Council discusses GIS capacity, grant consultants and updating critical-area maps

Lake Forest Park councilmembers spent time Thursday outlining options to expand the city’s GIS and grant-writing capacity and to improve its critical areas mapping.

Staff said a full-time GIS hire was not funded in the current budget but the city retains access to a GIS consortium (noted as an Association of Washington Cities benefit) that provides base maps and GIS layers. For one-off or larger needs staff recommended contracting consultants. Councilmembers discussed defining a baseline set of data the city wants collected — storm-drain inverts, culverts, sewer and street inventories — to avoid loss of institutional knowledge when staff leave.

On grant work, staff described a state-level grant consortium of independent grant writers that can be engaged on contract; these contractors can write grant applications but project managers or engineering consultants generally handle subsequent grant administration and reporting.

Council also discussed updating the critical areas inventory (wetlands, floodplains, unstable slopes). Staff said the mapping work is underway in an unfunded capacity by leveraging existing regional datasets and an internal planner’s ArcGIS skills. The stated goal is a more usable online map to reduce the need for costly site-specific studies and to give property owners clearer guidance before they hire consultants.

Councilmembers suggested the city seek available regional and state datasets (for example, post-Oso landslide resources and soil liquefaction layers) and to coordinate with county resources. Staff noted certain mapping and ground-truthing tasks remain unfunded; they will identify costs and bring scope recommendations back to council for prioritization. No formal hiring decisions were made at the meeting.