The City of Prince George will be seeking a grant to conduct a Complete Communities Assessment for the city.
On Monday night, city council approved applying for a $150,000 grant from the Union of B.C. Municipalities to do the work.
“Complete communities as defined by the Ministry of Housing’s Complete Communities Guide are communities, or areas within a community, which provide a diversity of housing to meet identified community needs and accommodate people at all stages of life and provide a wider range of employment opportunities, amenities, and services within a 15-20 minute walk,” city director of planning and development Deanna Wasnik wrote in her report to council.
A Complete Community Assessment is intended to support city’s long-term planning and development
“Administration is proposing to utilize the Complete Community Assessment process to collect and analyze data that can be used to support and enrich the Official Community Plan (OCP) Update Project,” Wasnik wrote in her report. “This critical data will support future policies that can help the City of Prince George to develop into a complete community with housing diversity, transportation equity, sustainable infrastructure investment, and access to daily needs to support creating a more complete community.”
The B.C. Ministry of Housing has provided $10 million to the Union of B.C. Municipalities to provide grants to municipal governments of up to $150,000 to conduct the assessments.
If the grant application is successful, public consultation will need to be a key part of the assessment process, Mayor Simon Yu said.
“This is a good news story,” Coun. Tim Bennett said. “The opportunity to undertake this work in increasingly important.”
