To everyone who submitted community needs during the survey period, thank you! Departments are going through your suggestions to determine which are feasible and will be using your input to inform their 2023-2024 budgets. We need your help to determine which requests should be a high priority for consideration in County planning and which should be lower priority. 

Please click on the tabs above to prioritize requests in each category as high, medium, low, or “not a priority." Keep in mind that not everything can be a high priority. You may also find that you don't agree with a request that others in your community have submitted. You can rank these requests as “not a priority." 

Background: In 2020, King County Executive Dow Constantine and the King County Council directed the Department of Local Services to create a Community Needs List for each of the different unincorporated areas. The Community Needs List is a community-identified list of service, program, and capital improvement projects for which King County is the responsible government agency. 

The first step in creating the Community Needs List was to create an initial catalog of community requests. After the survey closed, this catalog was reviewed by Local Services and other County departments to determine which requests fell within their areas of responsibility. These requests have been grouped into the following categories: 

• Community and Economic Development
• Human Services
• Land Use and Code Enforcement
• Natural Resources and Parks
• Public Safety
• Roads and Transportation

What happens next? Local Services will share your priorities with the respective King County departments, who will continue to evaluate them for feasibility and inclusion in their 2023-2024 budgets. Local Services will report on the status of requests annually. This process is also not over. Once the prioritization process is done, we’ll put up a new survey so that you can enter new requests to be added to next year’s Community Needs List development cycle.

Out of King County departments’ areas of responsibility: Local Services is connecting with the appropriate external agency to let them know of your requests. For example, for utility requests, emergency homeless response requests, or library requests, Local Services is reaching out to the utility company or organization (such as Puget Sound Energy), King County Regional Homeless Authority, and the King County Library System, respectively.