Whitefish aims to simplify critical areas law

With a directive to simplify Whitefish’s critical areas ordinance, the Whitefish City-County Planning Board tonight will hold a work session to begin tweaking the comprehensive drainage law to make it 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.

Now the City Council has decided it’s time to consider some minor amendments to the regulations, and the Planning Board gets the first shot at developing recommendations for potential changes. The ordinance’s regulations for construction on slopes will be given special attention.

Trouble with slopes began in 2006 when the city imposed an urgency ordinance — a precursor to the critical areas ordinance now on the books — that set a maximum building slope of 30 percent. That regulation was consider too restrictive, so a committee in place at the time agreed that if slope construction was properly engineered and posed no threat to the public, it would be allowed.

“However, as a result of this built-in flexibility, this [slope] subsection continues to be a great source of confusion and uncertainty for the public,” a Planning and Building Department staff report stated.

Recent amendments exempt certain new single-family development from some aspects of the slope regulations, but are limited in scope, the report said. Initial peer review of the regulations pointed out that the slope rules are too confusing, and geotechnical engineers and other professionals statewide have recommended a cut-off where additional geotechnical review should be required.

The planning staff has recommended three options for slope regulations:

n Eliminate all the steep slope references, but require a geotechnical letter for any development on a 25 percent slope or greater. A geotechnical letter is a lesser analysis than the site stability analysis. This would eliminate the site screening for potential instability and the site stability analysis. References to erosion control would remain.

n Change the chapter to an erosion control chapter and eliminate all references to slope. There would be no limitation to development on slopes.

n No change to the regulation, with a rationale that the purpose of the critical areas ordinance has not changed and the recent changes for new homes adequately balance appropriate development while protecting water quality.

The Planning Board will consider proposed changes to several major sections of the critical areas ordinance, including stream, lake and wetland buffers and setbacks; groundwater; and administration of the law.

Prior to the critical areas ordinance work session, the board will hold a public hearing to consider rezoning property owned by Bruce Erickson at Carver Bay from residential to suburban resident, as part of an annexation process.

The meeting begins at 6 p.m. tonight at Whitefish City Hall.

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