Comprehensive plan

Key Takeaways

• A comprehensive plan sets a community's long-range goals for growth, land use, housing, and public services, and it is policy rather than a regulation that controls a specific lot.
• Zoning ordinances, subdivision rules, and capital budgets are the tools that carry a comprehensive plan out, so a rezone request is normally argued as consistency with the plan.
• In Washington, the Growth Management Act, chapter 36.70A RCW, requires a comprehensive plan to include land use, housing, capital facilities, utilities, and transportation elements that are internally consistent.
• In Washington, RCW 36.70A.120 requires a planning county or city to perform its activities and make capital budget decisions in conformity with its comprehensive plan.

What It Means

A comprehensive plan is the long-range policy document a county or city adopts to describe what it wants to become over the next twenty years. It sets goals for where housing goes, where jobs and shopping go, how much farmland and open space stay open, and what roads, sewers, schools, and parks will be needed to serve that growth. The plan is built from a map or set of maps plus written text, and it speaks in policy language rather than in parcel-by-parcel rules.

The plan by itself does not tell an owner what may be built today. That job belongs to the development regulations written to carry the plan out, chiefly Zoning, subdivision rules, and building standards. Because those regulations are supposed to implement the plan, the plan becomes the yardstick in a land use fight: an applicant asking for a rezone argues the change fits the plan's future land use map, and a neighbor opposing it argues the opposite. Brokers read the plan to see where a property's allowed use is likely heading.

How It Works in Washington

In Washington, comprehensive planning runs through the Growth Management Act, chapter 36.70A RCW. Under RCW 36.70A.070, the plan of a county or city planning under RCW 36.70A.040 shall consist of a map or maps and descriptive text covering objectives, principles, and standards, with elements for land use, housing, capital facilities, utilities, and transportation that must be internally consistent with each other.

The plan has teeth because of RCW 36.70A.120, which says a planning county or city shall perform its activities and make capital budget decisions in conformity with its comprehensive plan. Plans are not frozen, either. RCW 36.70A.130 sets a staggered schedule of update deadlines and then requires review and revision every ten years. The plan also drives environmental limits: RCW 36.70A.170 requires designation of Critical Areas, and RCW 36.70A.060 requires each county and city to adopt development regulations that protect them. So when a Washington buyer asks whether a vacant parcel can be developed, the answer runs down the Growth Management Act Gma chain of plan designation, then zoning, then the critical areas ordinance.

Example

Maria has a purchase and sale agreement on a 4.8-acre parcel in unincorporated Snohomish County at $310,000. The parcel is zoned R-5, one home per five acres, so today it supports exactly one house. Her broker pulls the county comprehensive plan and finds the parcel inside the urban growth area with a future land use designation of Urban Low Density Residential at 4 to 6 homes per acre.

That gap is the whole price story. At 4 homes per acre, 4.8 acres would carry about 19 lots (4.8 x 4 = 19.2, rounded down to 19), which is why Maria is paying $310,000 for ground worth far less as a single home site. So her broker writes the offer with a 60-day feasibility contingency. The plan designation is a policy statement, not permission. Until the county rezones the parcel to match the plan and approves a Subdivision, R-5 controls and those 19 lots do not exist.

Common Mistakes and Exam Traps

• The comprehensive plan is not the zoning ordinance. The plan states goals and designations; the zoning ordinance is the enforceable law that controls what may be built on a given lot.
• A future land use designation does not by itself allow the denser use. The parcel keeps its existing zoning until the jurisdiction rezones it.
• Adopting a comprehensive plan is an exercise of the police power, so an owner whose land is designated for lower density is not owed compensation. Payment belongs to eminent domain questions.
• In Washington the Growth Management Act is chapter 36.70A RCW, and RCW 36.70A.130 puts plans on a staggered update schedule and then a ten-year review cycle, not an annual one.