County moving forward with Barons IDP

By Nikki Jamieson
Sunny South News

Lethbridge County in moving forward with the Intermunicipal Development Plan with Barons.

During their regular Feb. 20 meeting, Lethbridge county council received an update on the Lethbridge County/Village of Barons Intermunicipal Development Plan. Presenting council with a draft version of the IDP created by the Oldman River Regional Services Commission, Hilary Janzen, senior planner for the county, said that the intermunicipal committee has reviewed it and agreed that the draft is adequate for the county to move forward with public consultation on the plan.

“As per all the IDPs that we’ve done in the last year or so, we want to ensure that county council as a whole has had an opportunity to review that draft so we can get a resolution to move forward to do that consultation, and finalize that particular intermunicipal plan,” said Janzen. “It is a framework which will address land-use in the fringe areas just around a mile around the Village of Barons, and will include policies on referral and dispute resolution, land-use issues — so agriculture, resource extraction industry, energy developments, transportation road networks.”

Janzen noted there was only a small number of properties in the affected area — 41 properties consisting of 14 land owners — and the committee felt that, instead of hosting an open house on the IDP, it would be better if the county mails the draft plan to the landowners in the county and advertise it.

“The committee felt that this would be a better use of time, in terms of moving this particular document forward. The landowners would be given time to review the draft plan and provide  comments prior to first reading of the bylaw.”

Administration anticipated that first reading of the bylaw would take place during council’s regular March 19 meeting.Council unanimously passed a motion to administration to move forward with the proposed County/Barons Intermunicipal Development Plan and public consultation.

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