Medical Lake to review and update comprehensive plan

The city of Medical Lake will be reviewing and updating its 10-year Comprehensive Plan beginning this month, albeit a year late.

The City Council approved a $37,142 contract with Shea, Carr & Jewell, Inc. to manage the comp plan update at it’s Jan. 15 meeting.

Bill Grimes, who had worked on the previous Comp Plan for the city, will be the lead, City Administrator Doug Ross told the council. Grimes previously worked for Studio Cascade during the last update. Studio Cascade has since merged with Shea, Carr & Jewell.

The city is outsourcing the process due to a lack of personnel.

“It’s something your current staff cannot accomplish,” Ross told the council, referring to himself as the city’s de facto planning department head. “It’s a large process with a very large public input component.”

The state’s Growth Management Act requires cities and counties to update their comprehensive plans every 10 years. However, the city had requested and received an extension last year.

“We got an extension for one year because our growth didn’t increase by 10 percent,” Ross explained to the council.

He said he hoped to start the process this month.

Adopted in 1990, the comprehensive plans are required under state’s Growth Management Act. It requires counties and cities like Medical Lake to identify urban growth areas, and to protect, among other things, critical areas and natural resource lands, according to the state Department of Commerce.

There are several tasks that cities must accomplish during the update, including establishing a review of, and revision to existing plans and regulations, engaging with the public several times during the process, and to propose and take action on any amendments to the existing comp plan, according to the Municipal Research and Services Center, a policy advising non-profit in Washington state.

Cities also have the option of addressing elements such as conservation and solar energy, although those elements are not required.

Failure to complete the comp plan would make the city ineligible for grants and other funding, Ross told the council.

The updated plan is due by the end of June.

Lee Hughes can be reached at lee@cheneyfreepress.com.