Comprehensive Plan

The Comprehensive Plan (PDF) (20.6 MB) is a living document that will be updated periodically to keep pace with the fluid nature of growth in Ketchikan. This page is dedicated to keeping the community current on events, process, content, and other aspects of the Comprehensive Plan continuum.

What it Is

The Comprehensive Plan is a long-range document that memorializes the vision of the community and the leadership of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough. Used as a guideline to provide consistent application of regulations and to provide for responsible development, the Comprehensive Plan establishes the framework to build a sustainable community plan within the geographic boundaries of the region known as the Ketchikan Gateway Borough, inclusive of its unincorporated parts and municipalities.

Function

Of greater significance than the written plan, is the process of public involvement that creates, updates, and applies the goals of the plan. Either through active involvement in this process or by using the comprehensive plan as a guide and as a catalyst to our thinking we are taking responsible action towards achieving a healthy, safe, attractive, and viable community for present and future generations.

Effective community plans are plans that are "of the community" and "for the community" if not entirely "by the community". It is through citizen participation that the body charged with the responsibility for developing a plan, the Planning Commission, can ensure that the plan truly is for the community.

It is also through citizen participation that the Planning Commission and Borough Assembly involve the community in the process, so that those in the community who care can participate sufficiently that they believe that the plan is truly representative of the community and its collective will.