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Municipal strategic plans making the rounds

Municipal governments on the Sunshine Coast are releasing their strategic plans to give residents an idea of what to expect this term.

Municipal governments on the Sunshine Coast are releasing their strategic plans to give residents an idea of what to expect this term.

At the Sunshine Coast Regional District's (SCRD) June 28 corporate and administrative services committee, directors voted to send the draft of their 2012-14 strategic plan to member municipalities.

Among the three-year wish lists were goals to further improve First Nations relationships, to reduce consumption of water by a third moving towards 2020 and to implement an effective annual budgeting process.

Director Gerry Tretick reported to Gibsons council July 3 that an SCRD budget review process had taken aim at streamlining and possibly reducing the number of rounds to two.

"The regional district budgeting is very time consuming," he said. "A lot of the budget process is going through a huge number of projects and some of them probably shouldn't be there."

The Town of Gibsons' strategic plan was broken down into four general objectives, including economic development, communications, planning and infrastructure and public service.

A number of advocacy projects were also listed as matters "which are important to council, but are not within council's direct authority."

These included pushing for the use of smaller buses in Lower Gibsons, the provision of an affordable commuter ferry service as well as the co-ordination of services like police, fire, health and education.

In Sechelt, the strategic plan was broken into time-sensitive categories ranging from "very short term goals [2012]" to the "very long term" goal of establishing the railroad between two waters.

While expanding the airport is considered a three-year goal for Sechelt, goals like the expansion of downtown parking, creating a new logo and tagline and rewriting affordable housing bylaws were among the 13 pegged for 2012.