About 80 residents turned out to the Mount McIntyre Recreation Centre on Wednesday evening to provide their thoughts and comments on the city’s next Official Community Plan (OCP).

The city began its review of the plan last November, launching a survey that is set to wrap up this week.

Whitehorse 2040 is looking toward the next two decades. The plan was last updated in 2010.

Mike Ellis, the city’s senior planner, said this morning he was pleased with how Wednesday’s drop-in session went as well as the more than 300 responses that have come in so far to the survey.

Ellis noted the city has put a lot of work into determining how Whitehorse residents prefer to communicate with officials. It has learned that most prefer to make their views known through online efforts like the survey.

At the same time, Ellis said “there’s still a need for these face-to-face events” where residents can speak directly with staff, respond to questions posed in a different way and so on. Hence, the drop-in session was held.

Over the course of the evening, Ellis said, residents brought forward a variety of topics. As the city’s guiding document, pretty much any sort of issue can fall under the OCP.

“The OCP can cover every topic the city works on,” he said.

As officials have heard in the past, affordable housing and the prevention of wildfires were two issues brought up by multiple people attending the drop-in session.

While the survey is set to officially close tomorrow, Ellis said there’s a likelihood the online survey will be available on the city’s website over the weekend, and he’d like to see as much input as the city can get.

“It’s just so important people participate if they can,” he said.

The city wants the expertise of residents, he added, and to know what direction in which they want the city to move forward over the next 20 years.

“It lays the ground work (for future planning),” he said.

Ellis said the survey, which takes about 15 minutes, includes maps along with the questions being asked.

It’s available at www.whitehorse.ca/departments/planning-sustainability-services/official-community-plan-ocp/whitehorse-2040.

After the survey ends, city staff will begin going through the responses and comments that have come in to produce a document detailing what came forward out of the public input.

While there’s no fixed date on when that document will be released, Ellis said, it’s expected to happen sometime around late February or early March.

Along with the consultation, work is underway to incorporate several other plans into the OCP.

Those include the sustainability plan, downtown plan, transit master plan, bicycle network plan and many more.

Following the consultation phase are three other phases to the OCP work: exploring new concepts, creating the plan, and adopting the plan.

While they are envisioned to each take about half a year, city staff has stressed timelines are flexible, and no dates for each phase are set in stone.