St. Albert has its community vision.
Council approved the community vision and pillars of sustainability framework on Monday, as well as beginning the process to see the framework enshrined in policy.
“When I read it as a whole, I feel St. Albert in it,” said Kalen Pilkington, the city’s community sustainability co-ordinator, in an interview with the Gazette.
The vision sets out St. Albert as a “vibrant, innovative and thriving city” that “cherishes its unique identity and small town values.
“The future of our community lies in the dreams and aspirations of its people,” reads the vision.
The vision has five “pillars of sustainability” to support it – social, economic, built environment (meaning infrastructure), natural environment and culture.
The city’s community sustainability committee co-chair Cam Munro said many of the pillars have overlap with each other. For instance, he said, the city needs to have a good economy so they can afford to sustain other parts of the city, like good infrastructure or a thriving cultural scene.
Embedded within each pillar are a number of bullets. The social pillar, for example, calls for a “diverse range of housing and transportation options,” while the economic pillar highlights a thriving downtown as a core item.
Munro said the hope is that this vision, created after about 7,000 consultations with the residents of St. Albert, who in turn provided about 15,000 ideas, will help guide the community for the next 50 years.
“In 50 years we want to make sure what we have is better than what we have today,” Munro said, though he did add what St. Albert has today is pretty good.
That’s why the committee recommended to council that the document be enshrined in policy but also worked into the city’s various master plans and the municipal development plan as they come up for renewal.
The committee started its work in 2014. The consultation, said to be the largest in St. Albert history, included students on bikes conducting interviews, a mail-out, automated kiosks, online surveys and more.
A company was hired to crunch the numbers so the committee could get a handle on all the data.
While the committee is officially done its work, Munro said they hope to continue the work by developing a time capsule, a book and hosting a celebration.
The project was paid for by the federal gas tax fund grant. Pilkington said so far $187,000 has been spent out of the $276,500 earmarked for the process.
Council did approve the plan and other recommendations, though not without questioning why the vision and pillars should get their own policy.
“A vision’s where you want to go, policy’s how you get there,” said Coun. Cam MacKay. He agreed it should be in the municipal development plan, which is the city’s highest level of planning document, and called the vision a fantastic one.
Coun. Wes Brodhead was co-chair of the committee and said he’s “immensely proud” of the work, especially the level of public consultation.
