Why Care About the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan?

Seattle Animal Watch believes that Seattle’s citizens need to speak up during the current One Seattle Comprehensive Plan update. Here's why. (and here’s what to do.)

What is the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan?

The State of Washington’s Growth Management Act requires cities to plan for population growth by creating comprehensive land use plans. The Seattle Comprehensive Plan is a 20-year vision and roadmap for Seattle’s future.  The One Seattle Plan will guide City decisions about where we locate housing and jobs, and where and how we invest in transportation, utilities, parks, and other public assets. The goal is to make the city more equitable, livable, sustainable, and resilient for today's communities and future residents.

Why should this matter to Seattle citizens?

The process generally involves proposals for zoning and a corresponding increase in services and amenities. However, the city also includes proposals for human development, cultural resources and improving the quality of life. To date, the plan and the draft environmental impact statement for that plan STILL do not address companion animals despite a letter sent by seven animal welfare groups in Seattle. The City of Seattle is projected to increase by almost 250,000 people in the next twenty years. People will bring their animals. Is the City and the Seattle Animal Shelter prepared for this? Have they done any analysis? Do they have enough capacity for even the current animal population and their human families?

What are the impacts of poor animal services planning?

The answer is simple: nonprofit rescue organizations must pick up the slack. We are seeing this with the high demand for affordable spay/neuter services, rescue overflows, and community cat neglect. The City of Seattle often offers grants to organizations that work on social issues or neighborhood issues. What support do they offer animal services and rescue organizations when their own animal services are not properly planned or sufficient? Who takes up the financial and emotional slack? Animal welfare groups, volunteers, and their donors.

That’s not fair.

What is the impact of poor land use planning?

Poor land use planning results in a lack of off-leash areas in the City of Seattle. We do not compare favorably to similar cities. There was an article and even an editorial in the Seattle Times about the public safety issues in parks. Not surprisingly, nothing about the animal welfare aspect of this issue. Dogs need to roam for both physical and mental well-being.

How has the City of Seattle treated animal welfare planning to date?

They haven’t. We raised this issue last year during a virtual public meeting about the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan. We asked about animal services planning, not just for off-leash areas, but for spay/neuter, pet food banks, animal cruelty investigations, etc. Where is the interdepartmental planning? We received ten upvotes from meeting attendees, but the only question the chat moderator asked the City staff was about off-leash areas. The answer? Oh, it’s a Parks issue. (In other words, they knew nothing about it.)

What about the Seattle Animal Shelter’s Two-Year Roadmap?

This is not a comprehensive plan for growth. This is a two-year plan to primarily organize internal operations. It has happened before and will happen again.

In one of SAW’s interviews with former director Esteban Rodriguez, we asked about the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan. He said ‘someone’ had reached out to him, but never followed up. We don’t know the real story, but the fact is that no one pursued this.