Saving the baby
By WILLIAM L. SPENCE
Planning board faces difficult decision with growth policy
The Daily Inter Lake
An appropriate balancing act, or a good - but insufficient - first effort?
That's what the Flathead County Planning Board will have to decide in the next few weeks, as it begins its deliberations on the draft growth policy.
Is this proposal ready for prime time?
If approved, the new policy will replace the 1987 master plan as Flathead County's fundamental planning document. It will serve as the philosophical foundation for the subdivision and zoning regulations, and for a slew of future land-use maps, management plans, neighborhood plans and other planning tools.
Almost 200 people have submitted written testimony since the draft was released on June 30.
Taken together, their comments offer no clear indication as to whether people would rather send the policy back for a second effort, or tweak it and move on. Some of the letters say the 48 goals and more than 200 supporting policies proposed in the draft don't do enough to guide future growth or restrict inappropriate development; others think it goes too far and intrudes too much on private property rights (see related story).
A few even recognize that trying to craft a land-use plan for the Flathead can be a daunting task.
"I want to thank you for all the time and effort you've put into creating a plan for population growth, and also for trying to retain individual property rights," wrote House District 5 Rep. George Everett. "Solomon would have had a problem with this baby."
The question for the planning board is, does this draft save the baby? Does it offer a reasonable middle ground, helping preserve certain aspects of the Flathead that people cherish most, without totally dictating what can or can't happen in various areas - or has it been diluted to the point of uselessness, becoming so vague and unoffending that it leaves the planning board, commissioners and community in a continual tug of war, fighting over growth rather than directing it?
A public hearing on Wednesday will be the last opportunity people have to weigh in on this issue before the planning board begins its deliberations. The hearing takes place in the second-floor conference room at the Earl Bennett Building, beginning at 6 p.m.
Assistant Planning Director BJ Grieve, who coordinated the production of the draft policy, said it's unrealistic to think that a specific, detailed growth plan for Flathead could be developed in time to meet the state-mandated deadline of Oct. 1.
(By law, growth policies must address certain issues by Oct. 1, otherwise they're invalid.)
To deal with all the land-use issues facing the county, Grieve said, a comprehensive plan would have to include things like water quality management plans, transportation plans, regional park plans and neighborhood plans, as well as land-use maps that identify what type of development is appropriate for certain areas.
The draft growth policy calls for all those tools to be developed, he said, but in the coming years versus right now.
"Thinking that the planning office is going to be able to create two dozen neighborhood plans and all these other plans and have them all ready at the same time - while still processing umpteen subdivision applications every month - just isn't realistic," Grieve said. "This draft isn't intended to be an all-encompassing, comprehensive plan. It isn't going to end the tug of war. It's a framework document that calls for additional, more-detailed plans to be developed in the future. This is just the start of a multi-year process."
Rather than lump everything into a single, behemoth growth plan, he said, breaking the total package into smaller pieces allows the community to focus its attention on individual planning issues, such as water quality or parkland, as those plans are developed.
However, it also means that specific guidance won't be available on some topics for several years, if ever.
Ultimately, it's up to the planning board and commissioners to determine if this "framework" approach adequately addresses the county's planning needs, but Grieve thinks public sentiment supports moving forward.
"Had we written a document that failed completely, I don't think we would have gotten the response that we did," he said. "If we had failed, it would have been easier for people to just say, 'This stinks.' Instead, they took the time to write detailed comments that basically said, 'We recognize that this is important, and here's some suggestions for how to make the draft better.'
"There are things in the document that both sides can support. Property rights and planning don't have to be mutually exclusive. We wrote a growth policy that does respect property rights - but not an extreme interpretation of those rights. And we wrote a policy that does support planning - but not the extreme, 'fantasy' planning that some people want. I think it's a good starting point for more detailed planning efforts in the future."
Recent criticism from the county commissioners makes it uncertain, though, whether the planning board will go along with this.
On several occasions over the last 18 months, the commissioners have bumped planning applications back to the board, saying it needs to do a more thorough job of evaluating projects and mitigating impacts.
Those remands dealt with major plan amendments and subdivision proposals. If the commissioners expect the planning board to fix applications like that, then presumably they'll want even greater efforts expended on the growth policy, which will be the county's fundamental planning document for years to come.
Until the board makes a recommendation on the draft policy, the commissioners can't act on it.
"This is the most important thing we've worked on in the last 10 years," said planning board president Jeff Larsen, during an interview in June. "We can't fool ourselves into thinking this won't be hugely contentious. We need to give the public time to read it, digest it and comment on it. If I have to choose between meeting a drop-dead date and doing the job right, I choose doing it right."