Island County will not meet its long-planned summer deadline for an approved comprehensive plan update.

So, decision makers have worked with state officials to revise a new finish line,  shooting for the end of the year. Planners are also moving forward with a phased approach to future updates.

The commissioners recently adopted a “resolution of substantial progress.” It’s a process by which a jurisdiction without final approval of periodic updates by the legislative deadline will instead agree to finalize the update by the end of 2016.

“We’re going to continue working on our update this year until we get it done,” Long Range Planner Beckye Frey said. “We’ve completed substantial progress, but there are a few elements we’re just looking to finalize and do some extensive public outreach.”

The commissioners ran into some bumps in the road during the ongoing update process. They fired planning Chief Dave Wechner in the midst of the update, and reorganized the planning department. And the county prosecutor, Greg Banks, filed a lawsuit after the commissioners hired an outside attorney to help with the update instead of relying on his office for legal work; the state Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case this fall.

Though not directly involved in the drafting, Frey said the state Department of Commerce did guide the county in adopting the resolution. It was approved by the county commissioners on June 21 and submitted to the department prior to the deadline.

“The comprehensive plan is one of those things that can actually have a direct impact on how the county is developed,” Frey says. “It’s definitely not a plan that’s put on the shelf, it’s a plan that’s being used to guide the development that occurs in the county.”

According to Frey, who is also the lead for the Comprehensive Plan Update Team, the plan covers ten elements of development, including housing, land use, historic preservation and economic development.

It is meant to project the growth and population of Island County for the next 20 years and outlines how the county intends to prepare for potential expansion while addressing community issues and needs identified by the public.

According to the resolution, the county required additional time to update the Land Use and Housing elements, update the Freeland development regulations and incorporate policy changes from the Critical Areas Ordinance passed earlier this month.

More time was also needed to revise necessary development regulations and conduct code cleanup efforts, as well as do additional public outreach.

The county plans to complete updates to the remaining elements and finalize a draft of the comprehensive plan by the end of July. The periodic review as a whole should follow at the end of this year.

According to Frey, the county also plans to establish a new review process for future use as a part of the 2016 periodic review.

“We’re going to be finalizing the 2016 update, but as a part of the 2016 update we’re going to be making code changes to make a new updating process possible,” she said.

Though the county is required to update the plan every eight years, as directed by the Growth Management act of 1990, Frey said the future process will take a slightly different approach.

The plan will undergo a complete overhaul over the next eight years, with the county updating one or two elements of the plan each year.

In addition to finalizing the 2016 periodic review, Frey said the county will also spend 2016 setting the stage for that overhaul and making minor technical updates to make the plan easier to read and use.

“So by the time of our next periodic update cycle, the complete plan will have been revamped,” she said.

Four community meetings throughout Whidbey and Camano Island will seek feedback from the public on the county’s future growth, continuing the current review and kicking off the new process.

The meetings will take place in July (see info box) and will be held in the county’s four major planning areas: Langley, Coupeville, Oak Harbor and Camano Island. Each will be an open house during which the local community can learn more about the plan.

With the county estimating a population increase of just under 9,500 individuals by 2036, Frey says the meetings will be an essential opportunity for community members to voice their visions for how the county should evolve.

“We want the community to come really take a look and see if we need to make adjustments to the vision and to the actions that we want to take,” she said. “This is really the county’s vision for itself.”

For Frey and others on the county’s planning team, the upcoming meetings are a rare space for the community to truly influence how the county will look and feel in the daily lives of the public.

“It’s going to impact our daily lives in a way that a lot of major planning efforts that happen in government agencies may not,” Frey said.