Councillors in Bluewater will be taking some time to go over the municipality's Recreation Master Plan.
Maggie Off, facilities manager for the municipality, presented the plan to council last week. It's a 300 page document that goes over several different recommendations for different areas of recreation and leisure, such as programs and events, facilities, parks and open spaces, water access points, trails and service deliveries. Off says the Master Plan covers the next fifteen years.
“(It covers) what we currently have and what we can change and evolve and improve over time and we'll be re-visiting the plan every five years just to update it where necessary to reflect changes in municipal capacity, trends, community needs and interests, so it will definitely evolve over time,” said Off.
Off added, they did ask the consultants to attach costs to all of the recommendations so they can be realistic about what they were considering. She said over fifteen years the impact is significant. But she also noted things will change over fifteen years, so it's difficult to say now what the plan will cost that time period.
“This document's really a very high level strategic document and because recommendations can change, every single time we want to implement one of the recommendations it's going to require further investigation, discussion, consultation and council approval before anything can be implemented,” she said.
Off said creating the Master Plan has been a great exercise in connecting with the community and get input from them and all of the user groups.