2008 Update to the King County Comprehensive Plan

Council review

The Council will begin its final consideration of the proposed changes to the Comprehensive Plan with a public hearing on Monday, September 29 at 11:00 a.m. in the King County Council Chambers, King County Courthouse, 10th floor, 516 Third Ave. in Seattle. The Council will take comment on the Comp Plan amendments sent by the Council's Growth Management and Natural Resources Committee on August 5, 2008 (see right). The Growth Management Chair’s striking amendments, or "strikers,” modify the Executive’s proposed updates sent to the Council on March 1, 2008.

Final action on the Chair’s strikers as well as other amendments proposed by Councilmembers is set for early October.

Background

To better understand what will be before the Council at the hearings starting on September 29, 2008, below is a crosswalk of the various documents:

1. On February 29, 2008, the Executive delivered to the Council his proposed updates to the King County Comprehensive Plan ("KCCP"). Those proposed changes are contained in Proposed Ordinances 2008-0124, 2008-0125, 2008-0126, 2008-0127 and 2008-0128 . Hard copies of these proposed changes were published in two white soft-bound books ("White Books"). Book 1,  entitled "King County Comprehensive Plan 2008, the Executive Recommended Plan," contains the Executive's proposed changes to the Comprehensive Plan itself. Book 2, entitled "Amendments to the King County Code," contains proposed amendments to development regulations. All King County Library branches should have copies of these White Books.

The White Books are in underline and strike-through format to show what the Executive proposed to add or delete, respectively, to the County's existing 2004 KCCP (including technical amendments adopted in 2006.)

2. Over the course of a period of more than five months, the Growth Management and Natural Resources Committee ("GMNRC") reviewed the existing KCCP, as well as the Executive's proposed changes.

3. On July 10, 2008, the GMNRC Chair, Larry Gossett, published his proposed changes to the KCCP. Those changes included accepting, rejecting or modifying the Executive's proposed updates. The GMNRC Chair's changes were included in four striking amendments, commonly referred to as "strikers." The strikers were published on the web and in hard copies consisting of two blue soft-bound books. Blue Book 1 contains the Chair's proposed changes to the Executive's Comprehensive Plan updates and entitled “GMNR Chair's amendments to the Executive Recommended Plan." Blue Book 2 contains the Chair's proposed changes to the Executive's proposed development regulations, entitled "Amendments to the King County Code, July 2008."

In keeping with County Council protocol, the Chair's proposed changes to the Comprehensive Plan, found in Blue Book 1, starts with accepting all of the Executive's proposed changes, meaning that all of the deletions and additions proposed in the Executive's White Book 1 are included as the underlying text of the Chair's Blue Book 1. The strikethrough deletions and underlined additions in Blue Book 1 represent the Chair's proposed changes to the Executive's proposed 2008 updates. In other words, Blue Book 1 accepts all the Executive's proposed changes to the Comprehensive Plan and then by underlined additions and struck-through deletions shows the Chair's proposed changes to the Executive's updates, as well as other changes the Chair proposes to the existing Comprehensive Plan. Therefore to discern what text or policies the Executive proposed for deletion or addition, you must look at White Book 1.

4. Contained in the Yellow Book are the amendments to the Chair's strikers offered by various councilmembers at the August 5, 2008 GMNRC meeting.

5. Included in the Yellow Book, for the reader's convenience, are matrices showing (1) the differences between the Chair's proposed changes (Blue Books) both to the policies and text as proposed by the Executive and contained in the White Books, and (2) a matrix of the councilmembers' amendments to the Chair's strikers.