More people need to get involved

To The Eagle:

The Town of Cathlamet is about to spend money and many people’s time for a long overdue update to it’s legally required Town Comprehensive Plan.

This updated Plan will allow the Town to accomplish two primary things. It will: a) allow us access to available grant money for needed projects and efforts to improve our town. b) serve as a guiding path, or “North Star” for the Town Council to most effectively plan and prepare for our future - whether it’s making decisions for current issues, or planning for ones that are 10, 15, or 20 years out. (ie: “does a certain proposed Council action coincide with our Town Comp Plan”?)

For the revised Comp Plan to be most effective, the Council and Planning Commission needs its residents’ input. Recently we’ve found that what some Council members and mayor think are important for Cathlamet aren’t aligned or in sync with what its tax payers want.

As examples, I was recently asked “Why are we putting grass on the gravel patch across the street from the mayor’s house by City Hall which he uses to park his trucks on? We don’t need more green spaces when we still need sidewalks built, and Strong Park to be ADA compliant.”

Another questioned “why are we spending our tax dollars on this supposed toxic gravel parking by the bank when we have a beautiful waterfront park that’s not being developed?”

These are just a few of the good, valid questions that could be addressed at the monthly Town Council meetings.

I encourage all town residents to get more involved with its future. This is the residents’ town, the voters’ tax dollars, and all our families’ future. We all want the best for “our” town. Accordingly, it’s up to us to help the current and future mayors, councils, and Planning Commissions plan for what we want Cathlamet to grow into.

The easiest first step to accomplish this is to start attending the monthly Town Council meetings. Let the Council members know what you’d like Cathlamet to eventually look like. Ask the Council what Cathlamet’s current long term development plan looks like.

If we all get involved, communicate effectively, and pull together, we can take pride in Cathlamet’s inevitable future success - watching it mature as we want it to. Blindly leaving our town’s future in the hands of just a few though may have the opposite result.

Bill Wainwright

Planning Commissioner and resident