King County will begin the process of updating the Vashon Town and Community Plans this spring and is looking for islanders to participate in an advisory group to help lead that effort and assist in creating a new Community Service Area Plan for the island.
The plan will help chart the course for the future of Vashon and is expected to cover a variety of issues and topics, ranging from demographics and climate change to zoning and major land use changes, as well as smaller, targeted issues that would affect residents within a defined area, especially the town core. The plan will help guide King County’s development and capital improvement decisions over the next 20 years, according to officials from the county’s Department of Permitting and Environmental Review (DPER), which is spearheading the planning process. They are hoping to select 12 to 15 islanders who represent a variety of interests and community needs for the committee, which will meet monthly from March through September. DPER’s Bradley Clark will lead the effort on Vashon, and he indicated there will be several opportunities for all islanders to participate: at public meetings — with the first one slated for mid-March — as well as through social media, face-to-face conversations and in writing. Islanders’ input will be essential to the process, he stressed.
“No one knows best what the issues are but the people who live there,” Clark said.
As part of the process, members of the group will provide local advice, expertise and recommendations on land use, environmental issues, housing, public facilities and open space, among other issues and topics.
Long-range planning is an important public service, Clark added, and some residents of King County’s unincorporated areas, such as Vashon, have indicated that the service has been lax. This effort, which will take place first on Vashon, and then in all of the county’s Community Service Areas, is a step in providing that service, Clark said. He added that many of the communities’ plans are at least 20 to 30 years old.
“Some of them have been slightly updated and tweaked, but for the most part they have not been addressed for a couple of decades,” he said.
Vashon’s Town Plan — which covers Vashon town and Center and is recognized by King County as an official planning document, dates back to 1996. The Vashon Community Plan, which covers Vashon-Maury Island as a whole but is not recognized by the county as an active, adopted plan, dates back to 1986. The Community Advisory Group will review both of those plans, Clark said, and will also review the nine amendments to the existing Town Plan that members of the former Vashon-Maury Island Community Council’s Land Use Committee submitted to the county in 2012 after an extensive review of the Town Plan at that time. While the islanders who worked on that effort believed the county council would adopt those amendments as part of the county’s Comprehensive Plan, county officials did not submit the amendments to the council for approval. This news surfaced in 2014 and led to frustration for the islanders who had been involved.
For his part, Clark said the work of that committee will not be lost in the upcoming process, and he indicated that meeting all county and state legal requirements, time frames and submittal deadlines is one of his primary job responsibilities.
While some of those proposed amendments were quite specific, such as calling for businesses to install bike racks and setting restrictions for signage, Clark said this plan will likely be more broadly focused, with projects and ideas that would benefit the majority of people on the island.
“If a topic or project could affect multiple parcels, or lots or residents … then it could be on the radar screen,” he said.
Examples he gave included the possibility of creating bike lanes and changes related to increased affordable housing. The new plan would not call for a four-plex to be built on a specific piece of land, he said by way of example, but it could address homelessness more broadly and a lack of affordable housing for low-income islanders.
In addition to Clark, the work of the committee will be supported by representatives from a variety of King County departments, including Greg Rabourn, who lives on Vashon and serves as the Vashon-Maury Island basin steward. He, too, said there will be opportunities for islanders to weigh in on a variety of important issues, from whether or not the island should treat stormwater runoff in town, to where they would like growth to occur.
“There is a lot of opportunity for islanders to shape the way the island looks in 20 years,” he said.
The final task of the Community Advisory Group will be to complete the Community Service Area Plan by the end of the year, but the goal is to have the plan completed by October, Clark said. Once finalized, it will be submitted to the King County council to be included the county’s updated Comprehensive Plan.
The deadline to be considered as a member of the Community Advisory Groups is Thursday, Feb. 11. Paper copies of the application are available at the King County Rural Services Center on Bank Road across from the fire station and will be available beginning Thursday on DPER’s website.
