Maggie Boles

This document, an appendix to the City of Leavenworth's 2026 Comprehensive Plan, analyzes the city's housing landscape and strategic direction. It outlines Leavenworth's land capacity to meet forecasted housing needs across all income levels and for emergency housing until 2046. The plan focuses on addressing affordability challenges, which include rapidly increasing housing values and a high cost burden on renters, and calls for policies and incentives to promote attainable and workforce housing. Key priorities involve diversifying housing types, enhancing housing policies to support anti-displacement and anti-exclusion objectives, and ensuring an adequate housing supply for future generations.

This Comprehensive Plan for Leavenworth outlines strategies for land use to implement the city's vision and accommodate projected growth through 2026. It focuses on designating future land uses—residential, commercial, industrial, recreational, and public—while balancing growth with environmental protection. Key objectives include providing adequate land for housing and employment, promoting efficient land use, encouraging economic development, preserving natural and cultural features, protecting air and water quality, and ensuring sustainable and resilient development practices.

This Housing Element of the Leavenworth Comprehensive Plan aims to improve the quantity, diversity, and quality of housing options by evaluating existing conditions, reviewing projected needs, and implementing data-based housing tools. The plan seeks to mitigate displacement pressures and ensure housing access for all, regardless of income, race, or background. Key strategic goals include enabling sufficient affordable housing for all economic segments, promoting a diverse mix of residential densities and housing types, providing incentives and subsidies for affordable housing, encouraging and incentivizing workforce housing, balancing housing growth with the prevention of displacement, and ensuring residential development is resilient to climate change impacts.

This Comprehensive Plan articulates the City of Leavenworth's vision for guiding its physical, social, and economic development. It encompasses key elements including land use, housing, parks and recreation, economic development, capital facilities, utilities, transportation, and climate resilience. The plan aims to foster a thriving community by addressing challenges such as affordable housing, sustainable growth, and preservation of natural resources, while enhancing visitor experiences and ensuring efficient infrastructure and services.

The meeting included a study session segment focused on recent operational updates and planned initiatives for the first quarter. Key discussions included a detailed presentation on the lodging tax budget allocations, which combined information on city and county funding sources, highlighting Christmas Town as a high ROI event. Pedestrian count data from the holiday season was reviewed, noting the impact of a weather event on footfall compared to previous years. The council was also presented with proposed updates to several City construction standard details to improve safety and maintenance efficiency. Specific changes discussed included updating the fire hydrant assembly specification to a lower-maintenance, less costly model, revising the residential driveway connection detail to clarify the connection point at the city road edge and incorporating a bond requirement, and introducing new standard traffic control details to ensure compliance with federal guidelines and improve site safety during road work. A new water connection detail was introduced to incorporate required backflow prevention and reflect material changes.