St. Albert will be getting a new master plan meant to guide future councils on decisions that affect the social health and wellbeing of the community.
The social master plan, approved in the 2012 budget, will cost $50,000 to put together and implement. At its core is the recognition that municipalities can and should act on different factors that determine the social wellness of the community, addressing issues such as homelessness, seniors, youth and families, among others.
Family and Community Social Services director Scott Rodda conceived the plan, noting other municipalities in Alberta and in Canada have put together similar documents to help guide their respective councils.
“I’m hopeful and confident the document will have vision on how we will support our most vulnerable,” Rodda said.
Work on the plan is expected start in the new year and will involve consulting with affected groups that deal with residents’ social needs. Exactly which indicators will be used to gauge the social health of the community still needs to be determined and will be a part of the planning process.
“Part of the master plan is creating a matrix to determine the health and wellness of the community,” Rodda said. “The master plan has to clearly articulate the definitions we’re using, whether it’s health and wellness. Once that’s clear, we’ll have a set of indicators on how healthy or how well we’re doing.”
Establishing those indicators could be the biggest challenge for the steering committee. Different municipalities use different numbers of different indicators. Some, Rodda said, use as many as 100 and others use as few as 15 with different factors being given different weight. Communities that use them range from Strathcona County to Vancouver.
“We’ve seen what other communities are using.”
Mayor Nolan Crouse said the plan fits in perfectly with the ideal model of a sustainable community, which involves having master plans guiding government in economic matters, environmental issues and social factors.
“It begs the question, why wouldn’t you have a strong social master plan,” Crouse said. “So I see it as fundamental to the principles of a sustainable model.”
Crouse’s only concern is the “soft” nature of the subject matter and how some parts of the community might perceive it. Economics and the environment are easy to sink your teeth into given the numbers that drive them. Getting the community on board with a social master plan that lacks concrete, easily definable subject matter might be more difficult.
“People can relate to roads and potholes and trees, but people don’t relate to that side, the social fabric that some people don’t see,” Crouse said. “It has ideology written all over it is as well — what is the ideology we are striving to move?”
The ultimate goal, however, is to produce a detailed document that will stand for decades and can help councils of the future develop policy that affect the city’s social fabric.
“It really does need to be St. Albert-made. It needs to be specific to our community. There are some fundamental things that affect each community so we’re not unique in any way. I think some parts need to be and will probably be the same.”
