The Cheney Planning Commission is beginning the process of reviewing and updating the city’s comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan is a long-range planning document outlining a community’s goals and polices guiding future land use, the extension of community services and facilities and other desirable urban design elements.
Comprehensive plans are constantly changing as communities grow, and are required to be reviewed and updated periodically by the state’s Growth Management Act. Cheney’s update is due in 2017.
City planner Brett Lucas outlines the proposed steps Cheney will take to create public participation in the development and amendment of the plan. Through the participation process, Lucas said the city seeks several outcomes, including broad dissemination of proposals and alternatives, opportunities for written comments, public discussion and debate along with feedback from staff and community members.
An online survey, similar to the survey used to collect input on the Parks and Recreation Department’s long-range plan, will be conducted in early in 2016. The survey is hoped to provide citizen input into existing land use along with potential changes that should occur.
A focus group of 9 – 11 community members will also be created, meeting monthly for approximately one year. According to the city’s public participation plan’s draft, the committee will consist of one member each from Eastern Washington University, the Cheney School District, a residential unit developer, a commercial/industrial developer and a multi-family unit developer.
Two to three city of Cheney “at large” members will also make up the committee, along with 2-3 members of the Planning Commission. The committee will vet planning issues, review public and staff input and other information, and report back directly to the commission.
Cheney’s approach to this round of the comprehensive plan review is much more Spartan than the last time the city undertook the process. That process used outside consultants and several committees to augment surveys and public meetings.
“We don’t have the luxury of hiring consultants,” Public Works Director Todd Ableman told the commission. “This is going to be pretty much in house.”
Part of the review and updating process will involve using a forecast of future population numbers to determine where growth in Cheney might occur. Ableman said they would augment this by using city maps dating back to the 1880s to show where growth trends have already taken place, hopefully making the review process more “exciting.”
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
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