SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Only about a third of the area described as Tin Can Hill in the city's general plan is subject to the new bylaw to re-zone the area as parks and recreation, according to city council documents.

"It's a much bigger area when you define Tin Can Hill in its entirety," said Jeff Humble, the city's director of planning and lands. "There may be some confusion."

He says the area in question is actually around 80 acres, or between 31 and 36 hectares, not 106 hectares as listed in the city's 2004 General Plan and a residential growth study completed that year, which are still available on the city's website.

"The lands directly adjacent to Tin Can Hill, which include some of the waterfront, were excluded but arguably you'd never be able to develop them if you didn't have road access," said Humble.

"It's a little bit confusing and challenging to define what exactly it means by taking out that parcel."

City councillor Mark Heyck brought up the issue at a committee meeting on Tuesday. He said city documents may not be clear when they attribute land areas as Tin Can Hill.

"City documents often reference Tin Can Hill as the area that goes from School Draw and 48th Street, right down to Negus Point. When in fact, that's not really what anybody considers as Tin Can Hill," he said following the meeting.

The 2004 growth study was never voted on by council and therefore was never amended, said Heyck

"That's one of those planning documents that references far more, and includes in the term Tin Can Hill much more than it actually is within the hill itself," said Heyck.

"It was just sort of tabled and never picked up again."

Heyck couldn't explain why Tin Can Hill was defined differently in 2004.

"For whatever reason, I don't know why. I don't have the history of the planning department. When the general plan came forward in 2004, I asked the Con Mine residential area be separated in the language of the document from Tin Can Hill. They're not the same thing," he said. "One is pristine raw wilderness and the other had buildings on it since the 1940s."

Heyck said the area of Tin Can Hill north of Rat Lake is not eligible to be re-zoned because it's still leased to Newmont Mines. He also said the strip of shoreline attached to Tin Can Hill is federal crown land.

- see Mark Heyck's guest comment on page 9.