Planning Board studies greenbelt zone proposal
What to do about a proposed greenbelt zoning district will be on tonight’s Flathead County Planning Board agenda.
Planning Director BJ Grieve said the board will discuss how to proceed on a request for a text amendment to change the zoning on roughly 79 acres — located on the east side of U.S. 93 between Ponderosa Lane and Autumn Court — from agriculture and suburban agriculture to general business highway greenbelt.
If the new zoning designation is created, it could be used along other highway corridors in the county.
The board already held a public hearing on the text amendment as well as a workshop.
Possibilities include holding another workshop or placing it on a future agenda for approval or denial.
Also on the agenda is a public hearing on a request by Lodgepole Inc. to add professional offices as a conditional use to the RC-1, or Residential Cluster, zoning designation in the Bigfork Zoning District.
The Bigfork Land Use Advisory Committee unanimously recommended approval.
According to the Bigfork Eagle, the zoning classification, which is aimed to “encourage a master planned community with a central recreational focus” — particularly targeted at Eagle Bend Golf Club — only exists within the Bigfork Zoning District where approximately 630 acres are zoned RC-1.
There currently are 21 conditional uses within the zone, including real estate offices, and the applicant suggests that other professional offices such as attorneys, architects, mortgage brokers and psychologists also would be appropriate within the zone.
Due to build-out and other limitations that apply to the potential use of the text amendment, it could only affect the Holt Drive corridor, limited areas on Chapman Hill Road and Bigfork Stage as well as internal features of future mixed-use developments, according to the staff report compiled by the Flathead County Planning Office.
In addition, Grieve said he plans to discuss a draft revision of administrative fees tonight and at 9 a.m. Thursday in a meeting with county commissioners.
Grieve would like to reduce most of the fees and make them user-friendly and more consistent. Included in this discussion will be creation of some new fees for processes that previously didn’t exist. Grieve said new subdivision regulations that take effect April 1 include, for example, administrative approval of preliminary plat for a minor subdivision.
Grieve noted that a review of the county’s administrative fees is required annually.
The Planning Board meets today at 6 p.m. in the second-floor conference room of the Earl Bennett Building, 1035 First Ave. W., Kalispell.