Do you have 10 minutes for your town every 4 years? Do you have something you would like Town Council to know about the quality of life in Chestermere or about Town services? Do you want to provide input on what the priorities should be for long-term development of recreational facilities in the future? If so, now is the time to have your say. Join your neighbours in completing the 2012 Town Survey, which opens September 1st and will remain open the entire month of September.
The last time a survey was done on this kind of scale was back in 2008. At that time, in addition to the typical kinds of questions asked in municipal surveys, a critical planning question was asked, i.e. whether residents wanted Chestermere to be developed as a bedroom community of Calgary, or whether residents wanted Chestermere to be autonomous, with increasingly more ability to get your needs met in the town. There was strong support for future development as an autonomous community, and thus the Municipal Development Plan (MDP) was written, incorporating a lot of the feedback from residents. This is the plan guiding future development of the community. If you look around the Town, you will find many things that are a direct result of feedback residents gave the Town back in 2008, and the MDP will continue to guide future development of the community, right up until the time the town is fully developed, anticipated to be 27 years from now.
The major planning question incorporated into the 2012 Town Survey, is what kind of public facilities and amenities residents want to see in Chestermere’s future. In response to residents’ feedback in 2008, regarding the importance of recreation facilities, the Town has contracted a recreation facilities consultant, who is currently working with Town staff to develop a long-term plan for the development of public facilities and amenities. This consultant has extensive experience in recreational facilities development, having worked for the City of Calgary for almost 40 years, and having been involved in the development of a number of the state of the art recreation facilities in Calgary.
“The Town of Chestermere is having this survey in order for residents to be able to provide feedback to Council. We need to hear what you want to see as your priorities, what you want to see as your future, and we need to know about our levels of service that we’re providing to residents,” says Mayor Patricia Matthews.
The development of facilities and amenities is a long-term process, and planning needs to begin now so that when, for example, the population reaches +23,000 (the target population identified by consultants as necessary for Chestermere to be able to support the operations of an aquatics centre), we are ready to move forward.
“Right now we are using this survey to .. map out our future. We need to provide to our developers and our residents a map of what needs to occur and what needs to be addressed, that residents want to see in the Town of Chestermere. We want to be able to take the results of this survey and strategically map out a plan moving forward, not only for our recreational facilities but also any other needs that are identified by residents through this survey.”
This survey is not just about what residents desire at this point in time, it’s an exercise in looking forward to where residents see themselves in the future and the needs of the community at that point in time as well.
Now is the time…Have Your Say! The survey can be found on the Town’s new website, www.chestermere.ca/Survey2012. For those with a preference for paper, paper copies of the survey will be available at the Whitecappers and Town Hall, and can be deposited at the drop box at Town Hall.
