Sandpoint's comprehensive plan sees updates
SANDPOINT – City Planner Amy Tweeten presented updates on the city’s comprehensive plan to the Sandpoint City Council Wednesday.
Tweeten detailed the current plan, the proposed changes, and a draft of the schedule moving forward. In addition, Tween went over previously adopted and in-progress “inputs,” and an overview of the plan vision and themes.
The city’s comprehensive plan is a policy document detailing the 20-year vision of the community. It establishes goals, objectives, and strategies to move the community toward that vision.
Idaho law requires cities to adopt a comprehensive plan to guide city staff and officials when making decisions about land use. It is also the legal basis for zoning regulations and should be reviewed every five to ten years to ensure it is addressing changing community conditions, Tweeten said.
“It is good practice to review every so often, and look at the historic trends … what has changed and what should we look toward to the future,” said Aaron Qualls, former city planning and economic development director.
The city’s current plan was adopted in 2009 and amended with the airport chapter in 2019. Reaching the second in the three-phase process of realizing this plan, city officials had already tackled part of its vision of increasing community engagement through community events, online questionnaires, and general online engagement all geared toward getting the community more involved in the process.
In researching those engagements it was found that residents ranging in age from 40 to 49 and 60 to 69, were found to be the most engaged in the process.
“Moving forward maybe we’ll try to do some additional youth engagement,” said Tweeten
The process was halted in the fall of 2020 due to staffing issues and an increase in the development review workload, city officials said. It will restart once a revised proposal is worked out with consultant Logan Simpson.
The new proposal will include other planning processes for the city that did continue such as the Parks and Rec 2020 master plan, Multi-modal Transportation 2021 plan, and the Arts, Culture, and Historic reservation 2021 master plan.
The current timeline for adopting the comprehensive plan goes from March 2022 to March 2023.