A new long term community development plan is one step closer to becoming a reality for citizens living in the Municipality of Boissevain-Morton.

Council held a public hearing on new by-law that would replace the existing by-law and guide the municipality into the future. The development plan sets out a vision for future growth. The municipality says the visions is advanced through physical, social, environmental and economic goals and policies that will foster change in the municipality.

“We’ve been working at this since 2021 I believe is when we started. We hired a company out of Winnipeg and they’ve helped guide us through this process,” said Head of Council Judy Swanson.

“Monday night we did the second reading and now it goes back into the government to be approved. Once we get it back we can go ahead with third and final reading. That sets up our community plan moving forward. We had one before with the town with one and the rural municipality with one. Now because we are amalgamated, we need one that speaks to both parts of our municipality.”

Only three members of the public attended the hearing and Swanson says that tells council a majority of the municipality's citizen support the plan.

“We’ve had three public meetings and the plan has been out there for a couple of years and there’s no surprises in it and I felt comfortable giving it second reading.”

“This plan tells us where we go with industrial growth, where we go with housing and even in the rural how many farm sites can be on a quarter so there’s a real variety of things. It’s about the vision and that’s passed onto future councils. Another council won’t have to go through this but if they want to a revision, they can do that, but they wouldn’t have to do the whole by-law over again,” said Swanson.

Once the community development plan is approved council members will turn their attention to updating the municipality’s zoning by-laws.