Lakeside plan put on hold

The embattled 2010 Lakeside Neighborhood Plan has been put on hold until a lawsuit challenging the neighborhood planning process goes to trial in December.

Flathead County District Judge Stewart Stadler on Thursday granted an injunction, staying the plan at the request of a group of two dozen Lakeside area property owners who sued the county, former Planning Director Jeff Harris and the Lakeside Neighborhood Planning Committee.

The temporary injunction means no new zoning districts can be created in the area served by the Lakeside plan, and no zone changes or zoning text amendments will be considered until the outcome of the jury trial, according to Planning Director BJ Grieve.

Conditional-use permits and variances will be considered, along with “anything where we don’t have to refer to the neighborhood plan,” he said.

“Our office will do no implementation of the Lakeside plan, nor will we accept any privately initiated applications” dependent on the Lakeside plan, Grieve said.

The plan approved by the county in late 2010 was an update of the 1995 Lakeside Neighborhood Plan, but the Planning Office can’t use the older plan while the injunction is in place because the 2010 plan hasn’t been thrown out, Grieve further explained.

The property owners’ lawsuit also asked the court for an injunction halting development of a Somers Neighborhood Plan and preventing Harris and the county from pursuing any future neighborhood plans. Since the Somers planning effort has been scrapped and Harris no longer works for the county, Stadler did not grant those injunctions.

“I think everyone has to acknowledge and thank the Lakeside committee for the hundreds of hours” of volunteer work that went into the plan, Stadler said, adding that he didn’t think the group deliberately “started out to hide things or do things under the table.”

The lawsuit brings into question a members-only Yahoo website the Lakeside Neighborhood Planning Committee used to conduct business as the planning process progressed.

The county subsequently ordered the website be opened to the public and all documentation associated with the site be made public. The site was kept open for about 30 days and then was shut down.

Because Harris and planner Eric Giles, who also no longer works for the county, received e-mail correspondence via the Yahoo site, the lawsuit alleges the Planning Office was aware of the “secret” site and did nothing to stop it.

During a court hearing on Thursday, plaintiff attorney Tammi Fisher alleged that many property owners were prevented from participating early in the planning process because they weren’t included in an initial mailing of a survey sent to Lakeside post-office boxholders.

She also claimed many of the committee meetings held in private homes weren’t given proper public notice.

Charles Lapp, who owns 65 acres in the Lakeside area, testified he was among those who didn’t get the survey until sometime later. And although the Lakeside committee said they contacted homeowner association presidents to make them aware of the planning effort, Lapp said he was president of such an association and wasn’t notified by committee president Deb Spaulding.

Lapp was on the committee that developed the Flathead County Growth Policy and said it was extremely important to him that a process be developed to assure transparency in neighborhood planning.

He said he suggested a method of actually going door to door in a proposed plan area to notify property owners, but that suggestion didn’t make it into the final growth policy. The neighborhood plan chapter of the growth policy states that organizers must make a “reasonable effort” to notify landowners.

Lapp and Lakeside property owner Donna Thornton both testified they tried to gain access to the Yahoo “work group” but were denied membership.

Lakeside committee secretary Barb Miller, who set up the Yahoo site to send e-mails, post a calendar and plan documents and photographs, acknowledged she denied them access to the website, but said she had received some “junk mail” and was concerned that the “proliferation of spam and viruses could affect the website.”

Miller testified that the Yahoo site never was an official receptacle for plan documents; she has an external disk drive with all of the Lakeside plan documents that serves as the official record. She also said no committee decisions were made via the Yahoo site.

A public website was developed to keep property owners abreast of the planning process, Miller said. She maintained that the committee did its best to provide notice of all meetings.

Thornton, however, said she believes the process was deceptive. By the time she gained access to the Yahoo website, 257 of 483 e-mails had been deleted.

“There was a lot of stuff going on there that I felt I had a right to be involved with,” Thornton said.

Others who testified about concerns over public notice were Jeff and Ardis Larsen. The Larsens are not among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, however. Lapp also is not a plaintiff.

Property owners suing over the Lakeside plan include David Allen, Eleanor Allen, Johnathon Allen, Aaron Allen, Kristy Allen, Darren Clarke, James Frame, Roxanne Frame, John Day, Bill Blomgren, Charles Harris, Judy Harris, Dennis Thornton, Donna Thornton, Jim Etzler, Beverly Etzler, Chris Rasmussen, Remi Rasmussen, Lawrence Ask, Carol Ask, Joyce Day, Rudy Mendez, Gena Mendez and Pauline Dyer.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.