The words wildfires and floods can put fear and anxiety into any individual who has faced either of these natural hazards. This is why Deschutes County partnered with the Community Planning Workshop (CPW) to conduct a review and analysis of their county code as it relates to wildfire and flood hazards. The CPW Deschutes Code Review Team recently met with Deschutes County’s Planning Commission on April 9 to presented floodplain land development policy options to the commission, based on best practices and policy recommendations from the county.

With an extensive agenda and limited time to present at the planning commission meeting, the team attempted to summarize and present the risk of flooding in Deschutes County, with a focus on presenting policy options. However, as the meeting progressed, it became clear that presenting a detailed line-by-line review of county code and policy options can be complicated and tedious. Our team forgot that the planning commissioners are volunteers and individuals with various degrees of personal and professional experience in floodplain management and flood policy and don’t know everything. We realized we were too busy presenting, that we forgot to educate them about the findings.

This was the first time that anyone on our team had presented to a planning commission, let alone discusses a topic so comprehensive as natural hazard mitigation policies.  We were so focused on showing we had done our research regarding the implications of limiting development, increase population growth, and reviewing every county code that related to flooding, that we neglected to emphasis how the policies we are recommending differ from the county’s current code and provide details on how the new polices could benefit the county.

After debriefing our planning commissioner meeting, we were reminded of the American Institute of Certified Planners responsibilities and ethics of planning. As planners, our team’s responsibility to our profession and colleagues is to “contribute to the development of, and respect for, our profession by improving knowledge and techniques, making work relevant to solutions of community problems, and increasing public understanding of planning activities”. Specifically “shall educate the public about planning issues and their relevance to our everyday lives.”

As we prepare for our upcoming meeting regarding wildfire policies, we have incorporated all the feedback we learned from the flood work-session and we are eager to present our findings in a more informative and engaging way. As a team, we have unquestionably grown and become more aware of not only our roles as graduate students, but also as educators. We look forward to finding a better balance in the final months of our project.

About the Authors: the Deschutes County Code Review Team is made up of Community and Regional Planning Masters candidates Michael DeHart, Erin Horan, Maureen Jackson, Brett Setterfield, and Drew Pfefferle. Team members are studying Community and Regional Planning in various areas of interests including environmental planning and policy, transportation, and natural hazard planning and mitigation.