The Roberts Creek Official Community Plan (OCP) was written way back in 1994. Since that time attitudes and ideas about land use have changed and we are learning to be more efficient and less wanton in our occupation of our piece of earth. So the time has come to bring the Roberts Creek OCP up to date. The process began in 2008 with the updating of all the technical information we have about Roberts Creek from demographics to geotechnical data. The next step was to invite volunteers from the community to form a committee to produce a new plan. Originally a committee of 12 was considered to be a workable number but when 18 intrepid souls stepped forward, the SCRD Board decided to modify the terms of reference and accept everyone who wanted to take part. A few people did drop out along the way and in the end about 11 or 12 die hards stuck it out for the following 3 years putting in thousands of volunteer hours of discussion, analysis, research and debate.
After they had examined the technical background report, the committee wanted to find out what the rest of the community thought needed to be considered. A visioning meeting called the Creek Cafe was held in the Roberts Creek Hall in October 2008. About 80 people gave up their Saturday (and as I recall it wasn't even raining!) to ponder and discuss 3 questions in a World Cafe format:
What is special or precious to you about Roberts Creek? What are the elements of a healthy, vibrant, livable community? Imagine the ideal Roberts Creek in 15 to 20 years and describe it. The comments made by those 80 people were combined into themes and formed the basis for the Vision Statement and the 17 goals that are the back bone of the Plan. What continues to astound me is how constant we Creekers are! I was involved in the development of the old Official Settlement Plan back in 1980 and the OCP which followed it in 1994. I have seen that the values expressed in both those iterations of our community's vision are remarkably consistent with the comments we heard at that Creek Cafe in 2008...I love the closeness to nature, silence, and the darkness of night; I love the rural aspect - wild, elemental and untouched; I love how Roberts Creek fits the human size; I love the sense of community, acceptance, and inclusion. A healthy, vibrant, livable community has housing for all and places for people to gather, promotes environmentally friendly practices and sustainable agriculture, ensures we have fresh air, water, healthy ecosystems, access to nature, parks and trails. The Roberts Creek of the future has more environmentally friendly transportation solutions, local control of crown lands, sustainable energy sources, parks over parking, a variety of ages and culture, locally produced food and maintains and preserves the rural flavor.
Over the last 3 years the OCP Committee has taken that vision and those 17 goals and crafted a suite of policies and objectives that put the goals and vision into action. There are some key changes that are proposed. The village core is the site of commercial development in Roberts Creek and it is very small. The committee has suggested a modest expansion of the commercial area to enable more services to be provided within the community and reduce the number of car trips people need to make. Complimenting that is a new increased density zone in a circle around the village core to focus development closer to services. Clustering and innovative housing design are encouraged. Also within the centre of the community, some expansion of home based occupation and bed and breakfast businesses are made possible. The new plan also places much more emphasis on local food production with a much expanded section on agriculture. Community gardens, farmers' markets and protection of agricultural land are all part of this section. There is quite a lot of attention paid to the importance of parks and trails in the new plan with more detail about the SCRD parks inventory and recommendations for new park amenities. Affordable housing and reductions of GHG emissions and energy consumption are new considerations that were not present in previous plans.
In October, 2011 the SCRD board gave the draft plan first reading. This allows the plan to be sent out to agencies for comment but more importantly, to the public for their perspective. On April 1 a public information meeting at the Roberts Creek Hall will launch the plan and the public comment period. A PDF of the OCP Draft Document is available online on the SCRD website at :
www.scrd.ca/files/File/Community/Planning/RC%20OCP%20review/RCOCP%20First%20Read%20Oct%2027%202011.pdf and hard copies can be viewed at the Roberts Creek library. Send comments to David.Rafael@scrd.ca
