County approves new subdivision regulations

The Flathead County commissioners on Thursday approved new subdivision regulations.

The new regulations will go into effect April 1, 2011. Commissioners Joe Brenneman and Jim Dupont approved the regulations; Commissioner Dale Lauman was absent.

Mayre Flowers of Citizens for a Better Flathead requested that the commissioners appoint another committee to review the regulations. She said the original committee was stacked with representatives from the development community.

“The county needs to embrace a more diverse” perspective, she said after the meeting.

“We could discuss issues forever,” Dupont said. “It’s a living document” that could be revised in the future, he said. “There’s some obvious things that need changing.”

Jeff Larson favors the new document, but said there are a couple of issues that need tweaking in the future. These include fire-safety standards and the offsite improvement formula.

Linda Christiansen asked that the commissioners not delete a provision that does away with a requirement that a subdivision’s density be at least five acres per lot if the groundwater in the area is less than eight feet.

That seemed to be the most contentious issue, with Flowers and Robin Steinkraus of the Flathead Lakers in agreement with Christiansen.

After the meeting, Flathead County Planning Director B.J. Grieve said the county decided to nix that requirement because it doesn’t match state law. He noted that Montana Department of Environmental Quality standards have a four-foot groundwater standard.

The five-acre zoning density restriction has been enforced, Grieve said. The current standard was adopted in December 2008. That restriction is one that can be made by zoning districts, Commissioner Joe Brenneman said.

“The community needs to decide how we protect our aquifer,” he said. “Communities could zone themselves in that way.”

The aquifer is going to be protected by citizen involvement and not by the county commissioners, he added.

Eric Mulcahy, one the members of the committee that reviewed the proposed regulations, said there is a mechanism in state law that allows the commissioners to make restrictions based on groundwater. That requires a groundwater study and would not affect zoning density, he said.

Other provisions of the subdivision regulations include: requiring that 65 percent of infrastructure to be complete before final plat; allowing covenants, codes and restrictions to be used to meet conditions of approval for a project; not requiring subdivisions with five or fewer lots that have less than 50 trips per day to improve the primary access road; reinstituting waivers of preliminary plats for subdivisions with three lots or less; and a revision to environmental assessments.

Lauman, who recently announced that he wasn’t going to run again when his term is up in 2012, was absent from the meeting due to health reasons.