Subdivision rules ready for final review
Finalizing subdivision regulations for Flathead County has been a long, tedious process, but a Dec. 16 public hearing could give the county an early Christmas present.
The commissioners meet at 9:30 a.m. Dec. 16 to consider a draft version of the regulations.
The current subdivision regulations were adopted in December 2008, but soon afterwards the commissioners appointed a committee of local professionals — Jane Eby, Eric Mulcahy, Dave DeGrandpre and Marc Leichti — to review the functionality of the new regulations.
“The commissioners wanted a group of professionals to look at the document and review how it works when you get into the field and apply it,” Flathead County Planning Director BJ Grieve said. “The focus of the committee wasn’t wholesale changes.”
It was a job that was supposed to take three months, but stretched into a year and a half because of the comprehensive nature of the review. The committee spent 2009 and the first half of 2010 working through the regulations and formally presented its recommended revisions to the commissioners in July.
Since then the commissioners have held three public workshops to review committee recommendations.
The committee divided the proposed changes into two categories: administrative and content issues, Grieve said.
Recommended administrative changes largely revolve around reformatting the structure of the regulations to reduce redundancy and make them more user-friendly.
Some of the content changes involved action taken by the 2009 Legislature.
For example, the Legislature provided governing bodies with the option of requiring that a percentage of infrastructure improvements be in place prior to a developer requesting final plat and the approval of a subdivision improvement agreement.
The Flathead committee recommends the commissioners initiate that option and require at least 65 percent of the infrastructure to be completed before final plat.
A big content change is a proposal to allow covenants, conditions and restrictions — called CCRs in the building industry — to be used to meet certain conditions of approval. Flathead County hasn’t allowed anything to be done using CCRs, but the proposed regulations would allow them to be used for road maintenance agreements, riparian protection requirements, no-build zone proposals and wildland urban interface requirements.
Requirements for offsite road improvements were a challenge for the committee.
Committee members felt the current direct-impact formula used for road improvements sometimes puts burdensome requirements on small projects. The existing formula has resulted in requiring small lengths of road paving that just isn’t practical, Grieve explained.
To accommodate subdividers of five or fewer lots, the committee recommends that subdivisions contributing 50 or fewer average daily vehicle trips to the county road system be exempt from offsite road improvements if the primary access is paved. Subdivisions contributing between 51 and 399 daily vehicle trips would be able to choose between completing a traffic impact study or a subdivision improvement agreement.
A subdivision improvement agreement is a contract between the county and developer whereby the developer agrees to provide collateral that it will get something done if the commissioners approve the final plat, Grieve said.
Subdivisions contributing 400 or more daily vehicle trips would be required the complete a traffic impact study, the committee recommends.
Another key change involves waivers of preliminary plats.
Current regulations allow a minor subdivision of three lots or less to apply for an administrative approval of preliminary plat if it meets certain criteria. The Planning Office used to call these waivers of preliminary plat, but former Planning Director Jeff Harris directed planners to stop doing them during the “boom” years, Grieve said.
“The technical community (surveyors, engineers, etc.) didn’t care for that at all and it has been an area of concern from them ever since,” he said. “This will bring back what we used to call waivers. They have limited applicability because they have to meet a number of criteria to qualify, but it’s a change worth noting because of the historical interest in the subject.”
Other significant recommendations involve a revision to the environmental assessment format, and deleting a requirement for the five-acre density or connection to public sewer for subdivisions where groundwater is less than eight feet.
A copy of the draft version of the regulations, showing changes from the current regulations, is available at http://flathead.mt.gov/planning_zoning/Drafts.php.
Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com