This spring/summer we are visiting local schools to find out what our County’s young people like about living here and how we can make it even better.

At the schools, we are teaching students about municipal government and community planning. Students get to act like planners and come up with some guiding principles and a long-term concept for a community or part of a community.

For this assignment, the students worked in groups of three to five people. They were asked to come up with a name for their fictional community that represented what they love about their own community or the values they want to promote with their design.

The students were then asked to choose a Reeve who would present the groups ideas.

Next, students came up with ten goals for their fictional community. The goals are meant to guide the design of their community by highlighting what they want to achieve for their residents. After coming up with their ten goals, the students were asked to design their fictional communities. A worksheet was provided that had a map of a fictional landscape containing typical features that you see throughout the County: a highway, a railway, a forested area, a lake, and a stream.

The students were asked to consider the size of the area, its diversity (e.g. rural agricultural areas to urban hamlets) and to consider the needs of all residents across these areas.

This student work will be used along with input from other consultation activities such as the Community Workshops as part of the County of Grande Prairie’s Municipal Development Plan update. The students’ goals will be used as a source for ideas for our own goals and/or goal topics for the review. The design ideas that the students create will also provide ideas for updated or new MDP policies. Even some of the student drawings may also be used to illustrate concepts in the updated plan.

To see a sample of the students' work, click on Student Planning Workshop Samples under Documents.

The initial round of workshops for the Plan Your County were held during the week of April 24 with events in Bezanson, Valhalla, and La Glace. Thank you to everyone who was able to come out!

What we heard

We had many good conversations and received a lot of feedback. Some of the initial themes that we have heard are:

• The value of preserving agricultural land
• The importance of food security
• Wanting an opportunity to purchase locally produced food

Other comments we heard at the sessions were about improving sewage capacity, the development of housing, and the need for new residential lots while keeping the community small.

On April 27, we also had our first student event at Teepee Creek School, which was a fun interactive experience. Students were asked to be Planners for a day and they worked on creating their own communities. 40 students participated creating eight community designs, which were displayed at the public meeting that evening.

Upcoming opportunities

The Plan Your County team will be in Bezanson, Hythe, Valhalla, and Whispering Ridge for a series of drop in Community Workshops to talk about the review of the Municipal Development Plan – the County’s high-level vision to guide growth. Here’s the schedule:

• May 11, 5-7 PM: Bezanson at the Bezanson School
• May 18, 5-7 PM: Hythe at the at Hythe Regional School
• May 25, 5-7 PM: Valhalla at the Valhalla Community School
• June 8, 5 – 6 PM: Clairmont at the Whispering Ridge Community School

Please note, additional events may be added as required.

What do we do with this feedback?

Our team will take all of what we’ve heard at these events and what we continue to hear and apply them to the development of the Hamlet Resiliency Strategy and the review of the Municipal Development Plan. Understanding what residents value is an important part of knowing how and where we should grow and develop as a County.

Don’t forget the survey!

The first Hamlet Resiliency Strategy survey will run until May 14. Recommendations from the strategy will be used in the Municipal Development Plan review to ensure that the needs of our hamlets are reflected in the broader vision for the County. Residents are invited to complete a short survey on what you love and would like to see within the strategy’s nine hamlets. The survey should take no more than 10 minutes to complete.

• Take the County of Grande Prairie Hamlet Resiliency Strategy | Phase 1 Survey