Neighborhood plan runs aground at planning board again

The Bigfork Neighborhood Plan cannot seem to get past its penultimate hump — passage from the Flathead County Planning Board.

The board voted 6-3 on Thursday night to continue the hearing about the plan until March 25. The plan first came before the board on April 9, 2008.

Public comment at the meeting was not extensive, but opponents did outline a list of grievances and suggested passage of the plan would open the county to legal action.

“It’s a lawyers full employment act,” said well-known property rights activist and president of American Dream Montana, Russ Crowder. “Especially because we have seen that Bigfork crowd and how they treat property owners.”

Crowder suggested that the first subdivision denied based on the plan would bring a flurry of lawsuits, “and I say that as someone who has just served the county with a lawsuit on behalf of one of our members.”

Charles Lapp, a Lakeside developer and former part-time employee of the Flathead Building Association, said the plan should be sent back to Bigfork with encouragement to pursue incorporation, rather than a neighborhood plan as restrictive as the one presented.

Members of the Bigfork Land Use Advisory Committee and the Bigfork Steering Committee were visibly frustrated by comments and the board’s eventual decision, which continues to elongate the more than four-year process.

“In good faith we made the changes you requested,” BLUAC chairperson Shelley Gonzales told the board, referring to the suggested revisions after a Dec. 11, 2008 workshop. “It feels like we're being bullied.”

One of the primary revisions made at the December workshop was the insertion of a paragraph in the plan’s preface that states outright that the document is non-regulatory.

But that preface and softened language throughout was not enough to assuage the concerns of at least three members of the planning board, who were outspoken about the contradictions and problems they perceived.

The board’s newest member, George Culpepper Jr., was the plan’s most outspoken opponent at the meeting. Culpepper was appointed to the planning board in December, while he held a full-time position for the Northwest Montana Association of Realtors as a government affairs director.  

Culpepper has since left NMAR, and now holds the same position with the Flathead Building Association.

“I don’t think this plan will get Bigfork sued,” he said. “I think it will get the county sued.”

Culpepper argued that the information contained in the plan was too outdated, something Gonzales said was largely the fault of the county, where it has been stuck in a “merry go round” for almost two years.

Culpepper also alleged that the plan discriminated against affordable housing.

“Based on this neighborhood plan, they do not want low-income families in Bigfork,” he said.

Gonzales, in an interview the next day, said that was plainly impossible.

“We cross-checked every policy with zoning to make sure we’re not overstepping zoning regulations,” she said. Besides, Gonzales said, many applications that have come before BLUAC have claimed to be for “affordable housing.” One of them is the Lake Pointe subdivision near Eagle Bend Golf Course, which is now a gated, high-end community.

Board members Culpepper, Rita Hall and Randy Toavs were all outspoken in their desire to do further work on the plan, while Mike Mower, Jim Heim and Marc Pitman all expressed support with only a few minor, if any, changes. None of the three who lobbied for more wholesale changes were present at the December workshop session.

Mower said the plan was a “philosophical document” with no regulatory power, and that the planning board shouldn’t impose itself too much.

“We should not be rewriting their plan,” he said. “This is not ours.”