City council meeting twice before summer break
By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on July 5, 2023.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com School’s out for summer and soon city council will be, as well.The council agenda, normally filled throughout much of the year with bi-monthly meetings and regular Standing Policy Committee meetings, is getting bare with July here.
Council will meet twice this month as usual – on the 11th and 25th – but only two SPCs are scheduled.
Cultural and Social SPC will meet Thursday while the Community Safety SPC meets on the 13th.
In August, all council meetings will be on hiatus. Equipment upgrades are scheduled to be made in council chambers throughout that month before council returns to business in September.
Mayor and council will all sit together again on Sept. 13 when they meet as Economic SPC. As council, they won’t meet collectively until Sept. 19. In addition to Economic, two other SPCs will meet in September – Cultural and Social on the 14th and Governance on the 21st.
On Thursday, the Cultural and Social SPC will hear an update from community planners Genesis Hevia Orio and Ross Gilgour on the land use bylaw renewal project.
According to a report being presented to the SPC, council in November of last year directed City administration to come back before the end of the third quarter of this year with land use bylaw amendments for shelter, supportive housing and other social issues that are related.
A land use bylaw update approved by council in the 2023-26 operating budget “envisages a comprehensive rewrite of the City’s land use bylaw over the next three years. Since then, a project team has been formed comprising staff from Planning & Design, as well as a wider project stakeholder group including staff from other City departments,” says the report.
The role of the land use bylaw is to ” define much of the built form and land uses of
Lethbridge. This has the potential to help foster a thriving local economy as well as a vibrant and welcoming community for all residents,” adds the report.
On Thursday, the SPC will hear from the planners about progress being made on the project including projected milestone dates.
The report says an engagement consultant will be planning and assisting with public engagement throughout different phases of the project with the first engagement to start this summer. Follow @albeebHerald on Twitter 4
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