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County staff outline comprehensive plan update, new climate and housing elements and how parks fit in
Summary
Clallam County community development staff briefed the parks advisory board on the countywide comprehensive plan update under the Growth Management Act, including new climate and resiliency elements, land‑capacity work broken out by income bands, outreach plans and options for how a parks plan could be incorporated.
County community development staff told the Clallam County Parks and Recreation Advisory Board that the county’s comprehensive plan update is underway and will include a new climate element and a resiliency subelement as required by state changes, and that staff plan public outreach across multiple communities.
Bruce Emery, the county’s director of community development, told the board the periodic comprehensive plan update aims to ensure compliance with state law and to look ahead roughly 20 years for land use, infrastructure and environmental protections. He said staff are completing a lands‑capacity analysis that now must demonstrate capacity broken out by income bands (for example, extremely low income up through moderate income), and that the analysis is showing gaps in some urban growth areas such as portions of the Sequim growth area and Cloudcroft/Carlsborg areas.
Why this matters: changes required by state law — including a required climate element and greater disaggregation of housing capacity by income — can change where the county expects growth to occur and therefore affect infrastructure, parks and service planning.
What staff said they will do: Emery described a public outreach schedule with meetings planned for Sequim, Port Angeles, Joyce, Clallam Bay and Forks and said staff and consultants will prepare discussion documents that separate required changes from community preferences. He said staff expect to post draft documents for comment by mid‑year and that state rules require the updated plan be adopted by year‑end; staff were holding to a June 30 target to post drafts but cautioned that the schedule may slip.
Parks plan relationship: Emery explained that a parks plan can remain an in‑house document or be incorporated by reference into the county’s comprehensive plan; incorporation would give it GMA status and trigger planning commission review. He said both options are feasible but that incorporation would likely require earlier engagement with the planning commission and possibly a joint meeting later in the process. County staff also said that adopting the parks plan by reference is a commonly used approach where the full text would be too large to reproduce in the comp plan.
Next steps: staff asked the board to consider how parks planning inputs should be timed to inform the comprehensive plan and to identify priority park projects the county should consider in the annual amendment or as part of the master plan update. The board asked staff to provide draft recommendations and a timeline so the advisory board can weigh in before staff advance materials to broader public outreach and Planning Commission review.
