County copes with deluge of master plan amendments

It has been a remarkable year for Flathead County master plan amendments, with four more applications scheduled to go before the Flathead County Planning Board this month.

That brings to 10 the number of plan amendments submitted so far this year - more than three times as many as were submitted in the last three years combined.

The rate at which the master plan is being modified is disturbing to some people, who wonder whether it undermines the validity of the entire document (which also is referred to as the growth policy).

"If every sentence is subject to amendment, then we can't really say we have a growth policy," J.D. Metcalf said during a planning board hearing in July. "If we're making constant changes, then essentially we've thrown the document out the window."

Referring to a proposed plan amendment in the Highway 93 North Zoning District, where more than 1,200 acres have been rezoned in the last two years, Martin Gilman said in September that, "if this proposal is allowed to proceed, then nothing in the county is safe from rezoning and development."

However, rather than represent an "anything goes" development environment, Planning Director Forrest Sanderson said this deluge of amendments is largely due to the fact that the county master plan is 17 years old and out of date.

When the document was created, he said, it designated appropriate areas for various types of residential, commercial and industrial uses. However, many of those areas now have been built out and developers are looking for new places to go.

"The number of amendment applications we're getting is indicative of the type of growth we're experiencing," Sanderson said. "The force and pace of growth is what's driving this."

The same issue applies to various neighborhood plans, he said. For example, the Bigfork Neighborhood Plan - which could be affected by three of the 10 plan amendments - is now 11 years old.

"The county master plan and the Bigfork plan were good documents for their era," Sanderson said. "They provided adequate space for myriad types of uses, but neither one has had a comprehensive, non-developer-driven update in years. The areas they set aside have been used up and the plans were left to coast. That's what we're dealing with."

That argument is supported by the fact that at least six of the amendments submitted this year seem to be obvious, logical extensions of past development patterns.

Case in point is the recently approved amendment for Corwin-Eisinger Motors, which converted 10 acres at the intersection of U.S. 93 and West Reserve Drive from a suburban residential designation to commercial.

Some people might question whether there's really a need for more commercial areas in the county, and others question whether this is an appropriate location for an automobile sales lot - but there's little doubt that some sort of commercial designation makes perfect sense for the property, given its proximity to the Home Depot and Lowe's retail centers, as well as to the proposed Glacier Mall.

Sanderson also noted that there was an 18-month period from late 2001 to early 2003 during which the county couldn't address any plan amendments or major zone changes, because of a 1999 law related to growth policies. Consequently, any comparison between this year's submittals and the limited number of amendments submitted over the last three years is skewed.

Nevertheless, he's well aware that this steady stream of changes does little to improve public confidence in the planning process. That's why he's hoping that the planning board will approve hiring a consultant to help write a new growth policy.

In most respects, growth policies are the same thing as master plans. Unlike master plans, though, policies are required to address specific issues - including spelling out when and under what conditions the document can be amended.

"A growth policy has to contain specific triggers that would warrant a revision," Sanderson said. "It won't be a case of developers saying 'I want to do this.' There has to be new conditions or new information driving [the amendment process]."

Currently, such triggers are not required, he said. There are no set standards to justify an amendment, so the requests are handled on a case-by-case basis.

The planning board has the statutory responsibility for preparing a growth policy, Sanderson said. Therefore, the board has to approve hiring a consultant. He thinks that decision could be made in the next two months.

Work on the new growth policy started in July of 2002. The board has held numerous public meetings since then, and it continues to do so - except on weeks when it has to address development applications.

And there's the rub: Given the pace of development activity this year, the board has less and less time for growth policy meetings. It had to hold multiple meetings in April, May, July, August just to address master plan, zoning and subdivision applications, with three more meetings scheduled this month. By the end of October, it will have held 17 "monthly" meeting since January, along with at least 82 public hearings.

"The board doesn't have enough time to adequately address the growth policy," Sanderson said. "I think it's time to hire a consultant who can take the project to completion by July of 2006, so that the necessary public hearings can be held and we get a document finalized by October."

Every planning jurisdiction in Montana must have a growth policy in place by October 2006. Otherwise, it won't be able to implement zoning or change zoning classifications.

"As long as the workload stays this rabid, it's time to hire a consultant," Sanderson said. "Getting a growth policy in place would absolutely resolve this stream of plan amendments."

Reporter Bill Spence may be reached at 758-4459 or by e-mail at bspence@dailyinterlake.com