By paNOW

Prince Albert hires new director of planning and development

Jul 9, 2013 | 12:30 AM

After many months of searching, the City of Prince Albert has found its new director of planning and development services.

During Monday’s city council meeting, Rick Stuckenberg was introduced as the department’s new director.

The position was created when the city merged the positions of the planning director with that of the director of economic planning last year. The former planning director, Yves Richard left for another position, and the former economic planning director, Joan Corneil was let go.

City manager Robert Cotterill hired a headhunter, originally pegged to cost $23,000, to find the new director. The open position was advertised twice, but that yielded no success.

The headhunter found Stuckenberg, who, up until the city hired him, was working in Alberta. He had worked in the Edmonton market and in a consulting role with AECOM, focusing on development planning.

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Cotterill said he was interested the most in Stuckenberg’s experience in both the private and municipal sectors. The city manager saw him as someone who understands the growth of cities and the kinds of decisions council has to make to make sure it plans its growth well.

The city made an offer to him about three weeks ago.

“A lot of the colleagues that I’ve talked to, have expressed some really interesting excitement about the new growth opportunities in Saskatchewan, and I like to be involved in growth and communities that are growing,” Stuckenberg said.

He said he sees “great bones” in the community, when it comes to its structure, and with the depth and breadth of services in Prince Albert.

“And with the historic elements in the community of the neighbourhoods, the trees, the streetscapes, and also the historic elements of downtown, to me, speaks to the need for really good community design standards that would help to facilitate growth, in-field development and re-development opportunities that would come forward.”

Stuckenberg also noted that the demographic of Prince Albert is “quite young,” and the city needs to respond by helping to create “new employment lands for growing the economy and providing opportunities for good meaningful work and employment for [a] long-term career for people in the community and to help service the growth to the Northern communities.”

He sees the need to balance the kinds of growth – residential, commercial, and industrial – in a way that’s socially and economically sustainable, while protecting the local environment.

As he and his wife look to make their move to Prince Albert, he looks forward to working with council to help enable the city’s growth. They currently live on a farm outside of Edmonton, and after a “considerable search” for a new community to settle down in, the Stuckenbergs chose Prince Albert.

His wife said they are impressed with the city, its green spaces and trails. But she looks forward to re-establishing her connections with the gymnastics community, as she’s a national-level judge.

The first order of business will be to seek council’s guidance on what its current priorities are.

“My sense, in the community, just from introductory visits that I’ve had here is, looking at the long-term growth opportunities, what kind of growth pattern would be appropriate for the community in terms of physically. Does it grow to the west, the south, the east? What kind of population target will we be looking at, so that we can plan our infrastructure through the infrastructure planning process? We could then also start to take a look at what the long-term capital requirements would be. So, we have that big picture perspective.”

Within his first 90 days in office, Stuckenberg expects to do a thorough review of all existing plans in the community.

“As we head into the budget process with council in September, we’ll be looking at what the budget priorities are to help set the new planning framework as we move forward together.”

Cotterill said there are a numbers of challenges he put in front of Stuckenberg.

“I met with him this morning, and I said ‘one, I think we want to do a better job of working with people that come into the department.’ So, I want a more customer-service focus to land development. We have … a couple of public processes we have to go through in the fall. One is to talk about the flood zone, so he will be taking on that challenge. And I need him to work closely with engineering to make sure that future growth decisions are good decisions.”

The city has been growing so fast that sometimes the expectations on the planning and development department are tough, he said.

“Our construction season is basically four to five months and in that time period not everybody knows what they want to do the day the season starts, and then when they put an application in front of us, they want an immediate turnaround. And some things we can’t turn around that fast. But I want to see if we can do it better.”

tjames@panow.com

On Twitter: @thiajames