Chelan leaders look beyond 'the loudest voice' in planning city's future

CHELAN — Before Chelan City Council debates another trail, another park improvement, another housing project or another transportation proposal, Mayor Erin McCardle wants elected officials to begin somewhere else entirely: with what the community has already said it values.

That philosophy shaped the city's annual strategic retreat June 30, where council members and department directors spent more than three hours discussing how local government should make decisions. The workshop produced no votes. Instead, it offered a rare public look at the framework city leaders hope will guide Chelan's 2027 budget and comprehensive plan update.

City Administrator Laura McAloon opened the evening with what amounted to a primer on municipal government. She reminded council members that elected officials establish policy while the mayor and city staff implement it, using the comprehensive plan, city code and annual budget as examples of how that direction becomes action.

"The council sets direction. Staff carries it out."

For the rest of the evening, nearly every discussion traced back to that idea.

McCardle's presentation argued that if the council is responsible for setting direction, it first needs a reliable way to understand where the community wants to go. She pointed to the Lake Chelan Vision Project, completed with Our Valley Our Future in 2024, as one tool for doing that.

Public meetings and council comment periods remain an important part of that process, she said. Residents who take the time to attend meetings often bring firsthand experience, neighborhood knowledge and perspectives that simply can't be captured in a survey. The visioning project was designed to complement those conversations by reaching residents who may never speak during public comment at all, creating a broader picture of community priorities before individual issues come up for debate.

Through bilingual surveys, stakeholder interviews and targeted listening sessions, organizers gathered input from 710 participants, including seniors, Latino residents, business owners, nonprofit leaders, educators, agricultural producers and young adults. The result, McCardle said, was a community baseline that could help council distinguish between individual concerns and broader trends.

Without that foundation, she said, difficult decisions risk being driven by "the loudest voice in the room."

The report found remarkable consistency in what residents said they value: Lake Chelan, the valley's small-town character, its natural beauty, agriculture, locally owned businesses and a safe, connected community. It also identified recurring concerns about housing affordability, managing growth, infrastructure, tourism and preserving the area's identity. Those findings have since been distilled into seven strategic initiatives that now guide departmental work plans and will help shape the city's budget discussions this fall.

McCardle stressed that the research isn't intended to settle future debates. Instead, she encouraged council members to return to it whenever those debates arise, using it as one way to evaluate whether individual proposals align with the priorities residents have already identified.

She cited walking trails as one example. Public discussion can sometimes create the impression that trail projects are broadly unpopular, she said, but when researchers examined responses across age groups and demographics, support for additional walking trails and safer pedestrian connections remained consistently strong. The lesson was that no single conversation, meeting or social media discussion tells the whole story.

Council members spent the next portion of the retreat testing that framework against the issues they continue hearing from constituents. Housing, transportation, downtown vitality, permitting, parks and economic development all surfaced during discussion, but one concern appeared repeatedly regardless of topic: communication.

Councilmember Tim Hollingsworth questioned whether residents have seen enough visible progress on housing affordability despite ongoing work by the Chelan Valley Housing Trust and other partners.

"I don't feel like the community sees execution."

Others agreed with Hollingsworth, saying the city sometimes struggles to publicly connect single projects to the larger planning process that residents rarely see. McCardle said she heard a common thread emerging throughout the conversation: if the city expects residents to understand its decisions, it has to do a better job explaining not only what it is doing, but why.

That conversation naturally led into the evening's hands-on exercises.

Council members first worked through a fictional budgeting exercise in which each participant received different pieces of information before deciding how to divide limited funding among competing park projects. The exercise intentionally gave each participant different information, forcing the groups to make recommendations without anyone possessing the complete picture.

When it concluded, McAloon didn't ask whether the groups had chosen the "right" project. Instead, she had them answer different questions:

• Did they have enough information?
• Did they assume someone else knew something they didn't?
• Did anyone fail to share information because they thought someone else already knew it?

The questions mirrored the reality of governing, where better decisions depend on asking questions, sharing information and recognizing that everyone around the table brings different expertise.

The council then repeated the exercise using real Chelan projects, weighing hypothetical investments in improvements at Don Morse Memorial Park, irrigation replacement at the Lake Chelan Golf Course and a potential community sports complex that could include an ice rink. Rather than arguing over winners and losers, discussion quickly shifted toward grant opportunities, partnerships, financing strategies and debt capacity. These are the same tradeoffs council members will face when the 2027 budget comes together later this year.

Another discussion highlighted the difference between policy goals and legal authority.

Councilmember Cesar Rivera-Vargas suggested exploring whether the city could make the permitting process more favorable for Chelan locals. Later, resident Jerrid Higgins asked why local residents couldn't simply be given preference. Because the retreat did not include a public comment period, the question wasn't addressed during the meeting.

However, cities can decide what their permitting standards will be through adopted code and policy, but once those standards exist, they generally must be administered consistently. Whether an applicant lives in Chelan or somewhere else, the same rules apply.

As the retreat came to a close, McCardle returned to the question that had quietly framed the entire evening.

Had anyone actually referred back to the community vision research while making those budget decisions?

Some had, and some hadn't. The answers were mixed, but the moment underscored the purpose of the retreat.

Chelan's next debates over housing, parks, transportation and growth will almost certainly be every bit as spirited as those that came before them. City leaders aren't expecting those conversations to become easier. Their hope is that they become more grounded — beginning not with the debate itself, but with a clearer understanding of the community they're trying to serve.

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media