Sedro-Woolley updates its comprehensive plan

SEDRO-WOOLLEY - Following a second public hearing and second reading of Ordinance 2115-26, the Sedro-Woolley City Council adopted the city's periodic 2025–2045 Comprehensive Plan at the council's April 22 meeting.

The City Council vote was unanimous.

The action concluded a two-year process that began in spring 2024 to address growth issues in Sedro-Woolley and its urban growth area.

It represents the community's plan for growth over the next 20 years.

"All of these comprehensive plans at the time that you're doing them are always complex," Community Development Director Tom Glover said. "It takes a lot of work. So, this was no different in that respect."

The state Growth Management Act requires cities and counties to update their comprehensive plans at least once every 10 years. The last update to Sedro-Woolley's plan was in 2016.

"We are very pleased (with the finished plan)," Glover said. "It took longer to do on our part and that was a little bit of a downer, but I think because we took our time and tried to do this right, instead of rushing it through, it just took longer. But I feel pretty good about it."

Several elements required by the state proved challenging, particularly the climate and housing elements.

An expanded analysis within the housing element meant the city had to craft policies advancing affordable housing choices, provide housing policies across all economic segments of the population and show how housing is to be distributed.

"The additional requirements from the state made it a little more difficult because it was looking at a gray, foggy perspective, like how do we do this?" Glover said. "Especially for the climate portion. The good thing about all this is that we are allowed to tweak the plan once a year. So we will continue looking at this aspect."

The city also will have the opportunity of looking at an overview of the plan every five years.

"That's when we can take a look and see how things are going with the policies and that sort of thing," Glover said.

Throughout the course of updating its plan, the city conducted several public meetings, open house events, community forums and surveys to obtain feedback and guidance from residents.

"It takes a big team and we had a lot of help from community folks to help us think this through, especially on the climate stuff," Glover said. "We had a climate subcommittee to help us with that part. A sounding board. Here's our ideals, are they creative or crazy?"

The entire plan was broken into smaller, more easily understandable chapters as opposed to one enormous document.

"We worked with Facet, our consulting team and they gave us a lot of great advice in terms of how to proceed and one of them was to break it up," Glover said.

Now the city will work to get its comprehensive plan implemented.

"Those policies provide kind of a general direction," Glover said. "Now we've got to update our development code with those policies and that's going to take some work. Not as much as the comprehensive plan, but it's a big bite. All summer long, we'll be working on that and that might get kind of complex with the new state requirements but we'll see how it goes."

The comprehensive plan in its entirety can be found here: sedro-woolley.gov/departments/planning/comprehensive_plan.php

Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.