Your recent articles on the Northgate area rightly noted that the City has a lot of work to do to respond effectively to neighborhood planning. The City Council is acutely aware of this, and we are working very hard to ensure that the current process for plan approval (now about halfway completed) is complemented with a comprehensive financing and implementation package. The City is moving forward to implement many plan recommendations as soon as they have been validated by the communities, such as the purchase of the Greenwood Greenhouse property, and the property adjacent to the Belltown P-Patch for park space, and funding transportation improvements at 23rd and Union in the Central Area and sidewalk repair in South Park.

Our new Neighborhood Development Managers are reviewing the priorities from all 38 neighborhood plans, and city departments are working to change the way they do business in response.

The Northgate Comprehensive Plan predated the current neighborhood planning process, having been adopted in 1993. Its early adoption has fueled some impatience in the community in implementation, and the City had not integrated it with the other plans in a way that would help to address those citizen concerns.

Recognizing this problem, the City Council is bringing the Northgate Plan into alignment with the overall city strategy. This will begin with a Council staff analysis of the plan and its implementation. In August, the Council's Neighborhoods, Growth Management and Civic Engagement Committee will review the plan and this analysis, and the Council will adopt a resolution addressing the Plan's elements and lay out a City work plan in response. Councilmembers have been assigned to be stewards for each of the other plans, and I have agreed to serve as Council steward for the Northgate Comprehensive Plan, with the assistance of Councilmember Peter Steinbrueck. The Department of Neighborhoods, at the request of the City Council, has provided the emerging neighborhood steward organization, Citizens for a Livable Northgate, with funding to develop a communications network and organize neighborhood meetings to assess the current status of the plan in the light of the many proposed developments in the Northgate area.

We are aware that many people in the community have expressed concerns about these developments. Some of these concerns have to do with whether the proposed developments are consistent with the adopted Northgate Comprehensive Plan - others raise issues that were not part of the planning process or that relate to areas of the development proposals that are not necessarily subject to city control.

Citizens are absolutely right to hold the City accountable for the implementation of the Plan. Council staff is reviewing the Plan's recommendations and assessing their consistency with decisions that the City is making. If the Council determines that these decisions are inconsistent with the adopted Plan, we will consider actions to rectify any discrepancies.

Insofar as proposed developments may be consistent with the Plan but still raise significant community concerns, the Council will also work with the community and the developers to address these concerns. Developers have been responsible and responsive to issues that have been raised to date, and the community has expressed its commitment to the Plan and its belief in the legitimacy of the Plan's goals. The City cannot control all of the actions of private property owners, and it is unlikely that everyone's concerns can be fully met. The City can, however, work diligently to ensure that we fulfill our obligations under the Northgate Comprehensive Plan, and that all parties are engaged in finding positive solutions to community concerns.

Citizen stewardship is also a critical part of Plan implementation. The Council welcomes the new level of community concern and interest in the future of the Northgate Urban Center, and will do our best to address issues raised by these citizens.

-RICHARD CONLIN,

Seattle City Council