The District of Squamish needs to have a good policy in place to manage growth, Mayor Elliott said while voting against the Cheema Lands application.
“We need to have good policy in place to manage growth and we have more work to do there,” she said.
Mayor Elliott, along with Councillors Chris Pettingill, Jenna Stoner, Armand Hurford, and Doug Race, voted against giving first reading to an application by Cheema Lands to amend the OCP.
“I was part of the last council and had the pleasure of working with our community on an updated OCP. We heard from the community that managing growth was important for environmental, social, and economic reasons,” Elliott said.
Mayor Elliott said she doesn’t look at the OCP policies individually, but as policies that work together collectively.
She said she doesn’t feel the Cheema Lands application met the essence of OCP policies, especially those related to focusing growth within the current footprint and meeting policy precursors.
Councillor Jenna Stoner said she is ‘generally supportive’ of the project moving forward if and when the OCP policies have been met.
Substantial OCP polices have not been achieved, she said, citing Wildfire DPA and the Steep Slope policies that have yet to be addressed.
“There are a number of OCP outstanding policies we need to do on our end before we start to address these really big developments,” Stoner said.
Councillor Chris Pettingill also said OCP requirements have not been met, and he doesn’t see a rationale for proceeding on the Cheema Lands application.
Councillor Doug Race said he did not make any promise of approving the development.
“The timing of this application is off. Once the OCP precursors are complete, this development can come back,” he said.
Councillor Armand Hurford said he wanted to get a comprehensive review of the application when he voted in favour at a Committee of the Whole in December 2020.
“I was open to the review process to see if this project could be supported. Now I have enough information to not support this,” he said.
In supporting the application, Councillor Eric Andersen said he always believed Lots 509 and 510 should not be excluded from growth management boundaries.
“This is a sound place for residential and I am concerned about the congestion and competition we have for development in the valley bottom,” he said.
Coun. Johh French also supported the application, although he said he had already spoken about his reasons for supporting this in a previous meeting.
District of Squamish staff had also recommended that council vote against granting first reading to Cheema Lands.
District staff said that while the population threshold had been met, the application didn’t meet policy stipulations laid out in the OCP.
The ‘policy threshold’ to start comprehensive review of this application has not been met, staff said in a council report.
“Given the outstanding policy work at this time, staff recommends defeat of the first reading,” the staff report says.
In a Facebook ad campaign, Cheema Lands had accused the Mayor Elliott of conflict of interest, which she has decried as intimidate tactics.
