Kitsap County recently posted early-stage revisions of the Comprehensive Plan Chapters and called for comments. Our KEC Work Group on the Comprehensive Plan Update swung into action and submitted an extensive and thoughtful review of the chapters on May 31.

We began by urging an update to the plan’s vision that includes:

1. greater emphasis on cultural, racial, economic, and other diversity and equity.
2. intentional treatment of nature as the foundation of life itself not simply as an asset for humans to use as it relates to each element (chapter).
3. integration of the elements of the Comp Plan while still recognizing the need for vision statements for each element.
4. more explicit attention to climate change and the migration of people and all forms of life in response to changing climatic conditions and population growth.
5. greater attention to the planetary limits within which humans (and other forms of life) operate (e.g., chemical pollution, climate change, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, freshwater consumption, land use change, loss of biosphere integrity)

Our full submitted document is available.

To share your own comments with Kitsap County, go to their website. It has interactive story maps (one for each chapter) with survey questions about each one. If your comments don’t fit the survey format, send them to compplan@kitsap.gov. Feel free to draw on our comments as you desire.