Kitsap County to revise comprehensive plan after Growth Management Hearings Board remand on wildfire planning and housing capacity

The Kitsap County Department of Community Development briefed the Planning Commission on Oct. 21 about a Growth Management Hearings Board order that remanded portions of the county's 2024 comprehensive plan for further work on wildfire planning, multimodal evacuation routes and the land capacity analysis.

Carrie Sali, a long-range planner with DCD, told the commission the board's decision identified three principal deficiencies: that the county must (1) revise its land capacity analysis to demonstrate sufficient housing capacity across all income bands (particularly 0—80% of area median income), (2) adopt planning tools or standards to reduce wildfire risk in the Wildland-Urban Interface and (3) identify multimodal emergency and evacuation routes for the land use element. Sali said the Growth Management Hearings Board remanded those topics to the county for additional work.

Why it matters: the Growth Management Act requires local jurisdictions to plan for housing at a range of densities and incomes and to reduce hazards where feasible. The county must produce a revised land capacity analysis that accounts for mixed-use residential potential, recently adopted Silverdale standards (reduced parking and increased heights), more realistic redevelopment assumptions and other local changes the county did not include in the 2021 analysis.

Staff's near-term plan: Sali told commissioners the county will pursue a two-track response. For the hearings board remand, staff propose to revise the land capacity analysis and adopt policy-level measures on wildfire by the board's compliance deadline of Feb. 4, 2026, while working toward development regulations later (staff said full regulatory updates would not be ready in the three-month window). Separately, the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) raised additional questions about employment capacity in Silverdale and some incorporated UGAs and asked that certain air-quality and greenhouse-gas policies appear in the transportation element; staff said those changes are largely editorial relocations and coordination items.

Key numbers and findings: staff reported a countywide shortfall identified in the 2024 review process. The hearing board found the land capacity analysis did not demonstrate sufficient capacity for extremely low- to moderate-income households (0—80% AMI); staff said those shortfalls were concentrated in the lowest bands. Staff also said mixed-use residential potential in commercial zones and recent Silverdale zoning changes were not counted in the earlier analysis.

Community and technical constraints: planners stressed that mapping fixed evacuation routes can reduce flexibility in a real emergency, so Emergency Management and fire officials prefer policy-level identification of likely arterials rather than adopting prescriptive, map-based evacuation routes that could be misused if conditions change. On wildfire standards, staff said the county could adopt policy language now and pursue code/regulation changes following the public-review process.

Timeline and public engagement: staff said it will issue an addendum to the comprehensive plan EIS and release public-draft text and map changes in early November, adopt a formal work plan by Nov. 30 (a PSRC requirement), hold planning commission and Board of County Commissioner hearings in December and January and seek to meet the Feb. 4 remand deadline. Officials expect to coordinate closely with PSRC during the process.

What the county said it would not do immediately: staff emphasized that writing, reviewing and adopting enforceable development regulations will take months and cannot be completed solely to meet the February procedural deadline; staff expects to adopt policy changes first and the implementing code changes later.

Authorities referenced: Growth Management Act (RCW 36.70A) and the Growth Management Hearings Board order; the county is coordinating with the Puget Sound Regional Council on PSRC certification of the transportation element.

Next steps: staff will return with a public-draft package in early November, a board-adopted work plan by Nov. 30 and follow-up briefings to the Planning Commission while the county completes the land capacity revisions and wildfire-policy updates.