On Tuesday, the community, culture and regulatory committee recommended the final version of the Oamaru, Weston and Kakanui spatial plan to the council for adoption on May 10.
Acting heritage, planning and regulatory group manager Roger Cook said the move marked the "first step in the sequence that will see the draft district plan moved forward".
"And that is a very significant piece of work for the council and for the team as well," Mr Cook said.
The spatial plan is a guiding document for the growth and development of Oamaru, Weston and Kakanui over the next 30 years.
It was developed by Barker & Associates, in partnership with the council, key stakeholders and runaka. Community engagement took place in October and November last year.
While there was general support from the community for the vision and principles of the plan, there was strong opposition to a proposal for alternative uses of council reserves and intensification on the South Hill.
At last week’s community, culture and regulatory committee meeting, members voted to remove the proposal to explore alternative uses for council reserves from the plan. The vote was split, with four councillors in favour and two against.
Some councillors expressed concern over the removal, believing information in the community engagement document had been misinterpreted as losing entire reserves to alternative uses, and Cr Jim Hopkins was worried about the perception of the council "politically withdrawing" from the issue.
"Given that the other submissions tell us that people want more housing choice, affordable housing, one of the few resources to which the council has access that may enable us to build community housing or facilitate affordable housing is our own land, and I don’t believe we should absolutely, categorically, unequivocally take reconsideration and possible use of parts of underdeveloped reserves off the table," Cr Hopkins said.
A lot of feedback the council received from the community was in response to what Cr Kelli Williams described as a "major misinformation campaign", and Mayor Gary Kircher acknowledged the council should have been clearer that it was only small and underused parts of reserves that could be developed, and any money made would go towards improving other reserves or adding to the reserves network.
"We didn’t do the job well enough in explaining ourselves, and I don’t think people really appreciate actually how much we actually value reserves," Mr Kircher said.
"I think every single one of us around this table appreciates what we do have, and don’t want to lose that network of reserves — we actually want to increase it."
Cr Melanie Tavendale, who chairs the committee, said the spatial plan was not binding and it would change as the community evolved. Heritage and planning manager David Campbell confirmed the council could revisit items taken out of the spatial plan in other ways.
"The discussion around the reserves just shows that if there is any step away from the direction that spatial plan is going ... it needs to be mindful, it needs to be well explained and it needs ... information underpinning it," Cr Tavendale said.
Other changes made to the draft document included reducing the extent of rural residential land between Weston and Oamaru, updating the population projections using more recent information, including more specific information about developing a potential youth centre, and identifying character areas where there may be a need for more controls to ensure any intensification was appropriate to the character of the area.
Zoning in Kakanui will also be reviewed, and councillors agreed more work was needed to identify future growth areas north and south of the township.
