City, county begin to chart options for governance

The committee that drafted a revised interlocal agreement last year for the planning “doughnut” around Whitefish will meet Thursday to discuss how to move forward as the question of who will govern the doughnut area hangs in the balance.

The doughnut is the area extending two miles from city limits that has been the subject of a protracted jurisdictional dispute between the city of Whitefish and Flathead County.

The City-County Planning Jurisdiction Interlocal Agreement Committee specifically will discuss options for the city of Whitefish’s response to Flathead County’s notice of intent to terminate the 2010 revised agreement.

The meeting begins at 6 p.m. at the Whitefish Community Library meeting room. Public comment will be taken.

Those options may change next week, however, depending on the outcome of a ballot referendum aimed at repealing the 2010 agreement.

If the referendum passes, the revised agreement will be thrown out. It’s unclear exactly what will happen after that.

The city maintains the original 2005 interlocal agreement giving Whitefish the responsibility for planning issues would be put back in place.

County officials have taken an opposite position, maintaining the 2005 agreement is null and void.

If the measure fails, it remains to be seen if the county will proceed with its decision to terminate the 2010 agreement or retract its notice of intent.

“We’ll have to discuss both scenarios,” Whitefish City Manager Chuck Stearns said, acknowledging the committee is challenged by not knowing the outcome of the referendum.

When the city received the termination notice from the county more than four months ago, the City Council directed the doughnut committee to meet and re-establish communication. It has taken a couple of months to get the entire committee together for a meeting, Stearns said.

Stearns serves on the committee, along with City Council members Bill Kahle and Chris Hyatt, county Commissioner Jim Dupont and doughnut area representatives Lyle Phillips and Diane Smith.

The committee last met in August 2010 to put the finishing touches on the 2010 Restatement of Cooperative Interlocal Agreement that was adopted by both the city and county.

The county commissioners opted to issue a notice of intent to terminate in June to get a six-month “jump start” in dealing with the potential outcome of the referendum.

In a notification letter to the city of Whitefish, the commissioners said the referendum “has fatally attacked” the compromise the two sides worked so hard to accomplish.

“While we at the county had hoped that the 2010 agreement would allow us to begin a new cooperative relationship with the city of Whitefish, we cannot postpone governance of the doughnut indefinitely while the referendum and its inevitable litigation plays out,” the commissioners wrote.

The city had 90 days from the June notification letter to propose a resolution, but the county later agreed to extend that deadline to Dec. 15.

The city and county must engage in mediation as part of the termination process.

The county, however, has stated it will not agree to extend the June 21, 2012, termination date.

Because the county commissioners believe there is “conflicting information” about what doughnut area property owners want, the county is conducting its own mail-in ballot survey asking doughnut property owners who they prefer to regulate them: the city of Whitefish or Flathead County. The survey is a straw poll and not part of the official election process.

Referendum supporters, on the other hand, believe there’s significant public opposition among city residents to the revised agreement and argue the agreement doesn’t allow the city to govern itself effectively because City Council members are unsure how the county will react to city legislation that spills into the doughnut area.

Former Whitefish Planning Director Robert Horne said control of the two-mile area “was never the issue” as the city proposed legislation such as a zoning compliance permit for that area.

“The reason for the zoning compliance permit was that the city had a responsibility to implement and administer a zoning code within the ‘doughnut’ and had no tool with which to do it,” Horne said in a recent email to the Daily Inter Lake.

Whitefish Mayor Mike Jenson, in his response to the county’s decision to terminate the 2010 agreement, noted it was not the City Council that sought the referendum ballot measure to repeal the restated agreement.

“Instead, the Whitefish City Council voted to approve the 2010 restatement to resolve the litigation,” Jenson wrote, referring to the city’s lawsuit against the county that was dismissed as a condition of the 2010 agreement. “We remain willing and committed to meet with you to continue working toward a fair, common-sense resolution.”

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