Planning Board mulls short-term rental proposal

The Flathead County Planning Board is poised to tackle two big issues at its meeting on Wednesday — short-term rental regulations and the South Whitefish Corridor Plan.

The board will continue its discussion and likely will make a recommendation on a zoning proposal to regulate short-term rental housing throughout zoned areas of the county.

A public hearing last month yielded extensive citizen feedback on a zoning text amendment that would add short-term rentals as an administrative conditional use in the Ashley Lake, Labrant/Lindsey Lane, Lakeside, Little Bitterroot Lake, Rogers Lake and West Valley neighborhoods. The North Fork area initially was included but has been dropped from the proposed amendment.

The public-comment section of the hearing was closed at the Feb. 8 hearing; now the matter is in the board’s hands for a recommendation to the county commissioners.

It remains to be seen what route the board will take.

At the Feb. 8 hearing, some board members said they wanted a chance to tweak the proposal before considering a recommendation; others said they prefer scrapping the text amendment and would rather simply remove the 30-day stipulation in zoning regulations.

Currently, operating a rental unit for less than 30 days is an illegal use in zoned areas of the county. Nevertheless, there are dozens of short-term, or vacation rentals operating throughout the county. Removing the 30-day benchmark essentially would make it legal to operate a short-term rental anywhere in the county with no regulatory oversight.

Three changes have been made to the proposed performance standards for short-term rental housing.

First, the North Fork has been dropped from the neighborhood list. Second, the maximum occupancy has been changed from two people per bedroom to an occupancy that does not exceed an average of three adults per sleeping area plus an additional two people, or the septic capacity as determined by the county Environmental Health Department, whichever is less.

A third change is the addition of requiring a minimum of one off-street parking space per sleeping area plus one additional off-street parking place. If boat space is associated with the short-term rental housing, one off-street parking space would be required for each boat trailer.

The Northwest Montana Association of Realtors asked for the zoning text amendment for three key reasons — to protect the homeowners, protect the property rights of neighbors and to protect the traveling public, Erica Wirtala, government affairs director for the Realtor association, told the board last month.

Allowing short-term rentals as an administrative conditional use not only would bring property owners who rent such units into compliance, but also would enable Realtors to market properties for sale that may have short-term rental potential, she said.

In other business, the board will consider a zone-change request by Michael Seaman and Garry Seaman in the Evergreen Zoning District. The proposal would change the zoning on just over 34 acres at 74 West Evergreen Drive from suburban residential and one-family residential to two-family residential zoning.

The acreage — at the southeast corner of West Evergreen Drive and River Road — historically has been used for agriculture and has a grove of trees in the center of the property. The Seamans have owned the property for more than 20 years and would like to create a mobile-home park to provide affordable housing for the Flathead Valley, according to the planning staff report.

A public hearing will be held on the Seamans’ proposal.

The Planning Board will devote the rest of the meeting to a work session on the county’s proposed corridor plan for the U.S. 93 area south of Whitefish city limits. The citizen-initiated corridor plan would change the zoning from agricultural and suburban agriculture to more intensive commercial and business service zoning on 490 acres along 1.5 miles of U.S. 93 south of the Montana 40 intersection. The affected acreage would be placed in an overlay zoning district called the Highway 93 South Whitefish Overlay.

The board meets at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the second-floor conference room of the South Campus Building, 40 11th St. W., Suite, 200, in Kalispell.

For more information, visit https://flathead.mt.gov/planning_zoning.

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