FAQs
- Housing
- Daily Needs
- Transportation
- Infrastructure.
What is an OCP?
An Official Community Plan (OCP) is a high-level community planning document that outlines the long-term vision for land use management and community development. The OCP is a bylaw adopted by City Council providing a statement of objectives and policies to guide community planning and land use management decisions within designated areas of the community.
The Local Government Act is Provincial legislation that governs local government land use planning. This Act sets out the parameters and process for the adoption of an OCP. Based on the requirements in the Act, an OCP must include maps and statements regarding residential housing, commercial and industrial land uses, agriculture, recreation, transportation, sewer and water systems, lands subject to hazardous or environmentally sensitive to development and reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.
Why are we updating the OCP now?
Best practice is to update an OCP approximately every 5 to 10 years. The City of Terrace completed its last OCP update in 2018. View the Official Community Plan Bylaw No. 2142-2018 here. The City had scheduled an OCP update to be completed in 2024 but recent Provincial legislation changes will extend the OCP update process into 2025. The deadline for municipalities to complete their OCP update is December 31, 2025.
The new Provincial legislation also now requires local governments to make changes to their zoning bylaw regulations to support small-scale, multi-unit housing on residential lots previously zoned only for single detached and semi-detached (Duplex) housing. For more information on the Housing Statutes Amendment Act, click here.
In support of the OCP update, the City of Terrace is conducting a Complete Communities Assessment. This grant-funded project will be completed in advance of and will help inform the OCP. It will review the current state of the community by mapping the community’s completeness as viewed through 4 lenses: Housing, Daily Needs, Transportation and Infrastructure. The project will also model potential future growth scenarios for further exploration through the OCP update process. Learn more about the Complete Communities Assessment.
What kind of changes will be made to the updated OCP?
That depends on you! The development of an OCP has a lot to do with public input. That's why we want to hear from the public about how they want Terrace to develop.
Two pressing issues that are the focus on some of the updates include housing and climate emergencies.
New provincial legislation (Housing Statutes Amendment Act) also requires local governments to make changes to zoning bylaw regulations to support small-scale, multi-unit housing on residential lots previously zoned only for single detached and semi-detached (Duplex) housing.
As a precursor to the OCP update, the City of Terrace also conducted a Complete Communities Assessment. The Assessment reviewed the state of the community by mapping the community’s completeness as viewed through four lenses:
The project modelled potential future growth scenarios that we will be exploring through the OCP update process.