Fall OPSRRA Local Business Trade Fair
This Fall OPSRRA is holding a local trade fair for local OPSRRA business members at the JdF Hall. The intention is to showcase and support local businesses that service our area. It would be intended to gather some of our local businesses into one room where they can interact with the community and talk about their business. A call has gone out to business members of OPSRRA asking them to join us in the Fall. Stay tuned for more information and let’s make an effort to meet and learn about our local business and services people and support them.
OPSRRA Community Bulletin Board update
Six new, larger boards have been added to our stock. This includes a brand new location board at Otter Point Rd at Poirier Lake, and replacing boards at Young Lake Road, Tugwell near Slingsby, up Kemp Lake Road and another one at the popular Shirley Community Hall parking lot. We are grateful to have volunteers now helping us with upkeep on all three Kemp Lake boards through our new Adopt a Board project, two Tugwell boards and the Shirley Hall parking lots boards.
If you would like to be part of the project of removing outdated or too weathered posters and sometimes snipping back greenery which interferes with access to a notice board near you, please email info@opscca.ca When photos of the new board were posted on Facebook we were very impressed by how quickly and well the locations were identified by residents.
Proposed changes to the Official Community Plans of the JdF EA
A new topic of interest has come up during the month of July that may occupy the time and consideration of many residents in our OPSRRA area.
At the July Juan de Fuca Land Use Committee (LUC) a proposal to unify all current Official Community Plans (OCPs) into a single JdF OCP was debated for about two hours before it was passed by the LUC.
The plan is to eventually reduce our current seven OCPs into one OCP and seven Local Area Plans (LAPs) one for each of Port Renfrew, Shirley/Jordan River, Otter Point, East Sooke, Malahat, Rural Resource lands and Willis Point. The common elements of all the OCPs will be drawn together and the LAPs will be added separately to ensure that local values are noted and recognized.
It’s a reversal of the current OCP history. When the District of Sooke incorporated in 2000 the rest of the JdF EA was serviced by Local Area Plans. It took several years and several JdF Directors before it was agreed that an OCP process would begin. The OCP is intended to be an overarching outline the significant goals and interests of each area in the JdF and it is followed by the creation of bylaws reviewing and updating or replacing the zoning bylaws.
The adoption date for the most recent OCP’s are listed below.
| Community | OCP Bylaw No. | Date Adopted |
| East Sooke | 4000 | July 11, 2018 |
| Malahat | 3721 | March 13, 2013 |
| Otter Point | 3819 | October 8, 2014 |
| Port Renfrew | 3109 | August 11, 2004 |
| Rural Resource Lands | 3591 | March 3, 2010 |
| Shirley-Jordan River | 4001 | July 11, 2018 |
| Willis Point | 3027 | July 9, 2003 |
(CRD website)
- housing needs for 20 years;
- commercial, industrial, institutional, agricultural, recreational and public utilities land uses;
- sand and gravel deposits;
- hazardous or environmentally sensitive areas;
- road and utility systems;
- public facilities;
- affordable, special needs and rental housing;
- greenhouse gas emission reduction targets;
- provincial guidelines.
Development of an OCP is a community effort. An OCP reflects the community’s values for growth and development. Community members, local committees and commissions help develop OCPs. The Capital Regional District Board adopts an OCP as a bylaw.
In our area, Otter Point’s OCP took five years to emerge, followed by East Sooke and Shirley/Jordan River.
There are certainly some advantages to a single OCP for our entire JdF. Not the least of which is dealing with mandates from the provincial government (such as housing mandates) that could be handled by reference to a single OCP, instead of seven of them. A single Housing Needs Assessment for JdF instead of seven housing needs assessments.
This is the beginning of a multi-year process to replace local OCPs with LAPs and I hope that local community members will be chosen to sit on the OCP committee and LAP committees to ensure that unique features of each area are represented in the new Local Area Plans. We must also remember the Rural Resource Lands is also part of our JdF Electoral Area and should have an equal Local Area Plan as other areas will have
All of the existing OCPs are on line through the CRD web pages. The one I am reading now is from Shirley/Jordan River (2018) and it is years ahead of its time in its understanding of the consequences for water resources and conservation. If most of this important information and text is not incorporated into the new OCP for JdF EA then it should at the very least be in the Local Area Plan.
This conversation will continue, as I said, for many months and many meetings to come.
OPSRRA 