Effort to change growth policy puzzles council

By JOHN STANG

The Daily Inter Lake

Leaders of a grassroots organization say they may hold a public forum to explain why it wants to change Kalispell's northward growth policy.

Such a forum most likely would occur after the Nov. 7 election to avoid confusion, said Roxanna Brothers, a member of the new group Town Champions.

The Town Champions organization is circulating two petitions to call for public ballots in 2007 to revoke a growth policy adopted by the Kalispell City Council on Aug. 7 and to replace it with a policy drafted by the group.

The organization has until Dec. 26 to collect 2,653 signatures on each petition to piggyback the public votes on the November 2007 elections. If the group collects 4,421 signatures on each petition, a public ballot will be set up prior to November 2007.

On Monday, the city staff briefed the council on the Town Champions proposal.

Brothers attended the meeting, and spoke briefly at the public hearing segment at the beginning of the workshop session, where no decisions are legally allowed.

However, the council balked Monday on having Brothers explain Town Champions' position.

Some council members said they should not take a position on a grassroots petition, arguing it is the petitioners' right and responsibility to present their plan to the public - without the government's interpretations, participation or opposition.

"Don't put words in people's mouths. … I think we're interfering with this process," said council member Bob Hafferman.

However, other council members wanted Town Champions to explain its proposals - arguing they should know why a group is criticizing their Aug. 7 decisions and they should be able to speak intelligently about the proposal to area residents.

The council ended by inviting Town Champions to speak to it at a later date. Brothers said she would have to consult with the organization before replying to the council's invitation.

In an interview after the meeting, Brothers said copies of the petitions are at some downtown businesses, including the Books West store, 101 Main St. The organization also has a Web site at www.townchampions.com.

The Town Champions group is working on how it will tackle public outreach.

Brothers criticized several council development-related decisions, which had some public opposition. These included providing extra money to a developer to tear down the old Montana National Guard armory so the venture can build a hotel-convention-center complex there. She also cited the city government buying the old Wells Fargo building to remodel as a new city hall without knowing all of the renovation problems that later surfaced.

The Town Champions group argues that the city government is encouraging commercial development at the town's north edge while the downtown has empty business space, such as the recently-closed Tidyman's store. More northern commercial development will likely draw business away from downtown, Brothers contended.

The Town Champions group contends that northward expansion will create major burdens on schools and utilities in Kalispell, and that the city should slow down and regroup. "Maybe there should be a moratorium on development for two years," Brothers speculated.

The reason that the group is conducting two simultaneous petition drives is that the first is to revoke the city's policy changes through a referendum, while the second petition calls for a yes-or-no vote on the Town Champions' substitute policy.

The conflict between the government and Town Champions focuses on almost 13 square miles north of West Reserve Drive. Reserve is Kalispell's northern boundary.

Kalispell has a growth policy that covers areas that could be annexed in the next several years. Although the city has no direct control over the so-called growth-policy area surrounding Kalispell, developers are building extensively in this growth area and many want their lands annexed into Kalispell to gain access to its water and sewer systems. The city can require developers to meet Kalispell's growth-control wishes before approving any annexation requests.

On Aug. 7, the council changed its growth policy to address the area north of Reserve, which is a housing and commercial development hot spot.

Some council members contend that developers will build in that rural area with or without the city's approval, and that the growth policy and annexation hammer will help Kalispell control that construction.

In broad strokes, the Aug. 7 policy calls for the northward industrial growth to be kept close to West Reserve Drive, with housing and small neighborhood commercial spots earmarked for the rest of the area.

The controversial segment is 600 acres - dubbed "KN-1" - near the northeast corner of West Reserve Drive and U.S. 93. The majority of that land is controlled by developer Bucky Wolford, who has proposed building an enclosed 735,000-square-foot shopping mall and a 350,000-square-foot retail center there, as well as earmarking 80 acres for other commercial development and 56 acres for a mix of homes and offices.

The city's revised growth policy allows as many as 270 acres of those 600 acres to be used for commercial development, plus another 150 acres for a mix of residential, commercial, office and industrial uses.

Meanwhile, the Town Champions proposal largely mirrors the city's policy - except for the KN-1 area.

The group's proposed changes would restrict commercial development to 36 acres of the 600-acre site and would limit any commercial building or set of connected commercial buildings to a maximum of 60,000 square feet. That would limit any KN-1 commercial building to about half of the size of the Home Depot building. Thirty-six acres is roughly two-thirds of the Target-Home Depot complex on U.S. 93, said city planner Tom Jentz.

If voters elect to replace Kalispell's growth policy with Town Champions' proposal, it likely would not affect Wolford's ability to develop his project, other than complicating whether the project can hook up to the city's utilities. But it could affect whether that project is developed in the city, or in the county.

The initiative also calls for any annexation to be studied for its long-term and short-term effects on jobs, taxes, city services and businesses in Kalispell. It also proposes revoking approvals for certain projects if the developer does not meet a project's timetable.

A few council members criticized the petition drive, saying the eight-page Town Champions plan has not gone through the same public hearing and debate process as the council's Aug. 7 policy changes.