PROS Plan summary

The PROS Plan guides how the City preserves and expands our park, recreation and open space system as Bellingham grows. It outlines the steps we need to take to keep achieving a quality, sustainable parks and recreation system in the future.

We update the PROS Plan every six years because conditions change and so that we can remain eligible for grant funding from Washington State.

In our last PROS Plan, community feedback helped define collective values for our parks and recreation system:

  • Equity

  • Design

  • Conservation

  • Play

  • Connection

  • System resilience

  • Partnerships

Those values are the framework woven through the PROS Plan’s chapters.

  • Community setting – This chapter deals with location, topography, climate and natural features that define Bellingham. It also explains more about our population and local trends in recreation, plus our maintenance and volunteer programs.
  • Existing facilities – This chapter describes all of our existing facilities. We include both facilities that are owned or managed by the City and facilities that are owned or operated by other agencies that also county toward the City's level of service metrics. The inventory of existing facilities is divided into classifications: neighborhood park, community park, special use site, open space, and trail.
  • Land and facility demand – Level of service (LOS) standards help us plan and budget for the needs of a growing and changing population. We set our standards in several ways: how close parks and recreation facilities are to people (service area), how much land is needed compared to the population size (acres per 1,000 people), and other ways. This chapter outlines our LOS standards and tools we use to measure how much land and facilities we need over the next 20 years.
  • Recommendations – In this chapter, we list potential policies, projects and facilities based on our existing inventory, needs assessments, and public input. While the list of recommendations is comprehensive, we implement them only when funding, feasibility and the right opportunities make it possible. All recommendations must also be approved by the City Council before we take action.
  • Implementation – This section addresses our financial strategy over a 6-20 year period so that we can secure and maintain existing facilities, provide recreational programs, renovate facilities, and implement project priorities. It includes our revenue and expenditures, capital maintenance needs, and our funding sources.

You can read the full plan from 2020 on our website.

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