Olympia seeks community members' feedback and participation in updating the city's Comprehensive Plan 2045 through a survey.
The survey, available through this link to the city’s website, asks the participants to review the Comprehensive Plan's values and vision statements and make suggestions for updates and additions. The deadline to complete the survey is May 31.
At the Olympia Planning Commission meeting on May 1, Community Planning and Development (CP&D) principal planner Joyce Phillips said the city will reassess its adopted community values and vision statements to ensure they are still relevant to the community. "We want to see if anything is missing or needs to be modified to reflect current values and vision."
Phillips explained that a comprehensive plan reflects the community's values and vision. It provides policy direction for the community for the next 20 years.
She said the Growth Management Act (GMA) requires updating the comprehensive plan every ten years. The latest update needs to be completed by June 2025.
The city, according to Phillips, has done some work in the comprehensive plan, including the Sea Level Rise Response Plan, Housing Action Plan, the Transportation Master Plan, Thurston Climate Mitigation Plan work, and additional work around equity and inclusion.
The city may need to adopt new or amended development regulations, such as zoning standards, engineering design and development standards, building codes, fire codes, and other works that influence development.
In updating the Olympia 2045 plan, the city plans a phased approach through a public process.
For this year, some chapters will be updated. These things have fewer changes required under the GMA, including Natural Environment, Transportation, Utilities, Economy, and Parks, Arts and Recreation chapters.
In 2024, the city staff will take on topics with more changes with the new guidance.
"So we have more time to absorb and digest that and figure out how to use that information to guide our plan," Phillips said, adding that chapters to be reviewed include land use and urban design, housing, public safety, and capital facilities.
"We expect to do updates chapter by chapter with a lot of public participation. There will be public hearings before the Planning Commission on each chapter," informed Phillips. She said the goal is to get through the city council for adoption.
Public outreach and engagement will continue in 2025. Phillips said they would do an environmental impact statement on the whole plan once it is drafted and have final adoption by June 30, 2025.
According to Phillips, the GMA required Olympia to plan for growth in the city and the urban growth area to prepare for about 20,000 new residents – about 87,680 people - from 2022 to 2045.
Phillips said the city would need about 13,500 additional housing units to accommodate that.
"If we look at the buildable lands report for Thurston County and the cities within it, we believe that there is adequate land within the city's existing urban growth area to accommodate the growth," Phillips said.
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Pkt3154
It would be nice to provide some assumptions about what is expected. (like how state efforts to reduce gas vehicles might impact planning decisions as we look that far ahead.)
Is there any modeling of the expected demographics related to the additional population expected? If they are mostly in their 50's +, I would consider different concepts than if it will be more uniform or maybe younger folks with kids/soon to have kids.
The only thing that seems certain is that by 2045 the baby boomer wave will be subsided. The big question in my mind is how is Social Security, Medicare(caid), and pensions going to be funded while we wait for that bulge to go away. Whatever happens, the outcomes around that funding will impact everyone in the system.
The more the expected situation can be laid out the more useful the projections of what needs to be done. Without that information, sounds like it will just be a wish list of things people want NOW placed twenty years in the future.
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