Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.
Major issues are missed, data is deficient.
Editor's note (Beaufort Observer): This article was written two weeks ago just after the Council adopted the Plan. We have delayed publishing it trying to get answers to questions from either City staff or the consultants who crafted the plan. John Rodman, the city Planning Director referred us to Clarion, the consultants. We have yet to receive a response to our questions, which are published below, so we are publishing the original article now without those answers.)
The Washington City Council, in its regular monthly meeting Monday (2-11-13) adopted a "Comprehensive Plan." The vote was 4-1. Doug Mercer dissented.
The plan is designed to assess where the city is now, from whence it has come and were it will be going through 2023.
You can review the entire document at
www.washington-nc.com Contained in the Plan is a vision statement:
We see Washington as a historically rich and presently vibrant community, situated at the key location of the joining of the Tar and Pamlico Rivers. Recognizing and respecting the heritage and culture, Washington citizens enjoy a high quality of life and look to the future with pride and enthusiasm. Redevelopment of the downtown and waterfront areas has turned this historic area into a modern-day center of commerce, leisure, arts, and entertainment. Retail businesses and services are convenient in multiple locations. A diversity of neighborhoods and housing styles provides a connected community fabric. It is easy and pleasant to walk and bike around the City. Eco-tourism brings visitors and energy to the City, as residents share the richness of this place with others. Local businesses provide goods and services and are successful. And all of this takes place within the context of a natural environment that is being protected so that it can continue to contribute to the lives of future generations of Washington residents. This is a City that has pride in its past, and faith in its future.
The City paid some $40,000 to out-of-town consultants to develop the Plan. What will be done with it was not discussed at any length Monday night.
On page 60 you will find a summary of the Plan:
This 2023 Comprehensive Plan has been prepared for the City of Washington to articulate a vision for the community's future, and establish a road map for how to achieve that future. This Plan is an update of the community's last adopted Comprehensive Plan, adopted by the Washington City Council in 2006. Washington's Comprehensive Plan is a strategic document that compiles information, community dialogue, and preferred public policy choices for the City. This plan provides policy guidance on a variety of complementary community issues, including coordinating growth and infrastructure, highlighting economic development pursuits, and protecting environmental resources. The plan is organized around ten key themes:
• Downtown and the Waterfront
• Economic Development
• Community Appearance
• Historic Preservation
• Tourism and Eco-tourism
• Transportation and Mobility
• Public Services and Facilities
• Commercial Business Districts
• Housing
• Neighborhoods
This updated Comprehensive Plan provides a policy framework, establishing the context for decision-making on projects and helping the community set priorities for action. This Plan suggests priorities for attention and action. The plan both sets forth the long-term vision, and serves as a resource for day-to-day decision-making.
Beginning on page 64 you can find a listing of "goals" for each of the ten key themes or issues.
On page 69 you can find the beginning on an analysis of "Existing Conditions." In this section you will find:
East Carolina University, along with its medical school and associated hospitals, accounts for much of the recent growth of the area. The City of Washington, with its family-friendly culture, waterfront, recreational opportunities, and reasonable commuting distance from Greenville, is increasingly viewed as a desirable place to live for individuals and families associated with ECU. (Page 70-71.)
In this section we find the data to support the following conclusions:
• Washington has seen very little population growth and is projected to continue this static trend.
• On the other hand, Beaufort County has been growing at a faster rate than the City.
• Both the county and the city have lagged behind the state, Greenville/Pitt and New Bern/Craven.
Specifically, over the last 30 years Washington increased in population from 8418 to 9744, a growth of 1326, which the Plan says, came mostly from "annexation of adjacent areas, the development of subdivisions along the eastern and western ends of the city, and the natural increase in population." The Plan does not give any details about where the growth has occurred other than that statement. It only says that the growth rate in Washington was 1.7% while in the County it was 6.2%. It is worthy of note that neither growth rate is viewed by typically accepted planning standards as sufficient to foster robust economic growth and development (i.e., jobs) but Washington's less than 2% growth rate is probably not sufficient to keep up with the increasing cost of municipal services and clearly not sufficient to sustain significant improvement in infrastructure without increasing the tax burden on existing taxpayer base. This is a major issue.
The warning flags in the demographics can best be seen in the "Trends in Age." What they show is that both the City and the County are getting progressively grayer with fewer and fewer young people (<18). The Plan itself is confusing on this point. It reports:
Overall, data show that the population for the city and county is slightly older than the state averages. Based on the most recent U.S. Census figures, the median ages of the populations for the City of Washington increased from 39.5 to 41.6, and the percentage of people over 65 was 19%, compared to the state percentage of 13%.
Looking forward, the trend appears to be continuing; Washington's future population will likely include a larger percentage of seniors and lower percentages of persons under 65 than the present population. While this is a trend that is being seen around the nation as the baby boomer generation ages, OSBM projects that Beaufort County will have a considerably higher percentage of adults over the age of 65 than the state of North Carolina over the next two decades. As shown in the table listed below, in 2030, it is projected that Beaufort County will have 28% of its population over the age of 65, compared to North Carolina, which will have only 19%. The City of Washington's age profile is very similar to, but slightly younger than, the Beaufort County Profile. For Washington in 2010: 24% under 18; 60% 18-64; and 16% over 64.
It then shows a table that does not break out Washington from the remainder of Beaufort County. Thus, presumably the "county" numbers include Washington's number, making it impossible to distinguish the relative trends between the city and county. We suspect it they had broken out the census tracks surrounding Washington, principally Chocowinity, the picture would have been clearly one of a deteriorating "inner city" with a more robust growing suburbs. That raises major issues related to infrastructure, particularly utilities (water and sewer) which are not addressed at all in the Plan.
What little comparison of trends the Plan does contain shows that Washington is lagging behind neighboring New Bern. Our neighbor to the south grew from 14,557 in 1980 to 29,524 in 2010 while Washington was growing from 8,418 in 1980 to 2000 which it counted 9,583 but began to decline over the last 15 years while New Bern saw its greatest growth. One might assume the comparison between Washington and Greenville would be even more stark.
In summary, what the data in this document show is that Washington could be said to be "withering on the vine" while other nearby places are growing. And the projections for the future don't show much of a change in that picture. But the Plan does not specifically address this issue, except in vague generalities.
Employment statistics contained in the Plan reveal equally stark comparisons and raise significant issues not addressed in the Plan. For example, the largest employment sector that supports both Washington and Beaufort County's economy is in the "Educational services, and health care and social assistance." (Not people getting social assistance but people working in that sector). Nearly one out of every three people working in Washington work in that sector while 1 in 4 in the County work for the school system, community college and social services. Manufacturing, which gets most of the attention and money when they start looking at "jobs," makes up less than 10% of the jobs in Washington and only 14.2% of the jobs in Beaufort County. Again, the Plan does not say whether the numbers reported for the County include Washington or whether they are separate, thus casting serious validity and reliability reflections on these data. One presumes these employment numbers are for jobs within Beaufort County rather than census data of residents of Beaufort County who work outside the County. The Plan simply does not address this. If the number are employment of residents, regardless of job location, then this changes the picture immensely. But the Plan does not afford us enough information to know. We suspect the relative high proportion of "jobs" in education and health care, compared to the state's numbers, would indicate that many of the jobs in that sector are actually located in Pitt County.
And that raises significant questions about the validity of this entire plan. It does not look at commuting. It has no data that would allow us to see the extent to which Beaufort/Washington's circumstances are intertwined with Greenville and Pitt County.
The Plan also is grossly deficient in data related to utilities planning. It only says:
The City of Washington owns electric, water, and sewer utilities to provide these services to residents, businesses and industries of Washington, North Carolina. The water supply source for the City of Washington is groundwater from the Castle Hayne Aquifer. The city currently has more than adequate water and sewer capacity to meet the needs of its residents. The average annual daily water use for the City of Washington in 2004 was only 55% of system capacity and the average annual daily discharge is only at 49% of the plant's permitted wastewater treatment capacity.
The city has also adopted the Wellhead Protection Plan to ensure that potential contaminants will not reach the city's wells. Through this plan, the City monitors the quality of the City's water supply and mitigates any potential contamination.
Amazingly this information does not account for the fact that Washington serves a considerably larger wastewater area than the City of Washington. Those "outside" areas include Chocowinity/Cypress Landing and a significant part of the River Road area east of Washington, as well as commercial areas on U. S. 264 West. There is no mention in the plan about what the trends are in those areas and what kind of capacity demands will be placed on the system in the next 20 years (the life of the Plan).
But beyond that, the Plan is grossly deficient in addressing the entire public utilities sector. In fact, we would suggest that while the county and municipalities spend an inordinate amount of their time and money trying to promote "economic development" the Plan does not include a comprehensive utilities plan. No "comprehensive plan" is complete without projecting where sewer will be needed in the future and how it is going to be developed. And the same is true for the electric utility, but that is another story for another day, except to suggest that whether Washington is going to stay in the electric business is something that really needs to be considered.
The Plan talks about the river being an asset to Washington and by implication to Beaufort County. Then to not address the issue of sewer along the river is regrettable. We would suggest nothing will have a greater impact on this community than will real estate that is tied to the river; probably much more than "manufacturing" locating in industrial parks.
But the most glaring omission in the Plan is the dearth of consideration for how Washington and Beaufort County should position ourselves in relation to Greenville. We sit within a half hour of the most prolific economic engine in Eastern North Carolina in the ECU complex. Just consider one question: Should Washington and Beaufort County focus more on trying to get manufacturing companies to move here or should we be focused on how to provide a high quality of residential life for people who work in Greenville and want to live on or near the water and in a "small town" atmosphere, maybe with superior schools? We would suggest Beaufort's future cannot really be properly envisioned without considering what ECU, including the medical complex, could mean to this community.
Likewise, the Plan gives scant attention to the impact of the trends in the public school system impacting Washington. The demographic trends in the Washington Attendance Area show a significant static to declining population. With public schools funded largely by enrollment, what the static population numbers mean for the ability to support public schools is nothing short of staggering. Yet the Plan is void of any significant attention to this issue. There is no mention on the impact of non-traditional public schooling on the city or county and what implications these trends may have on economic development, specifically the ability of Washington and western Beaufort County to attract residential development from the job base in Greenville.
We'll have more on this issue in future editions. But for now we will simply suggest that the Plan leaves much to be desired as a realistic planning document.
2-26-13 Update:
The article above was written before the County Commissioners decided to build the jail in the Industrial Park and obviously before the City Council expressed its concern at their February 25 meeting. But the conjunction of the jail issue and the city's Comprehensive Plan just illustrates the weakness of both the Plan and the city's planning process. It is inconceivable to us that a consulting firm could produce such a report without dealing with the issue of the future of the county government complex in downtown Washington. While they did not know the Commissioners would vote to move the jail out of the downtown, they certainly knew, or should have known, that the jail issue was current. And you don't need to be a professional planner to know that somebody should have conferred with county officials about what they see in the future related to county government and downtown Washington. This is poor planning and given the issues the demographics present to our community it is inexcusable that this deficiency was allowed to go un-noticed. But the more alarming thing here is the lack of communication between the city and county. Given the challenges this community faces, both economic and demographic, that is inexcusable. And the sad part is that after paying Clarion, we still do not have sufficient data upon which to address the major issues.
The Plan needs more than "Pride in the past, faith in the future."
