Kitsap County Department of Community Development planner Heather Cleveland told the Planning Commission on Aug. 5 that the department will publish a 60% draft of the county's rural and resource lands chapter on Sept. 2 and open a public comment period that runs through Oct. 3. "We will be publishing this draft of our deliverables on September 2," Cleveland said during a briefing titled the "Year of the Rural."

The briefing summarized work done since the county's 2024 Comprehensive Plan adoption and outlined outreach the department says informed the update, including two public surveys (one with more than 1,000 comments and a second with about 100 technical responses), workshops in the three commission districts, tribal coordination meetings and consultations with groups such as the Kitsap County Child Care Task Force and the Great Peninsula Conservancy. Cleveland described deliverables as the rural and resource lands chapter update, potential code changes and staff recommendations on reclassification requests.

Cleveland said the update will focus on rural character and the Growth Management Act's mandatory rural element, and noted that some development pressures and housing requirements are concentrated in urban growth areas. She told commissioners the county is preparing a rural lands analysis to assess development capacity in rural areas, and said the county will consider code updates on topics including agricultural uses, childcare (listed in code as "daycare"), event facilities, rural businesses, battery energy storage systems and mobile-home-park preservation. "Childcare...is not allowed in rural wooded at all," Cleveland said, adding staff are exploring whether some childcare uses could be "permitted by right with explicit conditions."

Staff also described the reclassification docket: 17 requests were initially submitted, 14 were withdrawn or removed, and three remain under analysis. Several of those three would change rural residential or rural wooded parcels to industrial or commercial designations; Cleveland said staff will evaluate each request under Kitsap County code processes (cited as 21.08.060 and 21.08.070 in the briefing) and in the context of the Comprehensive Plan.

Cleveland walked commissioners through the project schedule: open the 60% draft and public comment Sept. 2; community advisory council presentations and an in-person open house on Sept. 11; a Planning Commission public hearing on Sept. 23; deliberations Oct. 7; findings and recommendations Oct. 21; Board of County Commissioners hearing Nov. 10; and targeted adoption on Dec. 8. She urged the public to submit comments early and to note when they like language as well as when they want changes. "This is a 20-year plan, so we can't fix all of them right now," she said, but staff will record and respond to comments.

Commissioners and attendees asked for more detail about the agriculture working group, which Cleveland said includes representatives from the Kitsap County Agriculture Alliance, the conservation district, UW Extension and the Mason-Kitsap Farm Bureau, and about how public comment will translate into changes. A virtual attendee asked whether staff are "working toward deregulation" or instead clarifying requirements; Cleveland answered the goal is clarification and attention to economic viability rather than wholesale deregulation.

Cleveland also noted other studies and parallel work: a buildable lands report and land capacity analysis focus on urban growth areas and do not analyze rural capacity, which is why the county is developing a separate rural lands analysis. She said boundary-line adjustment work was moved to a parallel track and that staff will provide updates.

The briefing closed with staff pledging further outreach and an invitation to the public to review the Sept. 2 draft and testify at the two public hearings. Cleveland said she will return to the Planning Commission with the draft on Sept. 23 and answer questions at the Oct. 7 deliberations meeting.