The city of Bonney Lake is looking to pass a temporary measure to fix a flaw that prevented it from being eligible for transportation grants.
According to City Administrator Don Morrison, the population numbers used in the city’s Land Use section do not match the numbers used in the Transportation element of the city’s Comprehensive Plan.
And according to the Growth Management Act, all plans must be “internally consistent,” Morrison said.
But when putting together the most recent Comprehensive Plan update in 2004, the city used the Office of Financial Management’s population numbers for the Land Use element but hired the TransPo Group to complete the Transportation Element. TransPo used its own numbers for the transportation section, including residents who live outside the city limits.
“So they got adopted with different numbers,” Morrison said.
The issue came to a head in 2008 when the city was denied a a transportation grant from the Puget Sound Regional Council due to the inconsistency.
The only project eligible for the grant was the intersection improvements at Old Buckley Highway and state Route 410 and Morrison said that project was “way down on the pecking order,” making it unlikely that any stimulus money would have come Bonney lake’s way anyway.
“The chances of us getting high enough on the list was pretty remote,” he said. “But it’s still something we need to fix.”
The administration put the Planning Commission to work on the issue and they presented their fix at the Nov. 9 council meeting.
After consulting with the PSRC, the Planning Commission concluded that it “wasn’t an easy fix,” according to a memo from Planning Commission Chair Grant Sulham. According to the memo, the city will most likely need to hire a consultant to update the transportation element.
But the PLanning Commission offered a temporary fix inserting language that explains the difference between the numbers and the city’s intention to update the plan in the near future.
“It would make it possible for us to get grants,” Sulham told the council. “Right now, it’s not.”
Morrison said a Comprehensive Plan update is scheduled for next year, though it may be held until 2012 because of funding concerns.
The city council is scheduled to discuss the fix at the Nov. 16 council workshop and is expected to vote on the measure the following week.
