EDMONDS – This coming May and June could be two important months in the future of Edmonds.
They’re the months the city will ask residents how they would like to see Edmonds take shape in the future.
The City Council, Mayor Gary Haakenson and staff members, at their annual retreat March 5-6 in La Conner, engaged in a lively “visioning” session they hope will lead to charting a course for the city.
In addition to developing “mission, vision and value” statements about the city, the officials decided that public input – and ultimately, support – are critical components of any long-term plans.
“It’s got to be the public’s view of the future as well,” said City Council member Deanna Dawson. “We need to be out and talking to people rather than waiting for people to call.”
Between now and the end of April, city officials will develop a plan for just exactly how to get out and talk to people. Community coffees, town-hall style meetings and meetings with interest groups were mentioned at the retreat as possibilities.
The city officials broke up into groups to develop mission-vision-value statements about different aspects of city life – environment, social-cultural, economic and infrastructure.
These were boiled down into statements such as, “We see the city of Edmonds as a community with a vibrant, self-sustaining economy, while maintaining our small-town atmosphere,” and many others (see list, this page). These will be taken to the public for comment.
Also, prior to the meeting, the staff came up with numerous specific ideas in the areas of financial stability, economic development, physical development, business practices and community outreach, many of which the Council signed off on at the retreat. Examples include pursuing annexations, franchise agreements with utilities and finding funding sources. Officials will be working on ways to implement these in the coming months.
Haakenson said this year’s visioning plan is a different concept from the Hyett-Palma consultants’ visioning study the city paid for in 1999.
“That was really designed as a visioning study for downtown Edmonds, and what the future of downtown looked like,” Haakenson said. “What the Council’s working on is a vision for the whole city and what they would like the city to be like in the future.”
Haakenson said he’s been asking Council members “for two or three years to come up with a vision for what the city should look like.” This could be particularly helpful in land-use issues, he said. Instead of the agonized decision making that often takes place in such cases, “They could say, ‘this fits into (the plan), so let’s vote for it,’ ” the mayor said.
Council president Michael Plunkett agreed that the retreat went well – “probably the best one I’ve been to,” the six-year Council veteran said – but he’s skeptical of the visioning process.
“I have a minimum of high regard for the visioning thing,” Plunkett said. “The only vision that really counts is four Council members at a Council meeting taking a vote. Absent that, it’s all interesting, pleasant words.”
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