Not much change expected in Medical Lake comprehensive plan

The city of Medical Lake is following suit with Cheney and Airway Heights in that it is gearing up to work on its comprehensive plan update in 2017.

However, City Administrator Doug Ross said he does not foresee any major changes. Unlike the other West Plains cities, Medical Lake’s population has not changed much since the city’s 2010 comprehensive plan update.

“There is still a lot of land that is deemed residential and commercial that can be developed,” Ross said.

The city’s Planning Commission completed some of its review process in 2016, such as studying the L-1 light industrial zone chapter. Only a small piece of the city is designated L-1 and that is located north of Fox Hollow and Fox Ridge.

One chapter that Ross said will undergo some changes is the capital facilities plan, which he said involves reviewing “the type of projects the city will build and spend money on in the next 20 years.”

Ross added that he does not expect a change in the level of service the city provides to residents, which he said is “pretty good.”

“We can plan for 100-200 population increase, our city limits can handle that growth,” Ross said. “But you also have to provide the services, such as water, and we can’t handle a large amount of growth until we get the intertie with the city of Spokane, if it comes to that.”

The chapter on transportation will be added “by reference” when the city updates its six-year transportation plan.

“The shoreline plans are pretty well built out,” Ross said. “We’ve got good, strong, critical areas in our wetlands chapter, so I don’t foresee a lot of changes there.”

Ross said there is a 45-day period where residents can propose a change to the comprehensive plan. The proposed changes, which Ross said mostly consists of rezoning requests, are brought to the Planning Commission for review.

The commission will go through the chapters and review the plan, then submit it to the City Council — either in parts or as a whole document.

If the comprehensive plan update is not completed by the deadline, Ross said cities that did not experience a vast population change can request a two-year extension.

Al Stover can be reached at [email protected].