The purpose of this section is to establish procedures and timelines for amending the Comprehensive Plan, including text and maps, through the annual Comprehensive Plan review process, as an emergency amendment, or as a minor amendment. The Growth Management Act (Chapter 36.70A RCW) generally allows amendments to comprehensive plans, comprehensive plan maps and associated development regulations only once per year, except in emergencies, in order to allow communities to consider the cumulative impacts of the proposed revisions. As the Comprehensive Plan is a 20-year plan for coordinated development of the County, and the Zoning Code is one of the major implementation tools of the Comprehensive Plan, amendments to the Plan and Zoning Code require careful review of a community-wide need for the proposed amendment. This chapter distinguishes between those types of minor map or text amendments which clarify or simplify the Comprehensive Plan and whose impacts have already been evaluated in existing environmental documents from those types of applications for text or map amendments in which the cumulative impacts must be evaluated.

Whenever necessity, convenience and general welfare require, the boundaries of the land use designations established on any Comprehensive Plan map of this title, and other provisions of this title may be amended consistent with the procedures and criteria in the following sections.