2025 Comprehensive Plan Periodic Review

Learn about the 2025 Comprehensive Plan on our project website.  Find out where we are in the process and how you can help shape the future of Port Townsend for the next 20 years.  Questions? Please contact Long Range Planner Adrian Smith at asmith@cityofpt.us.

What is a Comprehensive Plan?

Port Townsend uses a Comprehensive Plan, called a "Comp Plan" for short, to chart how we want the city to grow over the next 20 years. The Comp Plan goes under "Periodic Review" every 10 years and sets big goals and policies, like our land use zones. Development regulations, like height limits, and active plans, like the Urban Forestry Plan, are used to implement the goals and policies in the Comp Plan.

A Comp Plan’s parts are called “elements” and can include:

What is a Periodic Review?

Washington State’s Growth Management Act (GMA) requires us to thoroughly review our Comp Plan every 10 years. Our review is anticipated to be complete in June 2025. The periodic review is an opportunity for us to collectively look at the big picture, see connectivity, and share ideas. It is when we actively compare our current plans and policies with new legislation, ensuring our community is up-to-date, and when we work closely with our community to ensure we all have a voice in planning the future of Port Townsend. The last time we updated the Comp Plan was in 2016. Dive into the 2016 Comp Plan.

How can you get involved?

Share your vision for 2045! Over the next year, the City will hold a variety of events so that Port Townsend’s diverse residents and workers with diverse perspectives have equal access to providing input to the Comp Plan.  Opportunities will include interviews, workshops, Planning Commission and City Council meetings, online outreach, and youth engagement through schools. Visit our project website for a schedule of events, and stay tuned for a public survey launching in June.

Fun Fact!

Did you know that Port Townsend has been awarded over $725,000 in state grants for City long range planning? These funds will be used for the 2025 Comprehensive Plan, Multi-modal Transportation Plan, Shoreline Master Program, and to develop a new Urban Forestry Plan. The City will engage the community in working on these plans over the next year and a half.

The 2025 Comprehensive Plan Periodic Review is being conducted in partnership with: