Don't let planning disappear

Inter Lake editorial

Given all the attention focused on the Flathead County Planning Office lately, you might think that planners are either summarily seizing private property or spending so much that the national debt is growing.

The chorus of complaints has ranged from whether a neighborhood planning effort was flawed by public-access limits to how much the Planning Office spent for s'mores and a boat.

The first point has merit - certainly total public access is needed in the neighborhood plan process. The spending issues, however, seem to be rather thin gruel on which to base arguments for firing public officials (which some people have argued should happen).

The subtext of the criticism seems to be that the county Planning Office and its director are actively engaged in - as shocking as it may seem - planning.

Some of the allegedly aggrieved parties act as if recent Somers and Lakeside planning efforts are a sudden and subversive assault on precious property rights. But it's worth noting that both of those communities (and others in the Flathead) have a long tradition of neighborhood plans. People in Somers started talking about a neighborhood plan way back in 1993. Lakeside residents started work on neighborhood planning in 1994.

What's new is that now planning is under a new growth policy and its mysterious "majority" requirements for launching neighborhood efforts. What's not new is that some people don't want any planning, and other people don't want any growth. Nor is this a new fight.

Don't forget that a former county commissioner - one of the prime spokesmen in the latest assault on the Planning Office - had a major role nine years ago in dismantling the county planning system that involved the three cities. The county's planning divorce back then put an end to 25 years of cooperative regional planning in the Flathead Valley.

Now, it appears, the naysayers see another opportunity to further degrade the ability of the Planning Office and citizens of the Flathead to pursue planning.

While we understand that private property rights are sacrosanct, we also think that planning for growth is the only sensible way to protect property rights for the long term. Destroying the planning process will not help anyone. Improving it will serve the best interests of Flathead County for years to come.