Residents interested in learning more about the proposed changes to Airdrie’s Land Use Bylaw (LUB) will have their chance, Oct. 29, when the City hosts an Open House at City Hall.
Airdrie’s LUB, originally drafted in 2005, is due for a complete overhaul, according to William Czaban, planner with the City of Airdrie’s Planning Department.
“It’s a living document. It lives and adapts to changes and how neighbourhoods develop, what people want to see and what Council wants to see out of the community,” he said. “As those changes happen incrementally, sometimes over many years – some things can shift out of alignment or you end up getting strange inconsistencies or things that aren’t quite interpreted in the same way.
“We’re really looking at this as an opportunity to hit the reset button a little bit and get everything back to an area where we’re regulating the things that need regulation and we’re getting away from things that are more benign or don’t cause many issues. We’re trying to make the bylaw easier to use and easier to understand and more consistent across the city so that the rules for one area can apply to another, unless there’s a real reason for different rules.”
Municipalities such as Airdrie are required to have a LUB under the provincial Municipal Government Act (MGA).
“A LUB is effectively the laws or regulations that the City lays out that control how land can develop throughout the city,” Czaban said. “Typically, it will split the city into districts where different land uses or development rights are granted through the bylaw.
“The bylaw tells you what you can put on your land. It tells you what your neighbour can put on their land, so it’s an important document for people because it controls how our neighbourhoods build out.”
Holding an open house where people can get information about the new LUB and ask questions is something Czaban said the City decided to do for a pair of reasons.
“We’re just into the early stages of finalizing content for a new LUB so we want the opportunity to bring that out to the public so they have the opportunity to see everything that we’ve been working on and get kind of a first glance at where some of our regulations might be landing,” he said.
“We also want to ensure that we give people the opportunity and make people aware that there’s every opportunity for them both to have a look at the regulations, digest it, have a talk with us about it and to also give us any feedback, any concerns that they might have, anything that they’re not quite sure about, any questions that they might have about the bylaw itself or the process.”
The open house gets underway at 6 p.m. in Council Chambers at Airdrie City Hall and runs to 9 p.m. According to Czaban, planning staff will give a short presentation on the proposed LUB, once at 6:15 p.m. and again at 7:45 p.m. In between, residents will have a chance to ask questions and look at the information on display.
