The City’s Comprehensive Plan is the set of policies, maps and other direction – published in one or more documents – that guides the community’s growth and development for up to 20 years. The Plan is created through broad community input and formally adopted by the City Council. The City must budget and spend on growth-related capital projects in conformance with the Plan, and land use and environmental regulations must be consistent with the Plan. In the public realm, the Plan is the main instrument that influences what the community will be like in the future.

In April 2011, the Sequim City Council determined that the City’s 2006 Comprehensive Plan did not provide adequate guidance to insure that the community would grow in predictable and healthy ways and retain citizens’ desired quality of life. The Council directed the Community Development Department to proceed with an update of the 2006 Plan, including a rewrite of the Vision Statement that expresses the Plan’s ultimate goal. While the project is called a “plan update” for technical reasons, it will create a mostly all-new plan for the city’s long-term growth and development.

Sequim 120 is the citizen-participation program that invites public involvement early, continuously, and openly throughout the preparation of the new plan. As shown in the Sequim 120 process diagram, public involvement is welcome and needed for every phase of the project – from the first visioning open house to the final public hearing before City Council adoption. It is the City’s responsibility to inform the community of the evolving new Plan and the next opportunity to participate. The City employs a variety of techniques to attract participation and to provide notice of process activities and events: notices posted on large Public Notice signs in 12 locations along major arterials and central places; enclosures in City utility billings; articles and announcements in the City Hall News published monthly in the Sequim Gazette; guest columns in local media; and other techniques such as putting information on take-out coffee cup sleeves. People who sign up to participate (email or call 582-2448) will be directly notified of future Sequim 120 activities.

1. Vision Phase     

Draft Vision Statement

Sequim will continue its growth and development as the activity center and civic/cultural heart of the Sequim-Dungeness Valley while maintaining the community’s friendliness, affordable lifestyle, “small-town” convenience, and overall high quality of life. We choose to preserve surrounding rural lands by directing most residential growth into the city to contribute to a more complete fabric of neighborhoods as well as new Downtown living. We value diversity and choice by insuring a broad variety of housing, mobility, lifestyle, and economic options to meet the needs of all age groups and family types. Sequim respects that the legacies of our past create a civic duty for a well-planned and well-managed future guided by the quality-of-life interests of all citizens.

Within this Vision, the community desires that . . .

• growth will occur mostly within the current urban growth area rather than continuing to push outwardly;
• rural lands will be preserved for the agri-tourism, food production, visual qualities and open space they afford city residents;
• undeveloped residential lands will infill to strengthen neighborhoods by enhancing safety, creating more livable streets, providing opportunities for mutual support, and promoting a social fabric where “small-town friendliness” is experienced every day;
• a more compact pattern of growth will create a future that is affordable in all ways – physically, environmentally, socially, and economically;
• Downtown will grow in activity and purpose not only to serve as the heart of the community and surrounding Valley but also to serve as the core of a residential neighborhood that is the setting of most multifamily development;
• greater diversity in age, household type, ethnicity, income, lifestyle, housing, mobility, and economic activity will increase community opportunities, variety, and interest;
• improved street and path connectivity among places of living, shopping, services, employment, and recreation will increase mobility and convenience as well as provide more transportation choices;
• a wide variety of housing types will serve all lifestyles, ranging from single-family homes on large lots to cottage housing, townhomes, accessory dwelling units, assisted living and Downtown apartments and condominiums;     
• higher density housing will be directed to locations where services, convenience, and amenities make it an attractive lifestyle choice for some residents;
• Sequim will be a more “complete” community by bringing unincorporated suburban areas that depend on the City’s public services, facilities, amenities, and civic activities within the city boundaries;
• Sequim’s pattern of growth will promote efficiency in resource utilization to enhance our role as the primary steward and purveyor of finite water resources in the Valley;
• the community’s image and identity will be promoted by active management of both the man-built and natural environments; and
• Sequim will grow as a community of all ages, from families with young children, to young adults, to singles of all ages, to empty-nesters, to active seniors, and to those nearing end-of-life.

Current City Vision Statement (2006 Comprehensive Plan)

Sequim will be the center of financial, commercial, retail, cultural, educational, recreational and medical services and activities on the northern Olympic Peninsula, while maintaining its friendly small town and rural atmosphere.