The GMA requires the CFP to identify public facilities that will be needed to address development expected to occur during the six year CFP planning period. The CFP must identify the location and cost of the facilities and the sources of revenue that will be used to fund the facilities needed to support development. The CFP must be financially feasible; in other words, dependable revenue sources must equal or exceed anticipated costs. If the costs exceed the revenue, the County must reduce its level of service, reduce costs by implementing non-capital alternatives or other methods, or modify the land use element to bring development into balance with available or affordable facilities.

Other requirements of the GMA mandate forecasts of future needs for capital facilities and the use of standards for LOS of facility capacity as the basis for public facilities contained in the CFP (see RCW 36.70A.020(12)). As a result, public facilities in the CFP must be based on quantifiable, objective measures of capacity, such as traffic volume capacity per mile of road or acres of park per capita.

One of the goals of the GMA is to: "Ensure that those public facilities and services necessary to support development shall be adequate to serve the development at the time the development is available for occupancy and use . . ." (RCW 36.70A.020(12)) In Pierce County, concurrency is required for sanitary sewer, septic and community systems, water, surface water, County roads, transit, and ferries. For these facilities, the following is required: (1) facilities serving the development to be in place at the time of development (or, for some types of facilities, that a financial commitment is made to provide the facilities within a specified period of time), and (2) such facilities have sufficient capacity to serve development without decreasing LOS below minimum standards adopted in the CFP. The GMA requires concurrency for transportation facilities. For transportation facilities, concurrent with development means "improvements or strategies are in place at the time of development, or that a financial commitment is in place to complete the improvements or strategies within six years." (RCW 36.70A.070(6)(e))

GMA also requires public facilities and services to be "adequate." These public facilities and services include: streets, roads, highways, sidewalks, street and road lighting systems, traffic signals, domestic water systems, storm and sanitary sewer systems, parks and recreational facilities, schools, fire protection and suppression, law enforcement, public health, education, recreation, environmental protection, and other governmental services (see RCW 19.27.097, 36.70A.020, 36.70A.030, and 58.17.110).

Concurrency management procedures will be developed to ensure that sufficient public facility capacity is available for each proposed development.

The County's development regulations, adopted July 1995, implement the plan and provide detailed regulations and procedures for implementing the requirements of the plan.

Pierce County intends to update the CFP annually. The annual update must be completed before the County's budget is adopted in order to incorporate the capital improvements from the updated CFP in the County's annual budget.