SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - An intense and divisive month over the future of Tin Can Hill culminated with a compromise among city councillors on Monday night.

City council voted to put plans to re-zone Tin Can Hill as a parks and recreation area on hold, but they voted on second reading to remove references to it as a place zoned for immediate residential development in the 2004 General Plan.

Council debated the two bylaws relating to Tin Can Hill for more than half and hour.

More than 50 people crammed into city hall's gallery to watch the meeting, leaning against the door frames and squeezing onto the steps to see how the vote would go.

Originally, council was going to move forward with a second reading of a bylaw to re-zone the area. But city councillor Bob Brooks proposed an amendment to postpone the re-zoning vote on the 33 hectare portion of Tin Can Hill to Parks and Recreation from Growth Management until council can read a Smart Growth Development report expected to come early next year.

"We just spent months and months going out to the public ... we have yet to see what the results of the public consultation have been," Brooks said.

Putting off the final vote until after the Smart Growth plan is complete is a good compromise, he told council.

"It's very possible we can achieve exactly what everyone wants ... but there may need to be some limited development to be able to afford it," he said.

"If it's the right thing to do, to set aside Tin Can Hill in its entirety, it'll still be the right thing to do after the study is complete," said Coun. David Wind, who was the only councillor out of eight to vote against removing Tin Can Hill from the General Plan.

Couns. Paul Falvo and Lydia Bardak also supported Brooks' amendment. But not everyone was in favour of delaying the decision to vote on re-zoning.

Couns. Mark Heyck, Shelagh Montgomery and Kevin Kennedy opposed it. Dave McCann was absent for that part of the vote.

"It's just not realistic to think council's decisions can be deferred or delayed until the report is complete," said Montgomery, who is the chair of the Smart Growth committee. "We've heard overwhelmingly from the public that we want to move forward with this."

Heyck, who has led the fight to re-zone Tin Can Hill, said this was an opportunity for council to correct the 2004 General Plan, which he said didn't acknowledge the people who never wanted it included as a potential residential area in the first place.

Heyck argued that developing part of Tin Can Hill will never be an option because it would be so expensive to blast the rock.

"No developer in their right mind would approach that property without the assurance that they could develop a massive, massive amount of it," Heyck said.

After the vote, he said he was pleased with the general plan vote but would have liked the re-zoning vote to go ahead as well.

"Tin Can Hill is not central to that plan ... I don't think it would have affected the Smart Growth Plan or the integrity of the process had we moved ahead with the zoning (Monday) night."

Most citizens watching the meeting filed away after the votes were made around 9 p.m.

In the days leading up to the meeting, people in favour of re-zoning and those who wanted to wait sent mass e-mails encouraging residents to attend.

There was also a sign posted at the entrance to Tin Can Hill on School Draw Road reading "You can stop the development!" and encouraging people to e-mail council saying they support re-zoning the area as parks and recreation.

When Mayor Gord Van Tighem asked councillors if any of them had posted the sign, no one came forward.