The City of Dauphin’s vision and goals for the future, along with the policies that will help make them a reality, were laid out in a draft development plan presented to the public for their feedback, last week.

About 30 residents attended an open house at City Hall, Oct. 6, to review the plan and fill out a survey.

Developed in the co-operation with Urban Systems, mayor Christian Laughland said the plan represents the long-term vision for the community and is meant to guide future decision-making, ensuring development takes place efficiently and sustainably.

“It’s not a document that’s set in stone. It’s a document that is a working document, a constantly working document. It’s for councils to look at in their terms and kind of adjust to it or readjust it,” Laughland said. “Councils obviously make their strategic plans, too, so they kind of try to align the two. But basically it’s a 20-year plan, a supporting document with council’s strategic plan.”

The plan is divided into three main sections. The “Our Story” outlines Dauphin as it is today and what was heard throughout the plan process.

“Our Vision” outlines where the City would like to be in the future and six key goals to make that happen. Those main goals are Community and Innovation; Climate Leadership and Resilience; Housing and Neighbourhoods; Local Economy and Tourism; Health and Wellbeing; and Truth and Reconciliation.

Finally, “Our City Structure” outlines the physical elements of the City, how they work together, and provides guidance for how to adapt and change to support the vision.

“So there’s six main goals with a number of points on each of them of what to focus on within those goals. There is lots of examples in the document,” Laughland said. “It’s a very readable document. I get a lot of documents being on city council and there are quite a few that I’m not too excited to get into and read. But this one, bluntly, I’m pretty excited to dive deep into it.”

The plan is available online on the City’s website at www.dauphin.ca and is accompanied by a survey which will be available until Oct. 21, seeking opinions on the document.

Laughland added there is an opportunity for the plan to change based on insight in the surveys.

Work on the plan began earlier this year as required by the province under provisions of The Planning Act and the Provincial Planning Regulation.

Utilizing funding provided by the province, Urban Systems was contracted to help develop the document.

Background research began in the spring and was followed by stakeholder and community consultations this past summer, which led to the development of the draft plan presented last week.

“Urban systems does this with a number of communities and they said that we’re way ahead of where another community would normally be. This usually takes two to three years, but because staff has worked so well on this, we’re ahead of the game,” Laughland said. “But there’s an election, so that’s going to slow things down a tiny bit. The finalized plan, it’s not probably not going to be until next year.”

Once finalized, the plan will be implemented following ministerial approval.