The long awaited update to the Town of High River's Land Use Bylaw has received first reading from council.

Melissa Ayers with McElhenney Consultants brought the new by-law to council, pointing out they'd chopped it down from 41 land use districts to just six.

"Forty-one districts is a lot, how do you know what land use your parcel has and then if you want to change from one use to another with-in that district there's a lot of process involved," Ayers says. "You'd have to re-zone the property so that's a full public hearing that's required in the MGA (the Municipal Government Act), there's a lot of things that would have to change to change from one thing to another."

She says with one of the key principles being flexibility, simplifying the by-law was one way to achieve that.

The previous by-law set out rules for the number of spaces required for any project to receive a permit to go ahead. Those with restaurant seating needed even more.

Ayers says that requirement for a minimum number will be dropped in favour of a maximum number needed.

"There's always a concept in planning that parking dictates your form and you have to have your parking set before you can really a whole lot else with your property," Ayers says. "By removing those requirements there's so much more that can happen and you don't have to have a good chunk of your land base dedicated to surface parking."

She says research shows that we are substantially overbuilding parking, and that should be reduced automatically by 40 per cent.
 
A Public Hearing has been set for April 3, 2017  so council can get further feedback on the document before sending it back for more work or giving it second and third reading and adopting it.