Washougal Council mulls 5-year strategic plan recommendations

The city of Washougal “will be a safe, vibrant and friendly community that successfully balances growth and expanding economic opportunity while preserving the community’s natural beauty and the unique amenities of small-town living,” according to an updated vision statement included in the City’s new five-year strategic plan.

The Washougal City Council will vote to adopt the plan in April or early May, according to City Manager David Scott. The City adopted its current 10-year plan in 2012.

“(The plan lays out) what the city wants to do. Our job now is to take those recommendations (and put them into action),” Washougal Mayor David Stuebe told the Post-Record. “We have the input, and now we’re trying to start moving forward with momentum and make stuff happen.”

The city hired BerryDunn, a Portland, Maine-based national consulting firm, in 2022 to assist with the strategic planning process, which included stakeholder interviews, surveys, open houses and in-person “community vision” forums.

“We were super thrilled by the level of participation we received from the surveys and at the open houses and community forums,” Scott told the Post-Record in late 2022. “We’re really grateful for it.”

Representatives from BerryDunn presented a report to City leaders during a meeting on Monday, March 6, that included recommendations under five core themes — economic development and community prosperity; financial health and core services; vibrant town center; “smart” growth; and redefined community identity.

“I want to see people outside and I want to see people engaged,” Stuebe said when asked by the Post-Record about what he hopes to see in Washougal five years from now. “I want to see them contributing to their community. I want them to enjoy what they have, but I also want them to respect it and take pride in it — clean up, keep it nice, and do things to contribute and not destroy this community. My vision is that we’ve got events at Reflection Plaza — kids and animals and happy people. I just want to see people having fun. There’s so much negativity everywhere. This is the place to start (being positive), right in your own back yard.”

Among BerryDunn’s suggestions:

? Establish an economic development manager position “to champion and coordinate economic strategic objectives and carry out the tasks associated with the plan.”

“By having somebody that’s dedicated to that, we can get momentum going,” Stuebe said. “It’s going to happen, but if we don’t have somebody that is focused on that 100%, it’s just going to take time. I think that (position) would be good.”

• Explore the creation of a metropolitan parks district or identify “preferred options for enhanced parks and recreation services.”

“The parks are huge for us because this is the Northwest and people want to be outside,” Stuebe said. “The things that our parks board has done are incredible — the signage, the clean-up. I think one of the best things they did was adopt the parks (to community members). There’s ownership there, and people are taking care of them.”

• Establish agreements with “significant” town center property owners to allow for redevelopment that will result in a “vibrant” downtown core.

“There’s momentum,” Stuebe said. “We’ve got events down there. I want to see stuff happening downtown. I want to see people come. We don’t want vacant properties down there. There’s a lot of storefronts that are vacant, and we’d love to see them filled. Are we going to be (like) Camas with the little art stores? I don’t know if that’s what we want to do. But I do want people to say, ‘What are we going to do tonight? Let’s go down to Washougal Times,’ or ‘Let’s go to Trap Door.’ I’d like to see more of those things pop up.”

• Implement a “citizen’s academy” to help students, residents and business owners “learn how their city government functions and what they can do to help improve it.”

“This academy is a way for them to come in and really understand (the City),” Stuebe said. “It’s a way to educate. People read something on Facebook, they think it’s true, they don’t have all the facts, and they just need to be educated on (some things). The academy would be more of a collaboration where people can come together and ask questions and find out how they can get involved.”

The strategic plan “is a living document that we will use to define the future vision for Washougal,” according to the City’s website.

“Having a strategic plan allows us to communicate our priorities within a credible, forward-thinking and well-understood framework so we can make effective budget and policy decisions and secure the resources we need to sustain the City into the future; maintain a guiding ‘north star,’ providing stability and more certainty in the face of election cycles, changes in leadership, economic fluctuations and changes to the state and federal regulatory environments; and make decisions and evaluate our policies, plans, programs, service delivery and processes through a lens of engagement, inclusion and fairness for all Washougal residents,” the website states.

For more information about the plan, visit berrydunn.mysocialpinpoint.com/washougal-wa.