Newsreal 98105

Elected council members now are meeting in City Hall Council Chambers in committee to deliberate on changes to one neighborhood plan after another, but a forum at the UW Evans School of Public Affairs this Saturday hosted by former Mayor Norm Rice, Councilmember Sally Clark, and the Evans School gathers city-wide community groups and individuals in a Neighborhood Planning Forum that promises a good look and survey of the neighborhood planning process.   

Consider, for example, the following 10 questions forwarded with background materials to Forum attendees.   Your thoughts?   

1. Are values of protecting social equity, economic opportunity, diversity, and environmental stewardship from the last round of neighborhood planning still relevant?  If not, then what’s missing, and how do we provide that?
2.  How much of the neighborhood planning process should be led by the city, and how much by the neighborhoods?
3.  How could the city make the neighborhood plans more consistent with each other in the planning phase? Drafting and adoption phase? Implementation phase?
4. How can the neighborhood plans meet city-wide goals and the neighborhood’s needs?
5. Should the neighborhood plans be more focused on vision and strategies, or specific actions and steps?
6. How should the city manage expectations of neighborhoods, and communicate the financial and legal limitations to proposed recommendations?
7. How can the city and neighborhoods work together on outreach to engage underrepresented groups?
8. How should residents who are new to the planning process get the civic skills needed to engage with the neighborhood planning process in an effective way?
9. How could the city align departments for better management and ownership of implementing the neighborhood plans?
10. After the plans are adopted, how can the city support neighborhood groups who want to advocate for and implement their neighborhood plan?