Village of Burns Lake parks and rec master plan in early stages

Village of Burns Lake (VBL) Director of Recreation Services Lewis Jones met with council on Feb. 1 to engage in preliminary discussions on a parks and recreation master plan.

The meeting was essentially to get input from council on a direction for the development of a plan. Jones stated in the meeting that VBL recreation infrastructure has historically been very grassroots and reactive in approach but has not had long-term strategic direction.

With aging infrastructure, he told council that it’s advisable to develop a 10year master plan document to guide the delivery of recreation and parks service that takes into account several key factors. These include current and historical levels of service, trends in the industry, local demographics and barriers to recreation and parks in the community.

Lewis, along with VBL staff, reached out to other small B.C. municipalities that have a population under 10,000 about their master plans in order to gauge a potential cost. From responses received, costs ranged from $30,000-$100,000, with an average cost of just over $70,000.

In terms of a direction for the plan, council provided Jones with several key points to focus on. Council wants the scope of the plan to focus on maintaining and improving facilities, services and programs, with a parks and trail component. In addition, they would also like to see more of an arts and culture aspect incorporated, and to show more of that side of the community.

Council also directed Jones and his staff to pursue partnerships with other local government such as Lake Babine Nation, Burns Lake Band and the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako. The reason of this is because VBL parks and recreation services and facilities are also used by those outside of the municipal boundary.

A provisional budget was also set for the master plan, though for now council decided to keep it as ranging between $30,000-$100,000, the same range set from the response from other municipalities.

This provisional amount will be brought back to 2022 VBL budget deliberations, beginning on Feb. 22, for further discussions.

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