Friday, January 24, 2025
BRIDGEPORT – The city Planning Commission revisited additional work on its Community Engagement Plan during its regular meeting last Thursday, Dec. 5.
“We are doing this project called the periodic update of the comprehensive plan implementing regulations as required by the Growth Management Act (GMA),” said city planner Kurt Danison. “One of the basic tenets of the GMA is early and continuous public involvement.”
Toward that end, the commission prepared a work plan which the council accepted and is now working on the public engagement aspect. The city has a two-year Department of Commerce grant for $50,000 each year to pay for the periodic update work.
Community Engagement Plan
The Community Engagement Plan specifies how the city is going to engage the community. Bridgeport has at least one Spanish speaker on staff to allow non-English speaking residents to participate in community outreach. The city will also include the Colville tribes in the process.
“We will want to try to get that underway right after the first of the year,” said Danison. “There is a lot of work to do.
Public engagement allows citizens to:
“We will want to try to get that underway right after the first of the year,” said Danison. “There is a lot of work to do.”
From this month (December 2024) until mid-June 2025 the timeline focus is on completion of the Community Engagement Plan to meet a June 15, 2025, deadline. Beginning in January 2025 work begins on drafting a Critical Area Amendment
“The state provides a critical areas checklist,” said Danison. “We must make sure that what we have in our regulations matches what the state regs are.”
A comp plan checklist also needs to be analyzed and completed.
The completed checklist will help the commission draft amendments to its critical areas regulations.
“That lays out what we will be doing starting in July 2025 through June 2026,” said Danison.
There is also housing and population projections to address to help predict increases and needs over the next 20 years.
“Next year we get into drafting the comprehensive plan amendments, adopt the comp plan amendments, analyze development regulations, and adopt those regulations,” said Danison. “Then we have to go through the formal public process to find that we have done this effort.”
The two state payments of $50,000 this year and next will cover the city’s costs to do this work. Danison said.
The GMA requires that the Comprehensive Plan include nine elements:
‣ Land use critical areas.
‣ Housing
‣ Conservation
‣ Transportation
‣ Parks and recreation
‣ Capital facilities
‣ Climate change & resiliency
‣ Utilities
‣ Economic development
“We will go through each one of those elements and update it,” Danison said.
Mike Maltais: 360-333-8483 or michael@ward.media
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