By Matthew Nash
Olympic Peninsula News Group
SEQUIM — The city council has set a May 1 deadline for residents and developers to propose changes to the city comprehensive plan, saying those proposals will be reviewed this year.
But anyone who misses this year’s May 1 deadline will wait up to years for city staff review because of staffing levels and time constraints, according to the resolution the council approved unanimously March 13.
“The resolution stretches it out as far as we can given our staff capacities,” City Attorney Kristina Nelson-Gross said. “It gives us flexibility to come back [with changes to the proposals].”
Comments submitted by May 1 will be reviewed this year by staff but comments submitted after May 1 may not be reviewed until 2019, Nelson-Gross said.
Nelson-Gross said the May 1 deadline gives the public time to get their comments in and council members time to finalize items they want city staff to review.
“After that, we review and analyze them to determine which ones go forward,” she said. “We would go through and weigh them, then go back and make policy decisions on them.”
The updated comprehensive plan, also called Sequim 120, was approved in October 2015 to map guidelines for development and growth within the city limits over 20 years.
The resolution says, “[Department of Community Development] staff will conduct its cumulative analysis in 2017 and at least once every two years [after May 1].”
City Manager Charlie Bush said the deadline also would give city staff time to propose policy changes by the end of that given year, but “implementation may take longer.”
Nelson-Gross said the city’s planning department intends to hire a land-use consultant to help review proposals, too.
Assistant City Manager Joe Irvin said the comprehensive plan’s previous deadline for changes was “a date determined by the city council” and requirements to review the plan at least once every eight years stems from the Growth Management Act.
Nelson-Gross said all proposals, mostly public, must be considered at the same time to see how their impacts work together.
Some of the council’s proposed changes this year include revisiting the need for a grid structure outside of downtown and commercial areas for future development, and revisiting a mandate for garages be built at the rear of homes.
Nelson-Gross said council members can bring up specific changes and propose amendments anytime separately from the annual deadline and tentative two-year review.
City staff also are working on zone classification tables for the public to cut down on staff workload redundancies and to help better understand zones classified in the comprehensive plan.
For more information on Sequim’s comprehensive plan, visit www.sequimwa.gov.
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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach him at mnash@sequimgazette.com.
