Raymond town council reviews two Bylaws

By Kenyon Stronski
Westwind Weekly News

A public hearing was held at Raymond council’s May 3 meeting to discuss Bylaw 1116-22 which concerns rezoning the land along the 100 south. First reading was given to this back on Apr. 5.
Administration received an application to redesignate the land from Urban Reserve to General Residential, and according to the agenda it is noted, “an application to rezone the area from Urban Reserve to General Residential is made on the premise that lots will be fronted onto 100 south and otherwise must meet all requirements as outlined in the General Residential land use district as outline in the Raymond Land Use Bylaw No. 987-11.”
Raymond’s Chief Administrative Officer Kurtis Pratt presented the information at the public hearing.
“About a month ago was when the first reading of this rezone application came before council. We approved the first reading and then for this last month we’ve been advertising the public hearing. Adjacent property owners in the vicinity were also given a notice of the rezone application to attend tonight or submit written responses. To date I haven’t received any written responses.”
“Just in summary of the actual application, the area we’re looking at rezoning is along the 100 south and 200 east.” Continued Pratt. “It will be going from Urban Reserve to General Residential and part of what you have to consider is we have already talked about redesignation criteria to go over that is written in the Land Use Bylaw. It has to deal with the compatibility of the use of general residential in the area. It will be 3 lots that are currently Urban Reserve and this rezone application will take it to General Residential. The application is consistent with the Municipal Development Plan.”
After the discussion, the public hearing was adjourned with no additional input from the public.
After a short discussion and council agreeing that the rezone application was compliant with the Land Use Bylaw and there would be no issue, second and third readings of the Bylaw were passed.
Bylaw 1117-22 deals with the fairly same issue, where an applicant wishes to rezone spaces from Urban Reserve to General Residential along with a rezone to Parks and Open Space.
Pratt also took the stand for this one, “We have another rezoning application but this one is right at the first stage which is first reading of the bylaw. The applicant has consulted with administration and we’ve processed the application to rezone phase four and phase five as a combined phase. In the Area Structure Plan you identify your phases so you’re able to do more than one phase at a time so if the market says ‘hey we wanna have additional lots you can do phase four, five, six and seven if you wish’ so having phase four and five done together is no problem. What they’re looking at doing is changing it from Urban Reserve and that’s land set aside for future development potential and so there is an area structure plan called the Stonegate Meadows area structure plan and it was advised and approved in July of 2021 and so this rezone application is consistent with that area structure plan and it shows how this entire area is to be developed and so this rezone application is to rezone a portion of phase four and five from Urban Reserve to General Residential. There is also a portion that will be also rezoned to parks and open space.”
It was also added that there are foundations for walking trails and drainage corridors between the residential lots which will also be identified as Parks and Open Space.
The bylaw passed first reading unanimously.

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