ISLAND COUNTY: Island County gathering community feedback for comprehensive plan update (SCN)

Isabella Loy reports on the Island County comprehensive plan update for the Stanwood Camano News.

Island County is in the beginning stages of updating its comprehensive plan, a document that will serve as the centerpiece of local planning for the next decade.

The comprehensive plan is required under the Growth Management Act to be updated every 10 years.

The Growth Management Act requires fast-growing cities and counties to develop a comprehensive plan to manage their population growth.

They Said It

“It drives our values around land use, transportation, permits, building — many, many things,” said Island County Commissioner Janet St. Clair during a town hall on Jan. 25.

“We are just beginning this process,” St. Clair said. “Staff has met with other municipalities in the county to begin looking at a shared-policy vision for this and to begin setting up our vision statement.”

“It’s your chance to begin to get involved early,” St. Clair said. “So if you care about shoreline issues that you care about transportation or the many, many things that make up all of our plans, I want to make sure you know early how to get involved.”

“You’re going to weigh in early and often on these major decisions the county is going to be making that will drive our county’s development policies, land use policies, our transportation policies, for the next 10 years,” St. Clair said.

An example St. Clair gave, attesting to the importance of the comprehensive plan, had to do with open space and parks.

“This came up last year when we had a request from the boy’s Little League and pickleball to develop our (passive) park on Camano,” St. Clair said. “They wanted us to build several new pickleball courts, the kids and the parents wanted us to build new bleachers.”

“All of that came up, but it wasn’t allowed under our comprehensive plan,” she said.

“Do you want your tax dollars to go to just passive parks or do you believe in passive and active parks? Maybe you want to make sure we have more pickleball courts, maybe you want to make sure our kids have a place where we can improve the bleachers and so forth,” St. Clair said.

St. Clair also said she welcomes emails about comprehensive planning. She can be reached at j.stclair@islandcountywa.gov.