With the North Shore Official Community Plan expected to get the green light at Kamloops council later this month, discussions regarding crime are still top of mind for many people.

North Shore BIA Executive Director Jeremy Heighton says addressing community safety on the North Shore played a large role in the back end of the OCP.

“Community safety is the benchmark upon which everything else in the community is built. You can’t have people going to your restaurants if they don’t feel safe walking down the street, you can’t have people with nice things in their front yard if they don’t feel there is safety.”

With that, Heighton explains the plan itself dictates what is built, where it’s built, and how it’s built, by creating a vision for the community moving forward.

“What we are trying to do is engineer neighborhoods in a way so community safety can be managed. For example, crime prevention through environmental design practices, through what kind of corridors, what kind of access ways exist, all those kinds of things become part of the underlying structure of the plan.”

Although, he suggests the execution of the plan is up to the private industry.

“The plan itself though is only about 10 per cent municipal, and about 90 per cent developer-driven,” Heighton said.

“So, the city has a responsibility to provide the infrastructure, and core connections to other plans such as recreation, transit, etcetera. But at the end of the day, the execution of the plan, the building of the buildings, the vision for the neighborhoods, bringing in arts and culture, that is up to the private industry to do.”

Heighton concedes the North Shore OCP has been in the works for roughly 4.5 years, and he is hopeful council will give it the green light to move forward.

Back in September and October of 2020 City staff met with students at NorKam Senior Secondary to identify photos they felt best represent the North Shore, those photo journals can be found here.