Olympia asks for 3 minor changes in its support for joint plan with Thurston County

The Olympia City Council, on Tuesday, April 18, authorized Mayor Cheryl Selby to sign a letter of support for the adoption of the Olympia Joint Plan and request to the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) for three minor modifications to the Joint Comprehensive Plan, which sets policies on zoning and development standards in the urban growth area (UGA).

According to Joyce Phillips, Community Planning and Development (CP&D) principal planner, the Land Use and Environment Committee was updated on the joint plan in March. The committee recommended minor changes and corrections to be included before the adoption, including:

• Updating the name of Priest Point Park to Squaxin Park in the plan. In April 2022, Olympia renamed the park Squaxin in acknowledging that the park's land has been used for generations by the indigenous peoples of the region – Squaxin, Nisqually, Quinault, Puyallup, Chehalis, Suquamish, and Duwamish.
• Replacing "development" with "implementation" on Natural Environment policy PN8.1 to reflect that the region has a recently-approved climate action plan.
  • The BOCC has set targets to reduce emissions by 45% below 2015 levels by 2030 and 85% below 2015 levels by 2050.
• Clarifying the Transfer of Development Rights policy pertained to private property farmland. (Natural Environment PN2.4)

According to Phillips, the city and county staff worked together to have consistent standards for the UGA to help provide a smooth transition as these unincorporated lands eventually become part of the city.

Olympia Principal Planner Joyce Phillips

This was the first update to the joint plan after Olympia significantly rewrote its comprehensive plan in 2014.

In the previous joint plan, Phillips added, the county adopted some of the city's goals and policies for the UGA. "But this time, the city requested to capture the text in each chapter [of Olympia's comprehensive plan] so that we have a more complete and robust plan."

Councilmember Jim Cooper noted that the process for updating the joint plan was slow, but the equity updates in the Olympia comprehensive plan are included in the joint plan.

"I ask the city manager to reach out to the county and ask for a way to redesign this process so that when we are doing our next comp plan update, we are moving in parallel or ready to go right away so that we can cut that timeline down," Cooper said.