The Executive Boards certified 2004 Comprehensive Plan Amendments for the City of Monroe and the 2004 Comprehensive Plan Update for the City of Bremerton.

The City of Monroe Amendments include a new transportation demand model, reflected discussion of a new transportation mitigation fee program, and clarified the method of calculating level of service conditions. The City of Bremerton's plan includes capital facilities and services that will accommodate its growth targets, identifies level of service standards, and meets concurrency requirements. Both Monroe's and Bremerton's plans are consistent with Destination 2030 and VISION 2020.

For more information, contact Yorik Stevens-Wajda at 206-389-2158 or ystevens@psrc.org.

The Executive Board was briefed on the work being done by the Growth Management Policy Board to update VISION 2020.

The Growth Management Policy Board is well into the process for the Update. Over the next 20-months, the boards will pass through 12 key decision points and 8 major milestones. The schedule calls for two major public review periods: (1) at the draft Environmental Impact Statement stage, without a preferred alternative, February 2006, and (2) at the draft Final Environmental Impact Statement stage, with a preferred alternative, September 2006. Adoption is scheduled for March 2007.

PSRC is using a new sketch-planning tool called Index - Paint the Region to conduct sensitivity tests of how the region might accommodate an additional 1.6 million people and 1.1 million jobs by the year 2040. Eight regional growth scenarios have been created using the INDEX - Paint the Region Analysis tool. The purpose is to develop and analyze a wide range of growth scenarios, with the goal of producing well-defined alternatives that will describe different ways in which the region might accommodate future growth through the distribution of population and employment. These alternatives will be further analyzed for social, economic, and environmental impacts in the VISION 2020 + 20 project's State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) environmental impact statement. This analysis will lead to the development of a preferred alternative vision for future regional growth. The Growth Management Policy Board is scheduled to take action to select these alternatives at its September 8, 2005, meeting.

For more information, contact Norman Abbott at 206-464-7134 or nabbott@psrc.org.

The Executive Board welcomed Joni Earl of Sound Transit and Kevin Desmond of King County Metro who presented the plans for traffic mitigation during the closure of the downtown Seattle bus tunnel.

The bus tunnel will close for retrofitting on September 24. More than $16 million is being invested in mitigation projects to help ease the flow of bus traffic in the downtown area during the closure. Third Avenue will see a considerable increase in bus traffic for the duration. When the tunnel reopens it will be ready for joint operations between bus and light rail.

More information is available online at www.seattletunnel.org.

In Other Business, the Executive Board: