It’s been 10 years since the Green Seattle Partnership formed and began work on an ambitious 20-year strategic plan. How are we doing? Well, we’re taking some time this year to dig into that question.
The original 20-year plan set out to achieve these three goals by 2025:
1. Restore all 2,500 acres of Seattle forested parklands.
2. Establish financial and volunteer resources to provide long term maintenance and ensure the sustainability of forested parklands.
3. Galvanize an informed, involved, and active community around forest restoration and stewardship.
So far, we’ve got over 1,000 acres of Seattle’s forested parkland in active restoration and long-term management, spread across 80 parks throughout the City. Our progress is in large part thanks to over 700,000 hours of work by our amazing volunteers, in addition to the dedication of our hard-working staff and field crews. We have done a LOT in the past 10 years! But we still have a lot of work to do.
This year, a 10-year strategic plan update process will include community input from our staff, leadership, volunteers, and the public. The City has hired HBB Landscape Architecture to assist in this process. With their understanding of the issues and proven ability to facilitate the public involvement process, they will help ensure the final 10-year strategic plan update is a success by creating a clear, balanced and accurate document.
The process began with an informal survey of the GSP committee members and Forest Stewards. Public involvement will also include presentations to various City of Seattle Boards and Commissions related to the Green Seattle Partnership. Working closely with GSP and Seattle Parks Staff, HBB will produce a document which will outline how the program has evolved since inception, celebrate its successes and create a vision for reaching 2025 and beyond. The plan will identify areas for opportunity, outline how the vision and goal will be achieved, and establish community support for our forested parklands beyond 2025.
We will be working on the update over the summer and will reach out to the community in early September and October.
Project timeline, progress reports, and information on public meetings.
More reflections on the past 10 years, given as a presentation from Green Seattle Partnership staff.