Welcome to Skagit County

June 1st, 2011

Envision Skagit 2060 asks Skagit Valley residents: What is your vision for the future?

SKAGIT COUNTY - Skagit County's Envision Skagit 2060 project recently posted its compiled community comments regarding the future of Skagit County. Included in the comments, are vision statements from local seventh graders at Immaculate Conception Regional School in Mount Vernon.

Since January 2011, the Envision Skagit Citizen Committee has held 10 public visioning sessions with Skagit Valley residents, including community meetings in Edison, Anacortes, La Conner, Concrete, Mount Vernon, Sedro-Woolley, and Burlington. The committee also held visioning sessions with local farmers and the Skagit County Planning Commission, as well as a second Mount Vernon meeting conducted in Spanish, and received written comments from local seventh graders.
In all, more than 300 participants attended the meetings and described what they value most about Skagit Valley now, what they hope to see retained or improved on in the future, the greatest challenges facing the Valley, and what changes they would most like to avoid.

Key themes that spanned the meetings included:

• Natural beauty, wildlife, and access to natural areas, together with the strength and diversity of local agriculture and access to fresh, local food
  
• Better public transportation and improved bicycle and pedestrian trails
  
• Concern regarding sprawl and increased development in the floodplain
  
• Desire for more compact, walkable, and mixed-used communities, but with the concern of losing the "small-town" feel of local communities

The meeting with local farmers called for enforcement of current county and state regulations as well as additional bold and innovative steps to ensure the long-term protection of agricultural land. Participants in the bilingual meeting expressed a strong interest in more recreational programs to keep kids of out trouble, improvements in public education, and greater inclusion of the Hispanic community in public processes. The seventh graders shared refreshing hopes and expectations, including the importance of farmland and tulips, access to parks, open space and nature, small town character, a need for a better transportation system to reduce congestion in the future, and more job opportunities for a growing population.

To view the compiled comments, visit www.skagitcounty.net/envisionskagit, click on Public Comments and scroll down to Community Meeting Responses. Many residents have also submitted written comments that are available for viewing under Received Written Comments.

The Envision Skagit Citizen Committee is taking all of these comments into account as it develops its long-term vision for Skagit Valley and recommendations for implementing that vision.

For a more detailed description of the public comment process, or for more information on the Envision Skagit 2060 project, visit www.skagitcounty.net/envisionskagit, or contact Skagit County Public Information Officer Emma Whitfield at emmaw@co.skagit.wa.us.