High River council says the new Land Use Bylaw passed at Monday afternoon's meeting does a lot more than pay lip service to the word "innovative".

Mayor Craig Snodgrass says after more than 18 months of hard work he feels it's a document that will stand for a long time.

"A lot of municipalities, they throw that word "innovative" word around and say they do it, but no, that's just something on a brochure is really all it is," the mayor says. "This is what I'm proud of is that we say it and we actually do it."

He says a huge amount of work went into the document and thanked the Planning, Renewal Advisory Committee of Tony Marshall, Jim Ross, Bill Fowler, Hal Knox, and Duncan Scott and all the people who put their time and effort into it knowing how important it was to elevate the town.

Snodgrass says there was a lot of education done to bring council along for the ride by Melissa Ayers and McElhenney consulting and the Town's Senior Policy Planner Ian Fawcett.

He specifically pointed to the stripping down of Land Uses from over 40 to just six.

"You keep adding zones over the years and everybody that shows up has a different thing for their thing and you just keep adding and adding and you come for re-zoning and the amount of staff time that takes it's just a royal pain, and for what?  We've opened up the usages and so the people who are running business can do so and possibly out of their home. The other way you're kind of pushing them, you can get a business started but you've got to lease a space so it becomes very expensive to get going."

He says the new bylaw allows people to use their homes for work while they get started and they can move up and out when they're established.

But Mayor Snodgrass was happiest and proudest of what the new Land Use Bylaw does to deal with secondary suites.

"This has been a gong show since day one with this council and it's something that blew me away and you know boy it sure brought it to light as to what a ridiculous thing that municipalities spend so much time approving or opposing these secondary suites and what I found was every one that we opposed, construction started the next morning," he says.

He says the key was to get people to come to the town and get building permits so they're designed safely and they're inspected and everybody's safe.

Full house for land use public hearing

High River closer to new Land Use Bylaw