County finishes review

The Daily Inter Lake

With a few more tweaks and nudges, the Flathead County commissioners completed their review of the draft growth policy on Tuesday.

Next up is a resolution of intent Monday, when the commissioners will decide whether to accept or reject the revised document.

The commissioners made about three dozen mostly minor changes to chapters 1-8 last week. They followed that up with another two dozen changes to chapters 9 and 10 on Tuesday.

The most significant revisions came in Chapter 10, which deals with neighborhood plans.

The Flathead County Planning Board made several changes to the initial draft of Chapter 10 because of concerns that smaller landowners would end up dictating what larger landowners could do with their property.

Among other revisions, the board added language requiring that 60 percent of the landowners within a proposed neighborhood plan area - and owners of 50 percent of the acreage involved - sign a petition in support of the plan before the proposal went to the planning board for public review.

The intent of the change was to ensure that any new neighborhood plan is supported by most of the affected landowners, as opposed to having support merely from the people who developed the plan.

That change received a great deal of public comment, both in support and in opposition.

On Tuesday, Commissioner Gary Hall proposed tweaking the percentages slightly, changing the 60/50 requirement to "a clear majority," meaning more than 50 percent of the landowners and the acreage.

That change was accepted.

However, rather than prohibiting proponents from advancing to the public review process until they had majority support, Hall's revised language simply indicated that the Planning Board could recommend denial of a neighborhood plan if that support was lacking.

The Planning Board's version of policy 43.8, which deals with this issue, said that "a minimum of 60 percent of the landowners represented and 50 percent of the acreage represented within the established [neighborhood plan] boundary must sign a petition … indicating support of the new neighborhood plan … prior to the plan being finalized as outlined in Step 4 [the public review stage]."

Hall's revised version of the policy says that "a clear majority of both landowners and acreage represented within the established boundary … should be in support of a proposed neighborhood plan. Steps 1 through 6 of the neighborhood planning process outlined in Chapter 10 establish a mechanism by which, if a clear majority of landowners don't support a neighborhood plan, the Planning Board can recommend denial of the plan to the commissioners due to lack of support."

Hall said he "believed in principle" in the way the Planning Board revised the policy, but thought the 50-plus-percent requirement and new language was a little fairer and easier to use, while still accomplishing the same objective.

Hall also proposed a new goal and four new policies clarifying that existing neighborhood plans will remain in effect when the growth policy is adopted, and that the Planning Office will determine if any changes are needed to make them consistent with the growth policy.

Before wrapping up the review Tuesday, the commissioners also rescinded a change they made last week to Goal 39 and related policies.

The goal initially proposed "protecting sensitive areas over shallow aquifers of less than five feet to the surface." The commissioners had changed that to eight feet, but changed it back to five feet on Tuesday after Commissioner Dale Lauman said he'd heard "quite a few concerns" regarding this issue.

Commissioner Hall agreed with Lauman; Commissioner Joe Brenneman strongly disagreed.

All of the changes and revisions approved by the commissioners will be available on the planning office Web site by Friday, at www.co.flathead.mt.us/fcpz/growthpolicy.html

The commissioners have the option of making a few more changes when they take up the resolution of intent at 9 a.m. Monday.

If the resolution is approved, people will have 30 days to provide written comments about the entire document, after which final action can be taken.