Pasco staff seeks targeted economic development goals and infrastructure planning in comp-plan update

Matson, planning staff leading the comprehensive-plan update, told the council that the city will modernize the economic development element to include clearer implementation measures and budgets and to make the plan 'more useful to Pasco's growth strategy.

"We want to make each element very unique to Pasco and not necessarily just meeting the state mandates," Matson said, describing themes such as economic diversification (aerospace, advanced manufacturing, health care), retail and commercial land supply, infrastructure capacity (including substation capacity), tourism and downtown revitalization.

Council members urged measurable targets and workforce development supports. Council Member Campos emphasized apprenticeship and bilingual workforce training tied to local employers and the community college; another member suggested putting numerical targets on higher-wage-job goals and tracking metrics such as jobs created per population growth.

Steven McFadden, deputy executive director of the Port of Pasco, described port assets and long-range planning for an aerospace innovation and manufacturing center. "Our current goal is have engineering and design done around 2030," McFadden said, noting the need for a substation and transmission line to serve a large aerospace tenant and describing a multi-phased, federally-supported infrastructure timetable.

Council and staff discussed retail and land-use choices, including concern that rezoning commercial parcels to residential is hard to reverse. Staff said the update will include outreach to economic partners (Port, chambers) and planning commission input; the full comprehensive plan is expected to be delivered to council as two volumes later in the year.