A Vision for the Future...

A comprehensive plan...

• Expresses a community's vision of itself--the community it would like to become--its hopes and dreams.
• Establishes an organized public process to identify community values and goals.
• Examines community needs and identifies solutions to protect the public interest.
• Creates a guide for decision-making regarding the future of the county, much like a business plan, to guide investment of public resources.
• Provides a policy framework to ensure consistency with other planning efforts, land use decisions, and capital improvement projects.
• Offers a budgeting tool by targeting the need and timing for investments of tax dollars in public facilities and infrastructure.
• Maintains a consistent perspective on community values and goals, even though decision-makers may come and go over the 20-year planning period.
• Must include a land use element and a circulation element. It may also include conservation, solar energy, recreation, transportation, transit, public services and facilities, public buildings, housing, renewal and/or redevelopment, capital improvements, and any additional elements and studies related to the physical development of the county.
• Should indicate what is needed to accommodate planned growth, striking a balance between patterns of land use and capital improvement needs.
• Ensures consistency and compatibility with the plans of neighboring cities and counties.
• Offers a tool to better match county programs and services with the needs of a changing population.
• Expands eligibility for grants and other funding sources needed to bring projects to fruition.
• Protects the public coffers from legal challenges to local codes by providing a rational, predictable basis for decisions that reflect the public interest.
• Should be updated periodically to address emerging technologies, demographic shifts, or other relevant factors.
• Ensures that developments - both private and public - and including those by state and local governments, will be consistent with the county's plan.

A comprehensive plan is not . . .

• A regulation or law that controls the use of land. Any local regulations should be consistent with the comprehensive plan.
• A document designed for making specific specific land use decisions--although proposed land use decisions must conform, in a general sense, with the comprehensive plan.
• A way to eliminate conflict--rather, it provides the framework for considering and resolving conflicting issues in the community.
• A means to force agreement. It reflects compromises needed to forge consensus for a community plan. While not everyone will be satisfied with the end result, the adopted comprehensive plan should deal with the many conflicting forces that shape a community.

Wahkiakum County. . .

• Plans under authority of the Planning Enabling Act of 1959.
• Is considered to be partially planning under the Growth Management Act (GMA), as it relates to identification and protection of resource lands and critical areas, and establishing a planning process for siting secure community transition facilities.
• Will include land use, housing, transportation, resource lands and critical areas, economic development, public facilities and services in develop-ing a plan to guide future growth.
• Will coordinate the plan with compre-hensive plans currently in place for the Town of Cathlamet and adjoining counties, the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy and the Regional Transportation Plan.
• Appointed a Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee, a broad-based workgroup representing a variety of interests, to develop and recommend a plan to the Wahkiakum County Planning Commission. The planning commission will review, accept or modify, and recommend a plan to the County Commission for adoption. A series of formal public hearings will be held before the plan is adopted. The planning process will take approximately 18 months to complete.
• Requested the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Council of Governments to research, coordinate and facilitate development of the Wahkiakum County Comprehensive Plan.
• Hopes you will become involved in helping to develop a plan that will truly make a difference!

Wahkiakum County Comprehensive Plan
Steering Committee

Leroy Burns
Bill Coop
Tom Doumit
Joe Florek,Jr.
Bob Jungers
Kyle Gribskov
Andrew Lea
David Vik
Frank Webb
Delvin Fredrickson
Ruth Edmondson
Richard Erickson
Linda Barth (Former Member)
Karen Bertroch (Former Member)
Curt Nielsen (Former Member)
Harry Paul (Former Member)
Larry Reese (Former Member)
Ken Scholes (Former Member)
Arvid Blix (Former Member)

Wahkiakum County Planning Commission

Leroy Burns
Erle Cooper
Terry Irving
Bob Jungers
Scott Kehrli
Delvin Fredrickson
Chuck Parker
Lawrence Rose
David Vik

For more information call: Wahkiakum County Commissioner's Office, 795-8048 or Melissa Taylor at the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Council of Governments, 577-3041