The Chief Administrative Officer for Steinbach says there was a good response at an open house last week regarding the city's revised Zoning Bylaw and Official Community Plan. Troy Warkentin says between 60 and 70 people attended the event to get information and provide feedback. And he adds those discussions could lead to some further adjustments.

"We did have some requested policy changes as far as the land use categories that were originally drafted. We will now take that back and discuss further with our consultants and consider them before we present the Official Community Plan and Zoning Bylaw for further review and approval."

He gives an example of one of the changes that was requested.

"The quarter section to the city's southeast (at Hanover Road and Hirschfeld Road) that was recently included in the annexation, a number of residents expressed some concern over the ability to use their land freely, as they had been used to. And it would be a subtle change. The city is looking at changing that category from what's called Development Reserve 1 to a Development Reserve 2 category, which essentially reduces the limitations or restrictions even further."

Warkentin says city staff also fielded a lot of questions at the open house about city services and taxes. He explains what will happen next with the two documents.

"Right now, we are going to review the draft document and make any final changes that we feel are relevant to our discussions to date and the information that we have received. We will now be submitting the draft document to provincial planning officials for their commentary and preliminary review. We are hoping to move forward with First Reading towards the end of May and also hope to hold a public hearing with respect to these documents toward the end of June."