Residents in Lantzville can now name new streets in their community.
District of Lantzville councillors unanimously agreed to adopt a street naming policy during their most recent council meeting on April 27. They also agreed to allow the public to propose their own street names through a nomination or petition process.
That process requires residents with a proposed name to receive 100 signatures from other Lantzville residents. If successful, the name will be submitted to the district for use.
Furthermore, the newly adopted policy allows councillors to propose their own street names, provided the proposed name receives unanimous approval from the rest of council.
Council also included provisions in the policy that let developers pick names for new streets within their development from a list created by the Lantzville Historical Society. The list would include names of historically significant people and those who have achieved national or international prominence in various fields like science, politics or sports.
The small municipality north of Nanaimo is expecting a significant amount of new development to occur in the coming years and construction on a 744-hectare residential development has been underway since 2017.
Under the policy, new street names would generally be limited to a single word that is no more than 15 letters long. Names that are “relevant” to Lantzville’s history, geography, indigenous flora and fauna, would be encouraged.
Meanwhile, names consisting of words or names that are used for advertising purposes or are derived from the individual or company subdividing the land are not permitted.
Developers will now be required to propose names that are “consistent” with the new policy and that they must be approved by the district’s approving officer or council.
Proposed street names would also be reviewed by dispatch and emergency services to determine if there are any concerns and to ensure that the same name or similar sounding names are not already in use in neighbouring areas of Lantzville.
The decision to adopt a street naming policy comes less than a year after the idea was first proposed as a way to ensure that Lantzville has new street names that better reflected the community.
Coun. Ian Savage, who brought forward the idea, said at the time that such a policy would be an opportunity to market Lantzville and suggested names like Food Market Lane and Advanced Avenue.
Councillors had also expressed a desire to see any such policy include exceptions allowing streets to be named in Hul’q’umi’num, the Snaw-aw-as’ traditional language.
However, the street naming policy that was approved by Lantzville councillors contained no such language or references to Hul’q’umi’num.
Nicholas Pescod
