Planning Sumner’s Future: The 2024 Comprehensive Plan Update

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 Council Public Hearing - December 2, 2024

A Public Hearing will be held on December 2, 2024 at 6:00 PM in the City Council Chambers, 1104 Maple Street. Materials for review prior to the meeting on this website, see "Documents".

October-November 2024 – City Council review

The City Council began its review of the Comprehensive Plan in October, with three study sessions, October 16, 28 and November 12.

May-September 2024 – Planning Commission recommendations

The Planning Commission has had a number of study sessions on the 2024 Comprehensive Plan and Draft Environmental Impact Statement (Comp Plan and DEIS), and held a public hearing on April 4, 2024. Background materials and public comments have been provided in Commission meeting packets. The next meeting(s) with the Planning Commission will focus on the Planning Commission recommendations. The Commission will be asked to take action (make final recommendations) on the proposed Comp Plan amendments, including the Preferred Alternative in the Draft EIS, various Comp Plan Elements and Draft Regulations. The Commission made its final recommendations at the end of September 2024, which will be forwarded to the City Council for review.

Planning Commission April 4, 2024 Public Hearing

The Planning Commission held a public hearing on the Comprehensive Plan on April 4, 2024 at the City Hall Council Chambers, The Commission took testimony from dozens of interested parties and agencies during the hearing and public comment period. The materials for the meeting can be found in the "Public Hearing Packet" in the Documents list on the right.

March-April 2024 - Draft Environmental Impact Statement and Draft Comprehensive Plan

See documents at the top of the Documents list on the right:

• DEIS Notice of Availability

• Volume I - Draft Comprehensive Plan and Codes

• Volume II - Draft EIS, and related Periodic Update Checklists

• Older documents are listed, but most have been revised and incorporated into the Draft Comprehensive Plan and Codes.

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) is issued as of March 1, 2024 for a 60-day public comment period, with comments due April 30, 2024. The DEIS includes environmental analysis and impacts analysis of 3 plan alternative approaches to distributing Sumner's anticipated growth. It also includes the Draft Comprehensive Plan and related plans such as Transportation Management Plan and Capital Facilities Plan, and also Draft Zoning Code Amendments. The scheduled date for a Planning Commission public hearing is April 4, 2024 at 6:00pm. For more info, virtual meeting login info, and related documents see the Documents Library column on the right---which will be updated with additional documents before the Planning Commission public hearing.

April 4, 2024 - Public Hearing with Planning Commission

A public hearing with the Planning Commission has been scheduled for April 4, 2024 at 6:00 pm in the City Hall Council Chambers, 1104 Maple Street, Sumner, WA. Once the materials and the public hearing information is available, the hybrid meeting login, proposed policies/codes, and other documents will be posted in the Documents list on the right.

What’s the process and timeline?

The estimated 2-year timeline for the 2024 Update consists of numerous reviews and 2 public hearings:

What's been completed so far

July through November 2023

The Planning Commission continued its review of the Comprehensive Plan (Comp Plan) policies and potential code changes. Additional “elements” (chapters) of the Comp Plan reviewed were: Utilities Element, Essential Public Facilities Element, and Historic/Cultural Resources Element. The next items to be reviewed through November 2023-January 2024 were the Land Use Element, Housing Element, Environment/Climate Element, Transportation Element and Capital Facilities 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 issues 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 was June 8, 2023. Related documents are posted in the Documents Library column on the right.

Review of Plan Elements: The Planning Commission completed its review of the first 7 elements (chapters) of the Comprehensive Plan (Comp Plan). Staff made minor edits to these chapters to reflect the Commission's comments, and brought 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 began 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 were 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 chapters reviewed.

Background:

The Comprehensive Plan contains the community’s goals and policies that guide decisions about how the city will grow in terms of land use, housing, transportation, the environment and capital facilities, and other decisions that will shape Sumner's future. The 2024 Comprehensive Plan Update will revise the existing Plan, the Sumner Zoning Code and development regulations—which implement the Comprehensive Plan policies. City began working on updates in 2023. The Planning Commission began reviewing draft policies and regulations in the summer of 2023.

The City Council opened the Plan amendment process in 2023, allowing applications for Comprehensive Plan and Zoning Code changes from private parties. 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. Many of the revisions are driven by new State and County requirements.

The Planning Commission began review of the 2024 Comprehensive Plan in March-April 2023. It approved the list/docket of proposed amendments (categories of changes, not specific text updates) and recommended that these move forward for further consideration. The Commission also reviewed the proposed Public Participation Plan that helps guide City outreach efforts during the 2024 update