# Planning Bellingham's Parks Future — The 2026 PROS Plan Update Begins The Parks and Recreation Committee of Bellingham's City Council met on February 10, 2025, to launch what may be one of the most consequential planning processes for the city's recreational future in years. With $2 million in state grants on the line, aging infrastructure straining budgets, and a community hungry for more recreational opportunities, the update of the Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Plan — known as the PROS Plan — carries significant weight for a city that has seen explosive growth in park usage since the pandemic. ## Meeting Overview Committee Chair Skip Williams called the brief but substantive meeting to order at 2:15 p.m. in City Hall's Council Chambers. Joining him were committee members Hannah Stone and Jace Cotton, along with Mayor Kim Lund, who participated in the discussion. The single agenda item — an overview of the 2026 PROS Plan update process — sparked a wide-ranging conversation about equity, financial realities, and the challenge of managing community expectations in an era of constrained resources. Parks and Recreation Director Nicole Oliver brought a team that included Lane Potter, the department's design and development manager, and Peter Gill, the planning and development coordinator who led the presentation. Their mission: to brief the council on a year-long planning process that will determine priorities for Bellingham's parks, trails, facilities, and recreation programs for the next two decades. "We are jumping on the Bellingham Plan train," Oliver announced, explaining how the parks planning process will integrate with the city's broader comprehensive plan update for the first time. "We're going to have a chapter six in the Bellingham plan. We're going to be going to narrow that goals and policies and be part of that revised framework." ## The PROS Plan Explained Peter Gill opened with a bit of linguistic housekeeping that revealed the department's attention to both detail and image. "Thank you, chair, for acknowledging that we are changing the terminology from pro plan to pro plan it," Gill said with a smile. "It's always been there. The S has just been silent. So good. We're good." The Parks, Recreation and Open Space Plan is far more than a wish list. It's a 20-year strategic guide that functions as the implementation blueprint for everything the Parks and Recreation Department builds, maintains, and programs. Updated every six years, the 106-page document currently serves as Chapter Six of Bellingham's Comprehensive Plan, but that's about to change. In a significant structural shift, the city is splitting the PROS Plan into two integrated parts. The strategic policy framework will become the Parks and Recreation chapter of the new Bellingham Plan, containing high-level goals and policies. The detailed implementation plan — the functional PROS Plan — will stand alone as a working document with facility inventories, service standards, and the crucial capital improvement plan that prioritizes where the city will invest its limited resources. "The Bellingham plan would be the parks chapter that's going to have the goals and policies of the Parks Department," Gill explained. "It'll have growth estimates and it will provide that consistency between different chapters of the Bellingham plan. So it's really the big picture overriding umbrella. And then the pros plan is more that implementation, that functional plan." The plan operates under six guiding principles that define the department's approach: play, inclusion, equity, preservation, connection, and resilience. These aren't just aspirational words — they're operational guidelines that inform every decision from where to build new playgrounds to how to design trail networks. ## Why Update Now? The timing of this update is driven by both requirements and reality. The Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office, which has provided about $2 million in current grant funding for projects like Bakerview Neighborhood Park, Boulevard Park shoreline improvements, and the Sunset Pond Trail, mandates that recipient cities update their PROS Plans every six years. Bellingham's last update was in February 2020, making the February 2026 deadline non-negotiable. But beyond compliance, the city faces a fundamentally changed landscape since the last plan. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered what Gill described as "a significant uptake or uptick in park and trail usage" whose effects are still reverberating throughout the system. Operations costs have climbed as facilities see heavier use and aging infrastructure demands more maintenance. Construction costs have skyrocketed, making every project more expensive than planners anticipated five years ago. "We have significantly increased operations and development costs," Gill noted. "Operations from that increased usage at our park facilities, aging infrastructure. And we've built quite a few new things since then that we need to factor in our design. Development costs have also gone up significantly in the last five years as well." The city has also gained new tools and responsibilities since 2020. Voters approved the Greenways 5 Levy in 2023, adding a new funding stream with a specific focus on climate resiliency. An emerging urban forestry plan will feed into Growth Management Act requirements for tree canopy coverage analysis. The city has integrated 30 acres from the waterfront subarea plan that need to be incorporated into park prioritization. New bicycle and pedestrian master plans require coordination with trail planning. Perhaps most significantly, Bellingham has continued to grow and urbanize, forcing the department to rethink its park models to ensure equitable distribution and access across a more densely populated city. ## A Complex Process Ahead The update will unfold in two phases through 2025. Phase One focuses on inventory, assessment, and the policy framework that will become the Parks chapter of the Bellingham Plan. This portion moves quickly — staff hopes to present it to the Planning Commission in May, with a hearing likely in July alongside the rest of the comprehensive plan update. Phase Two digs into the detailed service and needs analysis that will produce the prioritized project lists and funding strategies that form the heart of the functional PROS Plan. This more granular work continues throughout the rest of the year, with a target of completion by year's end rather than waiting until the February 2026 deadline. Public engagement will be extensive, driven partly by lessons learned during the pandemic about who participates in traditional public processes and who gets left out. The city is bringing on a consultant to help with outreach and has scheduled multiple touchpoints with the community, starting with meetings at Cordata Pavilion and Fair Haven Pavilion in mid-February. "We look to reach a significant portion of the public, and specifically those that are typically underrepresented in our community," Gill emphasized. The engagement strategy includes virtual open houses, partnerships with neighborhood associations, interest group listening sessions, and formal hearings. A community survey launched in January guides inquiry around three basic questions: What's your experience and preferences with the park system? What's the level of satisfaction? And how can the city improve and develop into the future? ## The Equity Challenge The discussion that followed Gill's presentation revealed the tension between community aspirations and fiscal reality that will define this planning process. Council Member Hannah Stone led the charge on what would become the meeting's central theme: equity. "It's challenging because and it's also a benefit, I mean, our community always wants more and rightfully so," Stone said. "That's why this community is such an amazing place to live is because we always strive to continue to do better and improve the, you know, facilities and access, and especially with the parks." But Stone pressed for a more intentional focus on gaps and inequities rather than pursuing what's easy or opportunistic. "Really wanting to focus intentionally on ensuring that we have right equity as far as access and just the infrastructure of parks and open spaces throughout throughout the city," she said. The challenge, Stone noted, is getting community members to think beyond a reflexive "yes to everything" mentality. "I foresee members of the community sort of being like, yes, right. We're all for everything and really wanting community members, I guess, to reflect on what are the true priorities, and that if we were going to have to say no to things, right, what are the things that really elevate to the top of the list?" Council Member Michael Lilliquist reinforced the equity focus, noting it "was a big centerpiece of the last time around, and there was the creation of the priority equity, you know, prioritization tool that focuses on equity." He called for ensuring "that equity remains kind of very much at the center of our prioritization" in the new plan. ## Reaching Underrepresented Communities Council Member Lisa Anderson brought decades of experience in public engagement to bear on the outreach challenge. Her concerns reflected hard-won knowledge about who shows up to evening meetings at City Hall and who doesn't. "How are we engaging with members that are usually underrepresented? The renters, the social, economic, the people with varying abilities to make sure that their voice is heard?" Anderson asked. She noted that evening meetings, transportation barriers, and simple lack of awareness have historically excluded many community members from planning processes. Gill outlined several strategies the city is developing to address these concerns. A Spanish-language public meeting is planned through partnership with Vamos. Virtual open houses will eliminate transportation barriers. The city plans to distribute postcards for people who aren't online, place QR codes in park restrooms so users can participate on-site, and tap into the extensive email list of everyone who has ever participated in a park program. Anderson suggested additional partnerships, particularly with the Bellingham Tenants Union to reach renters and with school districts to get information to families in lower-income neighborhoods. "If somehow we can rely on some of our community partners to use some of their resources to be able to make these announcements might be that," she said. Oliver noted that the Tenants Union had already been suggested at a Greenways meeting, showing the cross-pollination between planning processes. She highlighted plans to feature the PROS Plan update prominently in the spring and summer edition of the Playbook, the parks department publication that reaches every mailbox in the city. ## The Indoor Recreation Center Dream Council Member Stone raised what she called "the big dream for our community" — a large indoor recreation center or community center. This aspiration crystallizes many of the challenges facing the PROS Plan update: balancing long-term vision with six-year planning cycles, managing community expectations against fiscal constraints, and incorporating projects that could take eight to ten years to realize. "I'm slowly trying to come to terms with the fact that large projects or visions. Right, like community center, I've been told 8 to 10 years and we've been pushing about like how to accelerate that," Stone said. "I'm just wondering if there's any vision at this point for what role do those sort of long term plans have within this prose plan, and how that might be incorporated or or addressed?" Oliver's response revealed both progress and uncertainty around this community priority. The city received $200,000 from the state to develop a business plan and has been working with consultants. The department is in the third phase of evaluating the existing Arne Hanna Aquatic Center as a potential redevelopment site and has made progress with the school district on relocating the Carl Cozier pool. "I think that this plan should have some good meat in there of goals and strategies, but I don't think it's going to have everything. It's going to take some time," Oliver said, acknowledging the complexity of planning something Bellingham has never had. ## The Mayor's Reality Check Mayor Kim Lund's contribution to the discussion provided what may have been the meeting's most important moment — a direct acknowledgment of the financial constraints that will ultimately shape every decision in the PROS Plan. "I appreciate Council's direction today to have a lens towards equity about what moves forward," Lund said. "And also I want to make sure and this will be a recurring theme throughout the year. It was part of my budget message. We really also have to be stewards of what we've already created, what we've already invested in." The mayor's message was clear: while the city should explore community needs and identify gaps, the harsh reality is that Bellingham is already struggling to afford what it has today. "We are struggling to afford what we have today. And so when we get at the end of this process, that's going to be the difficult work of balancing. What can we actually bring into being because we're struggling with just where we're at at this moment in time." This sobering assessment set up the fundamental challenge that will run through the entire PROS Plan process: how to maintain credible community engagement around future needs while being transparent about severe fiscal constraints. ## Balancing Engagement and Reality Stone immediately grappled with the tension the mayor had articulated. How does the city ask for meaningful community input without creating expectations that can't be met? "I guess through the engagement process, I mean, it's a balance, right? And wanting to elicit information from community members about sort of what the needs are and what the wants are, where that goes, but also wanting to balance that with the financial reality," Stone said. She worried about a process that would "ask for all this feedback, and then we're going to put it to the side and not be able to actually do anything." Oliver offered a more optimistic view, emphasizing that the city does have resources to work with. The Greenways levy provides ongoing funding. The department continues to be successful with grants. A community center project would require broad partnerships and potentially private sponsorships that could help make it viable. She also noted that community input consistently includes calls for better stewardship of existing facilities. "One of the things that people always tell us when we ever we survey is take better care of what we have. So that is a common refrain from our, our, our community is to just keep taking care of what we have and improve it and enhance it." The department is developing new equity tools that Oliver believes council members will appreciate, including analysis of perceptions of safety, access barriers, and demographic data about who uses which parks. "We have some new data on how people move around the city and what what what's the demographics and where do the people live that go to each park? We're going to be assessing that and seeing some of the things that are stopping them." ## Looking Forward As the 35-minute meeting concluded, several themes had emerged that will likely shape the year-long planning process ahead. The city is committed to a more intentional focus on equity than in past planning cycles, both in terms of which communities get heard and which needs get prioritized. The integration with the Bellingham Plan offers an opportunity for better coordination across city departments and more strategic thinking about parks within broader growth management. But the elephant in the room — the gap between community aspirations and fiscal capacity — remains largely unresolved. The success of this PROS Plan update may ultimately be measured not by the ambitious projects it proposes, but by how honestly it addresses what the city can actually afford to build and maintain. The first community meetings begin this Thursday at Cordata Pavilion, launching a public engagement process that will test whether Bellingham can have an honest conversation about its parks future. The stakes are high — not just the $2 million in state grants that depend on having an updated plan, but the broader question of how a growing city maintains livability and equity when resources can't keep pace with needs. Williams closed the meeting noting that this was "for information and discussion only" and that a report would be given at the evening council meeting. But the brief session had already revealed the complex challenges ahead as Bellingham embarks on planning the next chapter of its parks and recreation future.