Councillors in Gibsons have taken the first steps to set up a new planning and development standing committee.
The committee would take over the role of the advisory planning commission (APC), look at other planning and land-use issues and make recommendations to council.
Council voted Dec. 18 to have staff prepare terms of reference for the committee for consideration in early 2019, and inform the APC that its work will be wound up at the end of December.
The APC has included community members since it was first created in 2012, and Mayor Bill Beamish promised in his inaugural address that the planning and development committee will also have town residents sitting on it.
Although the terms of reference aren’t yet finalized, Beamish said Coun. Aleria Ladwig, who sat on the APC before being elected to council, will chair the planning and development committee.
“They gave good advice to council and we appreciate that,” Beamish said of the soon to be disbanded APC, adding that with several members indicating they didn’t want to seek reappointment it made sense to move ahead with setting up the planning committee as soon as possible.
The other new committee Beamish promised to create is a natural environment and sustainability committee. He said the motion to form that committee will be coming forward early in the new year.
Beamish also left the door open to striking at least two other committees in 2019. One will be a policing committee, to look at how the Town should prepare for the need to pay for its own policing once its population goes beyond 5,000.
“It’s likely we’ll be looking at a cannabis committee as well. We’re waiting for a staff recommendation to come forward on that,” Beamish said.
