Hearing to be held on C.F. planning jurisdiction

| November 8, 2004 1:00 AM

The Daily Inter Lake

The public will have a chance to comment on a new planning jurisdiction for the city of Columbia Falls at a 7 p.m. hearing Nov. 29 in City Council Chambers.

Members of the Flathead County commission and the Columbia Falls city council will be present at the meeting.

They are soliciting comments on a plan to decrease the "doughnut area" over which Columbia Falls exercises planning authority, while increasing the city's authority within the smaller area.

The exact contours of the agreement have gone through several permutations as city and county officials have haggled over specifics.

Currently, the proposal calls for a new boundary for city planning authority that ranges between one and two miles from city limits, down from the current 4.5 miles.

In return, the city would have control over zoning, subdivision approval and floodplain permits within that area.

The plan is part of an ongoing debate over planning on the edges of Flathead County's cities. It's generally accepted that cities need to have some regulatory voice in development on their borders, since those developments likely will be annexed at some point.

However, there's also concern that people outside a city's limits would be regulated by a council without being able to vote on its members.

That's the reason commissioners Howard Gipe and Bob Watne cited when they shot down a similar plan amending the city of Whitefish's planning jurisdiction.

The Whitefish and Columbia Falls "doughnut" zones currently are administered by city-county planning boards that have both city and county representatives.

The county pulled out of a Kalispell city-county board several years ago, and Kalispell's planning authority now ends at city limits.