Sisters comprehensive plan lurches forward

The long-stalled update to Sisters' comprehensive plan moved forward last week as county planners met with Sisters City Planner Neil Thompson to iron out problems.

Most of the problems with the plan, designed to guide Sisters over the next 20 years, appear to be in how information is spelled out.

"I think a lot of the discussion really revolved around the format," said county planning staffer Kevin Harrison. "The way it was laid out made it hard for a reader to determine how conclusions were reached."

Thompson told The Nugget he has already begun reformatting the draft of the plan to make it easier to understand.

The tone of the Wednesday, October 1, meeting stood in contrast to a stinging 11-page memo sent out by county planners in June critiquing the plan. The city-county management agreement requires the county to review the Sisters plan.

According to Thompson, part of the reason the initial criticism was so harsh was that county staff based it on an earlier, outdated draft of the plan.

"As soon as we solved that puzzle," Thompson said, "many of the issues fell away, they fell off the table."

The county had concerns about the plan's population and housing-need projections and about the idea that once housing immediately outside Sisters is used up, the demand will be "transferred" inside the city limits.

But Harrison indicated that Thompson defended the plan's conclusions well - a defense he would like to see better laid out in the document.

"Neil knows this stuff," Harrison said. "He's got it down pat. He could explain it quite articulately."

Thompson will present a re-drafted comprehensive plan to the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners. If the commissioners approve it, the plan comes back to the Sisters City Council for final approval, before being reviewed by the state Department of Land Conservation and Development. According to Thompson, the plan update, begun in 1991, could be in place in early 1998.