At their May 4 meeting, City Councilmembers debated about whether the city should take more time on its Comprehensive Plan update to complete other planning processes.

A city’s Comprehensive Plan, mandated by the state Growth Management Act (GMA), is the centerpiece for local planning. It informs decisions on the development code, capital improvements and natural resource protection, among others.

Mercer Island’s plan was last amended in 2004, and its next update is due on June 30—a fast-approaching deadline with decisions on bus intercept, parking and Town Center visioning yet to be reached.

The city is already done with one piece of the puzzle, adopting its Shoreline Master Program update and receiving final approval from the Department of Ecology in March. Also, many of the elements—Land Use, Housing, Transportation, Utilities and Shorelines—involve all areas of the Island, not just downtown.

“Much of what’s in the Comp Plan is not going to change,” said Councilmember Jane Brahm. “It’s got to be updated, but it’s not a total overhaul. We’re not starting from scratch.”

When updating its plan, the city is required at a minimum to incorporate changes to the state law, primarily the GMA, changes to Vision 2040 and Transportation 2040, changes to the County-wide planning policies (which were rewritten in 2012) and any other changes the City Council wants made.

The Council set the scope of work in February 2014, and requested a “review light,” which is “essentially, making sure we met the requirements of those documents and agencies,” said Development Services Group (DSG) Director Scott Greenberg.

“It did not include a review of zoning in the city. It did not include a review of the Town Center. It was just a fairly simple update,” Greenberg said.

“Most cities around us were actually tearing apart their Comprehensive Plans and having those kind of debates.”

Greenberg said that “there is no extension process allowed in State law.”

The city’s Planning Commission met eight times last fall to discuss the latest update. There were no public comments at any of those meetings, though the community gained interest in the process with the Town Center visioning work beginning and agreements with Sound Transit on light rail and parking starting to take shape.

During the May 4 public hearing, citizens pointed out that the Town Center visioning will culminate in a code revision, which must be consistent with the Comprehensive Plan.

“I think we’re putting the cart before the horse,” said Councilmember Mike Cero. “I would like to see this suspended or tabled until the Town Center Liaison Group has made their report after hearing from the Town Center Stakeholders group, and then the Planning Commission has their cut at it … We’ve got so many things out of sequence from the way we should do this.”

Apart from Town Center, another worry expressed was about a decision made by the Planning Commission last year. The seven-member group voted to downgrade the level of service (LOS) from ‘C’ to ‘D’ for designated streets and intersections. LOS is a grade set by wait times at intersections and other measures.

Downgrading the LOS would ease mitigation required for additional traffic generated for a new project, making it potentially cheaper and easier for developers. Keeping it at ‘C’ would require expensive transportation improvements paid for by the city, possibly with some help from mitigation or impact fees paid by developers.

After questions about Mercer Island’s planned growth targets—how many additional people the city has to plan and zone for in the next 20 years—from the Council and community, the city recently launched into a debate about the obligations and opportunities under the GMA, looking into potentially charging GMA impact fees.

The Council’s discussion followed the first reading of the Comprehensive Plan update, though Councilmembers questioned whether it constituted a “first reading.”

Deputy Mayor Dan Grausz stressed at the beginning of the discussion that no final decisions would be made until June 15 at the earliest.

“We may decide after tonight that even what we’re going to do on June 15 won’t be the final review of this,” Grausz said.

The city will be able to update its Comprehensive Plan again in 2016.