Background:

What is the Comprehensive Plan Update?

The Comprehensive Plan is a roadmap to Sumner’s Future. The Plan lays out the community’s vision for how we will live, work, get around, and grow over the long term. The Plan contains the community’s goals and policies about things like land use, housing, transportation, environment and capital facilities.

The Update will revise the existing Plan to create a new 2024 Comprehensive Plan. The process will also include revisions to the Sumner Zoning Code and development regulations—which implement the Comprehensive Plan policies. City staff will start working on updates in 2023. Private individuals and developers may also apply for a change to the Comprehensive Plan, Zoning Map or regulations (none were submitted by the January 2023 submittal deadline).

What changes are proposed?

There were no changes requested by private parties by the January 2023 submittal deadline. Therefore, the amendments will consist of changes proposed by staff, working with a consultant team. Amendments will include updates to all chapters of the Comprehensive Plan and updates to the Zoning Code regulations as needed. Most of the revisions consist of minor “clean up;" some will be significant revisions that are driven by new State and County requirements. As revisions are prepared for Planning Commission and City Council review, the public will be able to review them too. Documents related to the proposed amendments will be posted on this page.

What’s the process and timeline?

First, the Sumner Planning Commission reviews the amendments to be considered. As amendments are evaluated, additional changes may be made (e.g. a change in a policy or a regulation change). Once the Planning Commission has evaluated the amendments, they will make a recommendation to the City Council. The Council makes the final decision.

The estimated 2-year timeline and milestones for the 2024 Update:

Will there be opportunities to comment on the changes?

Over the next 2 years, there will be opportunities to comment on what’s proposed at various steps in the process. There will be a future Planning Commission public hearing, as well as a City Council public hearing. These hearings will have a public comment period, and dates will be posted on this page.

What’s the latest

July through September 2023

The Planning Commission continues its review of the Comprehensive Plan (Comp Plan) policies and potential related code changes. The next “elements” (chapters) of the Comp Plan to be reviewed are: Utilities Element, Essential Public Facilities Element, and Historic/Cultural Resources Element. The next items to be reviewed, tentatively September) are Land Use Element, Housing Element, and Environment/Climate Element. Related documents are posted in the Documents Library column on the right.

May-June 2023

EIS Scoping Notice Process: As part of the Comp Plan update, the City will issue an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which analyses several alternative growth scenarios, potential impacts of those, and mitigation measures. The first step in this process is to issue a Scoping Notice, which is a call to agencies, tribes and the public to comment on the scope of the upcoming EIS. The deadline to comment is June 8, 2023. Related documents are posted in the Documents Library column on the right.

Review of Plan Elements: The Planning Commission has completed its review of the first 7 elements (chapters) of the Comprehensive Plan (Comp Plan). Staff will make minor edits to these chapters to reflect the Commission's comments, and will bring those back to the Commission at their June 1st meeting. The draft documents are posted in the Documents Library column to the right.

April-May 2023

The April 2023 Planning Commission meeting begins the Commission’s review of the Comprehensive Plan (Comp Plan), starting with the first several “elements” (chapters) of the Comp Plan. It is the Commission’s role to review the proposed amendments and make recommendations to the City Council.

The first five chapters of the Comp Plan are being presented to the Commission for consideration and comment. The policies in these chapters are from the adopted 2020 Comp Plan; however, most have not been updated since 2015. For the 2024 review, most of the policies have been carried forward unchanged or with minor updates as a “clean up” of outdated terms and text. However, some of the updated 2024 policies consist of substantive revisions or entirely new policies, as needed to reflect new State and County requirements. The Documents Library in the right hand column contains the 5 chapters to be reviewed.

March-April 2023

• Docket review: The Planning Commission will review the list/docket of proposed amendments in March-April 2023, and recommend which changes will move forward for further consideration.
• Public Participation Plan: The Commission will review the proposed Public Participation Plan that will guide City outreach efforts during the 2024 update.
• In April 2023, the Commission is scheduled to start reviewing revisions to the first few chapters in the Comprehensive Plan.