After months of consultation, long late night meetings and numerous open house discussions, the Jasper Community Sustainability Plan (JCSP) should be ready for public viewing next month.

Originally, it was hoped that the plan would be available for public discussion this week, but a tentative date of Oct 27 has been set for a public meeting.

According to Verne Balding, director of corporate and legislative services, the draft plan needed more revision than was first thought.

“We had hoped to get it done sooner than we have,” he said, “but there was more revision than planned.”

By the time the public gets a look at the future of Jasper, the steering committee will have spent much time deliberating and discussing what should be included.

“The internal working draft has been in hand since the end of July... the steering committee consolidated its comments this week and they went to the consulting team on Wednesday (Sept 9),” explained Balding.

“There was a whole series of decisions to be made – do you do this, or do you do that,” he said noting that there will be one more full plan review in the coming weeks.

Balding said there had been rigourous discussion over a number of issues, including housing, development processes, commercial allocation and much more.

On the table were questions such as, which parcels should be released, on what time frame, and whether they should be released to the community, the Municipality, or the Jasper Community Housing Corporation.

“The plan proposes to release them to the Jasper Community Housing Corporation,” he said noting that discussions have been extremely complex due to the variety of implications.

Despite the discussion and debate, Balding said all questions have been made collectively and consensus reached.

“My personal sense is that the planning partners are working positively and co-operatively together,” he said, “important community issues that have been on the table for some time may be resolved.”