The City of Winkler is asking the community for its thoughts on what priorities it should set when it comes to recreation over the next two decades.
A community survey has gone up at playwinkler.ca inviting Winkler area residents to weigh in on what venues and programming they use most and what they’d like to see added or improved.
The responses will be used to help draft the new Parks and Recreation Master Plan, explained rec. programmer Meg Dias.
“The last one would have been the early 2000s, so we’re overdue,” she said. “This one will help us plan for the next 20 years.
“The community is growing at an unprecedented rate, which is great, but our infrastructure, our planning has to step up to meet that.”
Development of the plan, being overseen by consultants RC Strategies, is currently in phase two, which includes the survey, open houses next month, pop-up consultation events, youth engagement, and discussion sessions with area stakeholders and user groups. The point of this phase is to help ensure the plan is focusing on what matters most to the community.
The scope of the plan is broader than residents may realize, Dias noted.
“I think sometimes when people think about recreation they just think about our facilities, but we’d really like to encourage people to think of it as well as the green spaces and trails and pathways and active transportation,” she stressed. “We want to know what people are using, what they aren’t using, what there’s a lack of, what we could use more of. We think we have a good handle on it, but there’s always stuff that maybe we’re not seeing.”
The survey will remain up until July 10. It only takes about 10 minutes to complete and can be done anonymously. There’s is also an option to provide your name to be entered into a draw for a $125 play pass gift card that can be used at all City of Winkler recreation facilities.
Both Winkler residents and those living in the RM of Stanley or the City of Morden are invited to fill out the survey.
“We do know that we’re a regional hub,” Dias said, noting the survey does ask for a postal code so they can track, broadly, where responses are coming in from.
Over 100 people have already filled out the survey, though Dias is hopeful they’ll see many more share their thoughts so they can have the widest range of feedback possible.
“We know that some voices we automatically hear because they’re in our spaces all the time, she said. “But if they’re not, we want to hear from them too. How do we get them into our spaces? What are the barriers?
“We know the benefit to building community through recreational spaces. The question is how do we do that?” Dias added. “I can’t encourage people enough to have their voices be heard with this.”
Work on the master plan is expected to take place through the summer in the hopes of having a draft to present to council in fall.
