Critical areas law changes proposed

Several key changes to Whitefish’s critical areas ordinance will be considered during a public hearing at the Whitefish City-County Planning Board meeting on Thursday.

The hearing is last on an agenda that includes a total of seven public hearings. The meeting begins at 6 p.m. at Whitefish City Hall.

At the City Council’s request, the Planning Board held work sessions in August and September to discuss amendments that would make the ordinance more user-friendly.

The ordinance was controversial before and after it was passed by the City Council in 2008. Realtors in particular have claimed the law is too complex, too expensive and makes it difficult to put values on property within the Whitefish planning jurisdiction.

The city staff has proposed renaming the law as the water quality protection ordinance and has changed all critical areas references to water quality protection areas in the draft the Planning Board will consider.

One of the biggest changes deals with steep slopes.

One of the proposed amendments would change the focus of slope concerns only on areas within 200 feet of bodies of water and wetlands with 10 percent or greater slopes.

A geotechnical letter would be required as part of the analysis, but references to site screening for potential instability and site stability analysis would be removed.

A geotechnical letter is a lesser analysis than the site stability analysis.

All other references to steep slopes were deleted.

The public works staff wanted the board to consider a recommendation from a number of geotechnical professionals across the state that suggested that a geotechnical review ought to be a requirement for any development on slopes greater than 25 percent. That recommendation, however, is not included in the draft.

Trouble with slopes began in 2006 when the city imposed an urgency ordinance — a precursor to the critical areas ordinance — that set a maximum building