The City of Estevan is changing one of its major policy documents to reflect today's realities.A bylaw to adopt an official community plan for Estevan was introduced at Monday's regular meeting of council. City manager Jim Puffalt said the plan, which was developed by land services manager Rob Denys, is intended to guide the growth and development of the city. "The purpose is to direct our future activities and provide some policy statements for council to consider," said Puffalt. "It also looks at our land within the city's parameters and boundaries to see what it should be, what is the future uses of this property."There was a community plan in place and there has been new legislation from the province so it was a good chance to streamline some of our activities and bring in new features. It's a great opportunity to take a step forward, plan for our future and make sure that what we are doing is in an orderly, reasonable fashion that looks after the best interests of the city, developers and the community as a whole."The dense, 84 page document, covers many of the facets that affect day to day life in Estevan including city form and structure, residential land use planning, zoning in residential neighborhoods, recreational space, commercial land use planning, city expansion, downtown development and revitalization and many others.Puffalt added the community plan also looks at the city's current accommodation shortage, recommending changes such as the allowance of "granny flats" which is an additional dwelling unit on a property that would normally contain just one dwelling."(Allowing granny flats) is not a huge change but accommodation wise, I think it is a good change that city council is considering to try and find different ways to get more accommodations," said Puffalt."I think what our old plan didn't take into account was this kind of growth in the city and it was kind of ending upon itself. Since the old zoning bylaws and community plan was done, that whole east end development area has happened, land has been annexed into the city and accommodations have become a huge issue from 20 years ago. It just tries to take into account a lot of the new conditions we are facing."
