Planning begins for area near Columbia Falls

A standing-room-only crowd of residents packed the Columbia Falls council chambers Tuesday night to have their say on how the Columbia Falls Stage neighborhood should grow.

The Columbia Falls City-County Planning Board is considering a potential neighborhood plan for the area, which is across the Flathead River and to the south of the city.

A 7 p.m. neighborhood committee meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 24, in City Hall will bring residents to the table for the next step in discussions.

All of the area under consideration lies south of U.S. 2, east of the river and west of Montana 206. The city's planning jurisdiction stops short of Montana 206 to the east and Kelley Road to the south. The neighborhood in question is located within about a 3/4-mile radius from the junction of River Road and Rogers Road.

Early in Tuesday's workshop, when former board member and Columbia Falls Stage Road resident Charles Lapp pointed out that many of the 60 or so people in attendance may not even live within the area under consideration, probably two-thirds of them discovered they were outside the area.

Still, all but a handful stayed for the hourlong workshop, the first step toward a possible plan. A neighborhood plan will deal with housing density, water and drainage issues, commercial development and traffic.

If the neighborhood plan is eventually approved, it will be appended to the city's recently adopted growth policy.

Comments from those attending showed deep concern over minimum lot sizes, effects on drainage across their property, high groundwater and increased traffic on narrow, sometimes curving and steep roads in the area - River Road, Rogers Road and Steppe Lane in particular.

The primary division seemed to be between those who want to leave their land in large lots which retain their agricultural character and those who want to subdivide their land for higher-density housing developments.

Kathleen O'Hair, a Steppe Lane resident, handed out a proposal developed by a group calling itself the River Road Neighborhood Committee. Among its requests is one for the planning board to consider low-density zoning.

The new growth policy projects future high density/urban residential zoning that allows from two to eight housing units per acre in that area. The River Road group's proposal would pull that back to no more than two homes per acre. Current minimum lot size is five acres.

"It's painful to be discovered," O'Hair told the board. She conceded there is no going back to the days before people started moving to the area, but said growth can be managed, "hopefully in a wise, well thought-out plan."

Another woman was concerned that shrinking lot sizes were a sign that moneyed landowners and developers are usurping the rights of "poor people" in the area.

A developer is working through engineering studies now to extend water, sewer and other utilities across the U.S. 2 bridge to serve a potential subdivision near the junction of U.S. 2 and River Road.

Developers can study anything they want to pursue, City Manager Bill Shaw said, but neighborhood input is important in deciding restrictions imposed on any development.

Fred Haas, who lives at Columbia Falls Stage and River Road, said his river-bottom land would be affected by runoff and drainage from the potential subdivision. He's also concerned about high groundwater.

"My land is in the 100-year flood plain, and I've always looked at it as agricultural and open area," Haas said.

A woman who lives at the Rogers Road with Columbia Falls Stage objected to having more traffic.

"I moved out of the city because it got so congested," she said. But now Rogers and Columbia Falls Stage are congested, too, "and I don't want more."

One man pointed out that planning and zoning jurisdictions will continue to grow with the city's inevitable growth, and "it'll all head south" to this neighborhood and beyond.

Boundaries for the neighborhood to be included in this potential neighborhood plan were far from cut and dried.

Since the timbered ridge just south of Rogers Road would not be affected by the drainage and high-groundwater issues that concern property owners to the north, Shaw suggested drawing the boundary there. The city's planning jurisdiction extends a bit farther south before the county's jurisdiction takes over.

Some at the meeting suggested forming two neighborhood plans, with the second covering land to the south.

If a plan were not developed there, but one is developed to the north, there could be a gap if Flathead County commissioners someday develop a neighborhood plan just outside Columbia Falls planning jurisdiction there.

"Those people south of the zoning jurisdiction need to decide if

you want to be left alone or if you want protections to allow only large lots," the city's contract planner Lisa Horowitz told the group. "If you want the protection, you need the zoning - so you've got to get a neighborhood plan first."

They need to work with the county commissioners, and possibly the city, to make that happen, she said.

Shaw explained that a neighborhood plan does not have the force of law that zoning holds. Planners are compelled to consider a neighborhood plan when considering proposals in an area, but are not bound strictly to its vision.

Final authority lies with zoning laws, he said.

"But zoning can be changed so easily," said Lucy Yates, a part owner of Columbia Farms who has 216 acres "right in the middle" of the land in question near Rogers Road, Steppe Lane and River Road. To illustrate that, she pointed out that she was part of the process which shrunk the former 10-acre minimum lot size zoning down to 5-acre lots a few years ago.

She called for a friendlier public participation process.

"I bet 75 percent of the people in this room never have seen the growth policy or even know what it is. Meetings need to be in a different format," Yates said. "So how do we come up with a better format?"

The first part of the answer to her question is being addressed with the Jan. 24 meeting, when neighbors willing to work on a committee will meet.

After that, their cooperative work with the planning board and with the city's limited resources available through Horowitz, Shaw and city planning clerk Kathie Lapcevic will determine the success of the process.

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com