carmen Graf said the combination of the multiple plans will help the Village to more easily implement them once they are complete.