Lake Forest Park reviews draft climate element; public hearing set for Nov. 13

Mark Hoffman, the city of Lake Forest Park’s community development director, and consultants from Cascadia Consulting Group presented a draft climate element to the City Council on Oct. 23, outlining both greenhouse-gas reduction and climate resilience policies and asking the council to hold a public hearing on Nov. 13. Staff said the city completed a SEPA determination of nonsignificance this week and could bring the item back for council action as soon as Nov. 20.

The draft, developed with the city’s Climate Protection Advisory Team, Cascadia, and the planning commission, responds to 2023 changes to the Growth Management Act (House Bill 1181) and to state funding made available through the Climate Commitment Act. The element includes a greenhouse-gas reduction subelement and a resilience subelement, nine overall policy goals and a set of supporting implementation actions. The planning commission transmitted a recommendation and a redlined draft to council for review.

Cascadia senior associate Maddie Siebert and consultant Alexandra summarized the technical analysis behind the draft. The team produced community greenhouse-gas inventories for 2019, 2022 and 2023 and a municipal operations inventory for 2023. In those inventories, Cascadia reported…