SEQUIM — City Council members shared their visions of Sequim’s future, with hopes ranging from a new City Hall on West Cedar Street between Second Avenue and North Sequim Avenue to traffic improvements leading into and through the city.
Council members exchanged thoughts during the opening of a two-day retreat at The Lodge of Sherwood Village, which started Friday afternoon and ended Saturday.
“Sequim will be the place to stop, shop and come to on the Peninsula,” said council member Don Hall, who along with the entire council attended the annual retreat with City Manager Steve Burkett and professional facilitator Julia Novak.
Borrowing from the National Public Radio program, “This I Believe,” Novak asked council members to relate how they believed in Sequim and its future.
Hall called for downtown improvements, extending water and sewer infrastructure to the proposed expansion of Sequim Marine Science Lab at Sequim Bay, commonly known as Battelle.
That same infrastructure should be extended to the proposed John Wayne family resort near the Port of Port Angeles’ John Wayne Marina, Hall said.
He spoke strongly about forming a new park district, professionally operated with multiuse fields run by the district.
Hall also expressed hopes for an expanded Sequim Open Aire Market extending to Washington Street.
Hall voiced support for siting, designing and building a new city hall in the vicinity of the existing West Cedar Street building.
He said he saw a downtown improvement plan that opened Pioneer Park on Washington Street to the public.
He wants to see a highway interchange completed at the east end of Sequim, allowing a U.S. Highway 101 eastbound off-ramp at Simdars Road, which was never constructed for lack of funding when the five-mile U.S. Highway 101 stretch was opened in 1999.
Council member Bill Huizinga — who moved to Sequim in 1974 and remembered a town of two traffic lights, a railroad running through where the Safeway supermarket stands today and a weak economy — suggested that the city work with Clallam County to improve traffic patterns.
“The way the road infrastructure is designed, everything has to come through Sequim,” Huizinga said.
“We haven’t planned for that,” he added.
He voiced concern about heavy traffic on Washington Street and Sequim Avenue.
With more than 20,000 vehicle trips per day passing Sequim High School on North Sequim Avenue, Huizinga said traffic was back to what it was before the Highway 101 “bypass” was constructed.
“We need to sit down with the county and figure out how to develop traffic patterns,” Huizinga said, adding that should be done in the next two years.
“I think a lot of the future of Sequim depends on what we do,” he said.
Huizinga said that the city staff has more time to plan now that it is not inundated with development proposals as it was between 2002 and 2007.
Mayor Pro Tem Laura Dubois, agreeing that Sequim has a traffic problem, called for a truck route so commercial trucks would avoid driving through residential neighborhoods south of Washington Street.
She also called for an annexation policy that would ensure that adding areas would not be a financial liability to the city.
Mayor Ken Hays recalled that one of the council’s priorities set last year was to rethink transportation.
“I feel like we are trying to work on that,” Hays said.
He said the Planning Commission, which advises the council on such development matter, should be allowed to “think freely.”
Burkett said the council will meet with the Planning Commission on Jan. 31 to discuss issues.
He said one of the city’s goals is to hire a consultant for a transportation master plan within the next two months.
A survey of Sequim residents would ask them their thoughts on how to improve transportation in the town, he added.
Council member Susan Lorenzen saw Sequim becoming a “highly successful locale” while maintaining its small-town atmosphere.
White-collar jobs will become the norm in Sequim, Lorenzen said, and schools would improve and include a satellite university site.
She sees a parks district that will also serve as an arts and music center.
Homelessness will be eradicated in Sequim, she envisions, with better medical care options.
“Sequim’s City Hall will be a showcase of modern technology,” Lorenzen said, and slow, quality growth will be the norm.
Council member Erik Erichsen said it did not matter what he believed, recalling that he ran on a platform of reducing unbridled development and to listen well to Sequim residents.
“If we would stop thinking about what we believe and start thinking about what people like and listen to them, that would help us fulfill their wishes,” he said.
Council member Ted Miller said city leaders must take “future blight” seriously.
“We need to find ways to encourage improvements on most deteriorating structures, and provide incentives to replace physically and functionally obsolescent buildings,” Miller said.
“Lessons learned in the downtown plan improvements may be invaluable in other sections of town.”
Miller said he recognized Sequim’s senior citizens as the city’s “greatest asset.”
“Sequim has weathered the recession as well as it has largely because of the steady income of our retirees,” he said in support of marketing the city primarily as a retirement and tourism center, which he saw as a way to weather bad economic times.
Dubois said she believes the council needs to communicate better with residents.
She said she not only needs to work on her own communications skills but that she hoped city staff also would listen better.
“Our citizens and stakeholders need to share their views,” she said.
Burkett told council members that city staff morale has improved because council members have a better relationship with staff.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.