Comp plan adoption needed to guide city forward
This is a copy of a letter sent to the city of Sandpoint related to its proposed comprehensive plan.
I am writing as a business owner. I encourage you all to write as residents, business owners, or anyone that just wants to ensure we have an updated direction for the future of Sandpoint. For or against, the time to speak up is now.
As a business owner in downtown Sandpoint for 25 years, I have seen Sandpoint change and try regularly to avoid change. The town of Sandpoint has operated for too many years with an outdated comprehensive plan that now lacks cohesiveness and an overall vision that is desperately needed to guide our growth and decisions related to growth.
Over the last year the city has solicited and obtained great input from citizens, businesses, and the community organizations and leaders in developing a comprehensive plan that addresses Sandpoint today and provides guidance for many years down the road.
The key word is guidance. The city's comprehensive plan is not a rule book or an ordinance or tablets of ten commandments. It is a guidance document that provides the framework within which this city council, as well as future city councils, will make decisions that move Sandpoint towards a future that we want, rather than a future of reaction.
No comprehensive plan is perfect, and this one is no different. I do not agree with some of the designations within it, and it is unlikely that there is any person that would not find something in it that they would like to see done differently. However, the plan accommodates the need to adjust and make right those specific things that we find out as we move towards the future that need to be adjusted and replaced.
In the meantime, the community, the businesses and future businesses, residents, and potential economic growth is in need of a road map of the future so that we can know at least generally what the playing field is going to be and how to develop a living game plan for our future.
Please review, make some minor adjustments if needed, and then adopt the plan for the future so that the many community needs and changes that are happening, and going to happen regardless of what we personally want to see, can be directed to be part of a vision of Sandpoint rather than a hindsight of what we could have or should have done.
A lot of good work has gone into this effort and a lot of intelligent people have volunteered their time and experiences to get the Sandpoint Comprehensive Plan to the point it is today. Let's move forward with this plan with minimal argument, micro management, or adjustment because of fears of what it looks like might happen in “my backyard.”
The plan does not direct bulldozers, or demolition, or drastic changes to what is there now. It merely allows a plan for growth and economic development to be discussed and decided within an operational framework that the citizens and the City Council will always still have the final word.
I encourage the council to adopt the Comprehensive Plan so comprehensive decisions can be made for our community's future.
PIERRE BORDENAVE
Sandpoint