RGS enters final phase: Economy, rural character top priorities
As the Peace River Regional District’s first-ever Regional Growth Strategy enters its final phase, General Manager of Development Services, Ashley Murphey expressed her appreciation for the hard work that people from throughout the regional district put into the project.
“I cannot overstate enough how much we really appreciate the time and effort the staff from each of your respective municipalities, and the staff here at the Regional District put into this project. It would not have been possible without them,” Murphey said as she presented the RGS update to the PRRD board on February 20.
“I’m very excited to be here, we’re coming up to the finish line of this project.”
The project kicked off with seeking public input, beginning in September 2023, which continued through to August 2024, using a wide variety of methods to get public feedback, from online surveys to open houses to community pop-ups and two dedicated engagement sessions.
After a year of intensive community engagement, Murphey says the draft RGS is ready for the final phase, which is to present the draft document to the PRRD board and member municipalities.
The document gives an overview of the population and regional economy, sets out the vision, goal areas, and goals and policies of the RGS.
The vision originally came from the PRRD’s vision statement, but through the engagement process has been revised multiple times and refined to finish up as:
The Peace River Regional District is comprised of distinct and unique urban and rural communities. The region is shaped by its roots in agriculture and its culture of independence, resilience and compassion for others.
With a strong economy, residents enjoy a high quality of life with a broad array of effective and responsive regional services.
Moving forward, we will continue to build strong collaborative relationships with all residents and First Nations in our region. And we will engage and involve all residents and communities as we move towards a bright, prosperous and healthy future.
The goal areas were also refined through public engagement, however, at each stage of the process, residents’ top five priorities stayed the same.
“Consistently throughout engagement, agriculture, regional economy, community building, living well, infrastructure were really ranked high priorities for our residents throughout the region,” Murphey said.
In the goals and policies section, nine goal areas were listed in order of priority with supporting goal statements. Each goal is supported by two to five related policy objectives, which have between two and eight policies each.
Under Community Building, which was the number one goal area, residents want to encourage and support growth in the urban centres, recognizing Fort St. John and Dawson Creek as the main urban centres with their established services and identified growth capacity.
“Another thing that came up throughout engagement a lot was protecting and preserving the rural character throughout the regional district.”
While the population of the region is expected to grow over the next twenty years, Murphey said that even with a high growth projection of 1.1 percent, “we anticipate that there is capacity within most of the member municipalities to absorb all of that growth, without needing additional lands designated for residential development.”
Which is good news for residents’ desire to retain the rural character of the region.
“Regional economy was a consistent, top ranked action area throughout all rounds of public engagement.”
As the second priority goal, residents support a diversified regional economy, and the development of a Regional Economic Development Strategy was suggested. This would be developed through collaboration with member municipalities, industry groups, stakeholders and any First Nations who may be interested in participating.
Since the PRRD is a vast rural area, it’s not surprising that agriculture and food were among the top three priorities for residents. In this category, concern was expressed for the preservation of agricultural land, to protect it from development.
“Some of our municipal partners throughout this process had identified struggles in designating lands for future non-agricultural uses within municipal boundaries. As we noted before, based on our review and analysis, there is substantial room within urban municipalities to concentrate the majority of population growth, where those services are already existing,” Murphey said.
Next Steps:
Murphey said, “This document is not intended to be a document that sits on a shelf. This is intended to provide us guidance and direction, so that we can action what’s important and has been identified throughout this process as important to the residents.”
The regional district has come up with 11 priority actions, some of which are already in the works, explained Murphey.
Monitoring of the RGS’s implementation is required, so Murphey says, “every year we’ll be doing an annual report to the board on our progress.”
There are a set of indicators that will allow the PRRD to track and monitor its progress.
The next step is presenting the draft RGS to member municipalities. The first municipality to have a presentation from Murphey is the District of Taylor at their meeting on February 24.