Looking to the future

Kimberley is developing a comprehensive long-range plan to ensure the sustainability of the community

Happy Hans, a Kimberley icon, was instrumental in building awareness of the new Integrated Community Sustainability Plan. — Photo courtesy Troy Pollock

Kimberley is making headway on a community sustainability plan that complements existing plans laid out in the city's official community plan (OCP), economic development plan and a host of other green sustainability initiatives.

The project, named ImagineKimberley, is to create an integrated community sustainability plan (ICSP) that looks 15 to 20 years into the future, said Troy Pollock, manager of planning services for the City of Kimberley.

“It’s an overall, broad-reaching sustainability plan for the community, not just for the City as an organization, ” said Pollock. “It’s really to be a guiding document for the community in general—for the City as an operation as well as other stakeholders in the community.”

An advisory committee has led the process and the City recently held a public forum to get feedback from community members.

Lending a hand

Aiding the initiative has been the Whistler Centre for Sustainability (WCS), a non-profit organization that offers consulting services with other resort municipalities.

Kimberley’s status as a resort municipality gave it preferred consideration—along with other resort municipalities in the province—when the WCS was given funding from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

Kimberley opted in and has been working with WCS to identify sustainability initiatives and build on existing plans.

“There are four community priorities that have been set,” said Pollock, “and those are: ensuring economic viability, protecting the environment, enriching community life and enhancing the tourism experience.” 

From those pillars, the committee will develop visioning statements and collaborate with everyone in the community to determine how to reach the goals set.

“We’ve identified a desired feature and we’ve identified our current reality—where we are today,“ said Pollock, ”and we’ll be identifying a series of action items or steps that we would want to take and strive to move forward on.” 

Data and community input is currently being gathered for the plan, and a rough first draft should be completed near the end of March and into April.