Okotoks Uses Ethelo to Bring New Life to Land-Use Planning

Land-use planning is rarely a topic that excites the public. Yet it’s crucial for local governments to understand residents’ preferences to shape communities in ways that serve everyone for years to come.

The Town of Okotoks, Alberta, found a way to breathe new life into its land-use planning process by using Ethelo. This innovative platform helped the town collect valuable qualitative and quantitative data while giving residents an accessible and engaging way to share their input on the types of homes and businesses they wanted in their community.

The Challenge

The Town of Okotoks’ Land Use Bylaw, which regulates the use and development of all land and buildings in the town, had not been updated since the 1990s. It didn’t account for new types of businesses, such as retail cannabis stores, and other modern development trends. Yet many residents were unaware of its existence or its significance in shaping their neighborhoods.

Okotoks officials needed an innovative way to engage residents on this often-complex subject, ensuring public input would guide the bylaw rewrite. The goal was to make land-use planning accessible, meaningful, and relevant to the community.

Why Ethelo?

Okotoks chose Ethelo because it offered a user-friendly platform for public consultation, capable of gathering meaningful insights while making the process transparent and interactive. The town had previously used Ethelo for consultations on its Environmental Master Plan and Municipal Development Plan, with positive results. Officials appreciated how Ethelo combined data collection and engagement to ensure broad participation.

“We are always looking for new ways to engage our residents,” said Andrea Charlebois, Communications Specialist for Okotoks. “Ethelo gave us a tool to capture residents’ vision for what they want their community to be.”

The Process

The consultation was live on Ethelo from January 20 to February 14, 2019. During this time, residents and business owners were asked to provide feedback on specific aspects of land use in two areas: the Downtown Commercial and South Business Industrial Districts. Key topics included:

1. Proposed Land-Use Changes:

   • Allowing new uses like amusement arcades and retail cannabis stores.

   • Reclassifying some uses from “Permitted” to “Discretionary” (or vice versa) to better reflect community needs.

2. Parking Requirements:

   • Introducing more flexible parking requirements tailored to specific business types.

3. Setbacks:

   • Reducing the minimum setback for business frontage in certain areas, allowing buildings to align closer to sidewalks and create a more pedestrian-friendly environment.

Residents could view real-time support for each option, interact with others in comment sections, and provide additional feedback on land-use issues. This interactive format not only encouraged participation but also ensured residents had the background information needed to make informed decisions.

Background and Approach

The town’s previous success with Ethelo gave officials confidence that the platform could make land-use planning accessible and engaging. It also ensured that public input would be collected efficiently, avoiding the logistical challenges of large in-person events.

Charlebois emphasized the importance of this approach:
“We really heard a wide variety of things from the community about how people want their neighborhoods to work. We were surprised by some of the things people weren’t aware of. When you work in this area, you know these details, but they can be hard for the general public to understand.”

Results and Insights

A total of 286 people participated in the online consultation, with Ethelo’s algorithm analyzing the results to identify areas of consensus. Additionally, 183 residents shared input at in-person events and workshops, ensuring a robust dataset.

Key findings included:

• Preferred Amenities:

  • 71% of participants wanted parks or green spaces within a 10-minute walk of their homes.

  • 51% preferred coffee shops, while 44% prioritized restaurants.

• Business Preferences:

  • Market-style retail businesses garnered the highest support, with 80% of respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing they were desirable.

Ethelo’s ability to combine qualitative and quantitative data provided Okotoks with a clear and actionable roadmap. Officials could see not just what residents supported, but the reasoning behind their preferences, giving them deeper insight into community priorities.

Charlebois highlighted the platform’s effectiveness:
“Ethelo is a helpful tool as it easily captures both qualitative and quantitative data. We were able to show residents what the future could be and find out what that means to them.”

Lessons Learned

While the consultation was successful, the team identified areas for improvement. For example, they noted that reducing the number of questions and screens could improve the completion rate for future consultations. Despite these minor challenges, the overall process provided clear, valuable insights for the town’s ongoing planning efforts.

Next Steps

The results of the consultation will inform Okotoks’ ongoing research and contribute to drafting a revised Land Use Bylaw. The town plans to share a draft policy direction with the community in fall 2020, incorporating the feedback gathered during this process.

By using Ethelo, Okotoks transformed a traditionally dry topic into an engaging and informative experience for residents. The platform not only facilitated meaningful participation but also provided town officials with the insights needed to create a bylaw that reflects the community’s vision for the future.

When Erika Botond took on the Senior Manager of Communications role at the Town of Whitby in late 2019, she looked at their budget engagement process and immediately thought they could do better. 

“We were relying on people to come to a council meeting, read a 500-page document and understand all the ins and outs,” she explains. “Not a lot of people have the time to do that or are that civically engaged. 

“There would be on average six people at a meeting. Trying to get people engaged in a budget isn’t the sexiest of topics at the best of times.”

Then times changed with the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic, and engaging online with their community became a necessity for the Town. 

“We needed to find an online way to educate people about something that’s pretty complex but impacts everyone every day,” Botond explains. “How could we create a platform where we can share information, post videos and take them through the process of what goes into making a budget.”   

Education and inclusion

The Whitby team was already aware of Ethelo’s Citizen Budget and saw the platform as the perfect solution for levelling up their 2020 budget engagement. 

Botond says Ethelo’s decision algorithm is a great way to educate residents by showing them where their views fit within the broader community and how their choices about services impacted the budget. 

“People may say taxes are high at the beginning of the process,” she says. “But as they go through the Citizen Budget tool, it provides more awareness of the process and impacts of decisions they were making. The result was we saw users come away with a better understanding of where their taxes are going.” 

She adds that Citizen Budget also lets the Town give people a lot of information in an easy-to-digest format that can be accessed anytime.

“It’s on their terms,” she notes. “When they have time to do it, they can go into the platform and understand what they want to get out of it. So it’s a way to reach many people with information at a time that meets their needs. Convenience is really the biggest piece of it.”

Speaking of convenience, Botond adds that the Ethelo team was critical in helping the Whitby team understand all the data they got and report back to leadership about it. 

“The experience reporting back was excellent,” she says. “We had a number of interactions where we got the presentation to our senior leadership team to a really good place. I found the process collaborative and iterative, and the Ethelo team was open to understanding the story we wanted to tell. 

It’s all about building trust

The ultimate impact from Ethelo for the Town of Whitby is the ability to deliver services to residents better because they understand what people want, Botond explains.

“We’re in the business of service delivery, and we want to deliver services that make a difference and impact people’s lives on a day-to-day basis,” she says. “So it’s essential to understand what’s important from the resident’s perspective.” 

“And we can report back to the community that this is what we heard and this is how we’re using the information they took the time to share with us. I think this demonstrates openness and transparency. People want to have a say in the municipal decision-making process, and the Citizen Budget platform enabled that.” 

Botond adds that internal business partners were hesitant to try something new when Communications first decided to try Citizen Budget. But after seeing the results, they’ve realized the value this platform can deliver and how providing an open and transparent process for our residents helps us build trust in the process. 

“Now, they’re converted,” she notes. “I think that’s a testament to our collaboration. And they’re really excited to do it again this year. They’re looking to include the Ethelo data in their target report, so before the budget is even completed, they can share with council what they’ve heard from the community and why they’ve made these decisions.” 

Botond says she’s also excited to use Citizen Budget again this year and plans to run a longer campaign supported by even more promotion. 

Meaningfully engaging online

When the Salt Spring Island local governments declared a climate emergency in 2019, residents quickly realized they needed to update their 2011 Climate Action Plan (CAP) if they hoped to reach their 2030 greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets. 

The CAP Steering Committee used the United Nations recommendation to set a goal of reducing GHG emissions by 50 percent by 2030. They worked with a number of different island organizations including local non-profit Transition Salt Spring, and local government officials, to identify mitigation and adaptation strategies. Then they collaborated with Ethelo and eDemocracy to plan a public engagement to hear community perspectives that would inform the plan. 

When the COVID 19 pandemic hit in early 2020 and the face-to-face component of the community consultation the CAP Steering Committee had planned was no longer possible, and they initially considered postponing their engagement. 

But with the Ethelo platform, they found a way to meaningfully engage a diverse group of residents in the discussions online, educate them about the trade-offs involved and create consensus around the most broadly supported climate solutions. 

Inclusivity and education 

The team helped to create a customized engagement organized into six major sections: Transportation, Homes and Buildings, Food and Agriculture, Forests, Waste Reduction and Tourism/Commercial.

It was important to the committee that residents had the information and insight they needed to contribute meaningfully to the discussion. That was made possible by including a significant amount of educational content in a format that was convenient and easy for participants to digest. 

Along the way, participants could also learn that it was easier to reduce GHGs in some sections than others. So they could understand the difficulty of each option and trade-offs required when making final planning decisions. 

“The online public engagement was very effective. The eDemocracy team made the setup and execution of the process easy and efficient,” says Darryl Martin, Chair of the Climate Action Plan Steering Committee. “We learned a lot about the priorities of our particular community and gained further understanding of our citizenry through the 233 pages of comments the survey garnered.

The platform also directly included participants in the process by letting them create their own plan for the Island. As people voted on different degrees of GHG reductions throughout the process, the platform displayed a real-time total of how much they were reducing and how difficult it was to achieve their plan. Their goal was to eliminate at least 35,000 tons of GHGs and keep the difficulty rating under five. 

With 936 participants, millions of possibilities emerged from those plans—far more than any spreadsheet could handle. But Ethelo’s algorithm let the committee quickly sort through the feedback and learn which options got the most support from the community. 

The team worked closely with the committee throughout the process, helping with everything from setup to moderation, technical support and data reporting. 

A New Approach To Urban Planning

The Smart Cities Challenge is a new way the Government of Canada is helping communities become healthier, more inclusive and livable. By challenging communities to use data and connected technologies to address their most pressing problems, the Smart Cities Challenge encourages innovation through competition.

The competition awarded one top prize of up to $50 million, two prizes of up to $10 million each, and one prize of up to $5 million. All cities could apply to the $50 million category, but the other two were restricted by city size.

Of the 130 proposals received, 46 cities applied for $5 million, 71 applied for $10 million, and 13 applied for $50 million. Each group was evaluated by a panel of government officials and other professionals with experience in infrastructure and public projects.

Each proposal needed to be evaluated quickly, but thoroughly, with a goal of selecting 20 to advance to the next round of competition. Ethelo provided the framework necessary to make this happen in an innovative way — much like the ideas being evaluated in the Smart Cities Challenge.

Process

Measuring Innovation, Fostering Collaboration

Following a brief initial consultation, Ethelo and the Smart Cities Canada team worked to set up an evaluation platform for 13 jury members based on 17 criteria, including the potential for economic growth and commitment to a healthy environment.

Kathleen Bouchard, a senior analyst on the Smart Cities Challenge, said the team did not know how many proposals they would receive and wanted a tool that could handle 20 just as easily as it could handle 200. The team also wanted a tool that was flexible enough to accommodate all 17 criteria. They found that flexibility in Ethelo.

Using Ethelo, jury members viewed each proposal in their assigned category and made comments on how well it adhered to each of the criteria. Rather than working individually, Ethelo allowed reviewers to see each other’s comments and provided the opportunity for group interaction.

The Smart Cities Canada team monitored progress throughout the evaluation period and communicated with evaluators if their scores and comments appeared to be out of line with the others.

“We were able to quickly calibrate who judged low and who judged high,” Bouchard said. “If we noticed a discrepancy, we could call [the specific judge] back about rating scale. It was definitely a time saver on our side.

Every year the Squamish Nation develops a budget to align resource allocation with upcoming strategic priorities. From programs to events, to capital projects and staffing costs, the budget outlines all resources the Nation requires to provide programs and services to its members while investing in their future. 

As part of their 2021 budgeting process, the Nation wanted to get feedback from its members on initiatives identified as priorities in the annual budget. They wanted to hear from as many members as possible, including those living on and off-reserve, Elders, youth and advisory committees. 

The Nation chose Ethelo’s Citizen Budget platform for the online component of its budget engagement because of its unique abilities to educate and include citizens in the budgeting process.

Bridging the divide

As Denis Murphy, Director of Finance for the Squamish Nation explains, the administration of the Nation serves the needs of its members, so having visibility into member priorities is critical to ensuring leaders are making the best financial decisions. 

Murphy says Citizen Budget’s unique ability to let members adjust real-world budget amounts and make trade-offs based on their priorities helps them learn about the complexity of budget decisions. 

“I think it’s important that members go through the process of trying to figure out what resource or allocation trade-offs they want to make,” he explains. “It’s important for them to understand some of the decisions and complexity. Ethelo is a good tool for education in that regard.

“Because it’s interactive and because it involves members making decisions and interacting with choices that the nation needs, I think you can generate interest and greater engagement with members.”

He adds that discussions happening in the comments section also helped identify areas where people needed to learn more and future opportunities for engagement. 

For example, one initiative in their Citizen Budget engagement was about some jurisdictional questions related to the nation taking greater ownership of setting rules, regulations and standards in education. 

“It was apparent from some of the comments that people didn’t understand what it was about,” Murphy notes. “We tried our best to articulate it, but it wasn’t as successful as we wanted. So in subsequent engagements, we need to spend more time on it or we need to articulate what we’re trying to do in a different way.”