The city of Swift Current has adopted a new blueprint for the future of its recreation, parks & culture.

During tonight's city council meeting the final design for the 130-page master plan was rolled out to council by Vancouver's Urban Systems Ltd. after three years of development and it passed unanimously.

Jim Jones, Swift Current's general manager of community services, said he's pleased with the plan that he referred to as a guiding document for city council to make future decisions based on.

"It's not going to be the decisions council has to make," he said. "A lot of times when you're applying for grants, that's part of the process what they call shovel ready. Shovel ready is not just when it hits the ground, it's before it hits the ground and a lot of times those reports are asked for prior to you receiving any consideration for grant applications."

The $93,000 plan ended up taking longer than expected due to the COVID-19 pandemic but throughout various stages of public engagement, Urban Systems Ltd. had 693 residents from the city provide feedback to help shape the design. About 50-75 of those responses came in the final phase of developing the plan.

"We've also documented all of those answers and we provided to each member of council administration, each one of those," he said. "A lot of the questions, I felt it was very important that those go to council because some of those questions were ones that were being asked during your election campaigns. Some have been asked to our administration... I said new council is going to have to wade through that and determine which ones that they need to take heed to and which ones they're not."

The 10-year plan includes a trio of options for one of the biggest hot button topics in Swift Current, an integrated leisure facility. Two options were focused around a new facility (one around $200 million and one around $75 million), with the third idea based around refurbishing the current facilities.

"Our aquatic centre we have right now, we're definitely going to have to put some money into the building... Because it's tired, it needs some work," Swift Current Mayor Al Bridal said. "Then we have to take some serious thought into the future and we are going to go into a strategic planning session here this year with council administration and the community and look what we want for the future. So for right now, I know what I'd like to see. But what I want to see may not be what the rest of the community wants, so I'll sit back and wait. Our strategic plan will be looking at our recreational facilities like the aquatic centre, like a field house. And see where our community wants to go and how we're going to pay for it and where we're going to put it."

The plan also acknowledges based on population, Swift Current's pathway system is actually behind similar-sized city's but the quality of the roughly 19 kilometres of it is good. The report also touched on the potential for the system to more than double its size to about 50 kilometres.

"I did find it very surprising that we had a less extensive pathway system than some places so I'm glad you addressed that and highlighted the quality of it," Swift Current City Councillor Tom Christiansen said.

One thing a lot of the city's residents and Urban Systems Ltd. were pleased with was the number of parks within Swift Current and the land they cover.

"I very much enjoyed this plan, it confirms a lot of great things that we already knew about our city having 19 per cent coverage of parkland within our city borders is excellent," Swift Current City Councillor Ryan Switzer said. "And most residents are within a short walk to some green space."

A few more areas in the plan that received good grades from the public are its outdoor and cultural facilities minus two things that could be upgraded.

"In terms of outdoor recreation facilities, the only one that is lower on satisfaction is the outdoor pool," Urban Systems Ltd. Partner Catherine Berris said. "The quality of it really isn't up to modern-day standards.

"The one gap that was identified (in cultural facilities) is flexible performing arts spaces. People tend to call these black box theatre spaces. You have the three theatres that are the private ones, but they aren't very available for groups to come and practice."

While the majority of councillors liked the master plan unveiled, Swift Current City Councillor Leanne Tuntland-Wiebe worried that it may end up being wasted money if not used properly and promptly.

"Apparently all city's use these plans to guide them in decisions made in the future, the problem is that these plans get old and have to be done again," she said. "When an actual developer comes in with their own plans those concepts we paid for probably aren't going to be used."

She then went on to list several plans the city has paid for (Oman School, St. Joseph's, Ashley Park School, Springs Valley) but haven't moved forward with much in terms of following or developing them.

"Then there's the downtown main street master plan concept which I call the utopic city plan," she said. "The main street program itself Marty is good, with the grants for store owners to redo their outside but it's the utopic plan I really had a problem with. Wrapped up in this was the downtown core logo and marketing material which was done by a firm from the southern states that could have been done locally and the money kept at home."

The city employee tasked with making sure this document isn't put on a shelf at city hall and forgotten about like Tuntland-Wiebe worries could become a reality, is Jim Jones.

"That is exactly my responsibility," Jones said. "Our community services teams meet bi-weekly and discusses issues that are coming up with everything all across our whole spectrum of what we do. I set the agendas for those meetings so we will be bringing that up. There's lots of situations that come up where reports come to council, where you'll start to see stuff like as indicated in our adopted recreation, parks, and culture masterplan and say it was this. You'll be starting to see that happen through some of the reports that are coming to council here over the next year."

The full document can be seen here.