Older Adult Rural Support Hubs - Constance Bay & Fitzroy Harbour

Get Involved…Ottawa’s New Official Plan

The City has launched into the first Public Consultation phase in its work to produce the new Official Plan. Achieving good “Public Consultation” is always a challenge and the city has been working to improve this to engage residents in the production of its new Official Plan. You are encouraged to participate in this future-shaping activity.

Visit the special site:  https://engage.ottawa.ca/the-new-official-plan . Please note that the deadline for participation in the current set of polls on the 5 Big Moves has been extended to 30 September 2019. 

Background staff work has been underway for almost two years and the preliminary work for this new official plan was undertaken as part of Ottawa Next: Beyond 2036: Identifying the challenges of Unknown Futures . This step has identified five fundamental areas where it is intended to focus. These are referred to as “The 5 Big Moves.”  The report is at: https://engage.ottawa.ca/8204/documents/18759.

These Big Moves are:

• GROWTH MANAGEMENT: “..Achieve, by the end of its planning period, more growth by intensification than by greenfield development. This growth will provide a variety of affordable housing options for residents…”
• SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY: “..By 2046, the majority of trips in the City of Ottawa will be made by sustainable transportation…”
• COMMUNITY AND URBAN DESIGN: “..Improve our sophistication in urban and community design, and put this knowledge to the service of good urbanism at all scales, from the largest to the very small…”
• RESILIENCY: “..Embed public health, environmental, climate and energy resiliency into the framework of our planning policies…”
• ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: “..Embed economic development into the framework of our planning policies…”

There are a series of discussion papers that support discussion in the different focus areas. Of particular interest to rural residents is the “Rural Ottawa Discussion Paper” {https://documents.ottawa.ca/sites/documents/files/op_discuss_paper_rural_en.pdf } that deals with such topics as:

• Challenges Facing Rural Ottawa
• Demographic Shift
• Rural Housing
• Rural Economy
• Agriculture and Agri-Tourism
• Rural Jobs and Places to Work
• Village Mainstreets
• Climate Change
• Emerging Technology and Rural Connectivity
• Economic Growth
• Food Security
• Rural Character

A browse through this Discussion Paper should arouse your interest to contribute toward how we could be doing things better. A good next step is to select one of the 5 Big Moves from: https://engage.ottawa.ca/the-new-official-plan?tool=survey_tool#tool_tab and participate in the online public consultation.  If you would like to make further constructive comments, you are invited to email them to: newop@ottawa.ca. You can also submit them to Councillor El-Chantity.

If that worked well for you…consider contributing to some of the other Big Moves discussions!

Councillor El-Chantiry will be holding a Ward Consultation on the New Official Plan on 23 September. See the attached notice and plan to attend this event.

You should aim to complete your involvement in this phase of Public Consultation by end-September 2019. Your second major opportunity for participation will start in February 2020 when a First Draft of the detailed guidelines for the production of the New Official Plan will be available for public review.

Ken Holmes

Official Plan Community Ambassadors Working Group

Ken.Get.Involved@gmail.com