Two of the city's highly anticipated master plans are now in the hands of council for review and will be debated within the next two months with an eye towards approval.
Council received a quick review at its Monday night meeting of both the draft cultural and recreation master plans. Both documents, developed by RC Strategies, lay out how the city will consider the development of both recreational and cultural life in the city.
"These are not action plans that say tomorrow we'll do x, y and z," said acting city manager Chris Jardine. "They establish a vision and a process for moving forward towards that vision. If and when you adopt this, it does not mean you've given carte blanche to spend millions of dollars."
Both master plans were fundamentally approved in December 2009. Besides researching the current state of both recreation and culture in the city, both working groups have met repeatedly with affected groups to be able to develop a workable document that is intended to guide council's future decisions in both areas.
Both plans have also endured two rounds of public consultation, with open houses held last year as well as an online survey through which residents could make comments.
Though Mayor Nolan Crouse mentioned to administration that links to the plan should continue to be shared through social media and other avenues, Jardine pointed out that both plans have been revised based on public feedback and the plans are now in council's hands.
"We have not made significant changes to that process. Short of anybody who wants to lobby directly to council, [they are] in council's hands."
Culture
Cultural services director Kelly Jerrott gave council a brief overview of the cultural plan, emphasizing the six key priorities the plan envisions — celebrate cultural assets, increase and deepen cultural participation, promote cultural tourism, establish sustainable funding, ensure infrastructural strength and optimize service delivery.
"This is intended as a long-term guiding document to further cultivate the arts and culture in our community," said Jerrott. "It's intended to guide development over the next 10 to 15 years."
The plan recommends an array of ideas ranging from less than $50,000 to greater than $100,000 within two to 15 years. Some of the strategies include grant and training programs, developing a St. Albert culture website, hosting dance mobs, integrating the Founder's Walk into the school curriculum and pulling all of the existing cultural offerings into an arts university, a package of "experiences" for visitors.
Jerrott said her department was looking at ways to see how this plan could align with the city's other master plans.
"One of the items that very clearly came out as one of the recommendations was to work with tourism and to try to create synergies and collaborate with other departments."
Recreation
Recreation services director Monique St. Louis described the recreation master plan as a "look at the future of recreation for St. Albertans."
The key focus of the working committee, she said, was defining the value of recreation, which encompassed everything from an increased personal quality of life and health to reducing health care costs by helping eliminate obesity and diabetes.
"The vision, as presented, is simply an active and engaged community. Our mission is creating a quality of life and building the community through recreation," St. Louis said.
Priorities range from bolstering community development to investing new recreation infrastructure, such as enhancing parks and open space planning. Other ideas include after-school programming, adding more volunteer support and embarking on a citywide sponsorship campaign.
The recreation master plan will be debated Feb. 21, with the cultural master plan coming back to council March 5. Copies of the draft are available at www.stalbert.ca.
