Seeking common ground

This week at the invitation of the Swan Valley Community organization, I traveled with Mark Shiltz, Montana Land Reliance staffer, to speak to that community about how the North Fork got involved in land-use planning.

Although we see the results of that effort every day - we now have minimum lot sizes, setbacks, interlocal meetings and other improvements - I had not thought about how it all got started for years. There aren't many of us left from those beginnings, and I think they're worth recalling.

The North Fork Land-Use Advisory Committee came into being in 1984, twenty-plus years ago, but it wasn't just created because someone thought it was a good idea.

For more than 10 years prior, the North Fork community had been the scene of a series of battles among landowners. It's probably too simple to just say the battles were between summer residents and locals, or even environmentalists versus rednecks, but that's the way it seemed at the time. As the community became more and more polarized, everyone was placed, or shoved, onto one side or the other. There was no middle ground.

Each side would put up a slate of candidates for the annual election to the North Fork Landowners Association, and the Community Hall would be packed on election night. (No absentee ballots on the North Fork.) When it was determined which side had won, the losers would withdraw until the next year and the bitterness increased.

A lot of folks canceled their membership or just stopped coming to meetings. The North Fork is a great place to enjoy, but a lousy place for whining, sniveling or bickering.

When it finally became evident that neither side could win a lasting victory, convert the opposition or drive them out, a more moderate group emerged to promote community peace.

Instead of fighting each other, we united to influence a new enemy - the state and federal agencies. All agencies give out information and provide for public comment. If comments come in from all sides, the agency can do what it wants without a public consensus and, most often, the battle continues.

However, if a community is united, they can influence agency action. Even bureaucrats want to be loved, or at least liked.

North Fork planning focused on things we agreed on instead of our differences. Nothing is perfect, but today the community and the Forest Service collaborated on fuel mitigation on private and public land, and we are safer because of it. The National Park Service revisited its plan for their portion of the North Fork, and we all benefited.

We don't always get what we want, but as long as we're united, we can influence agencies that also have to answer to a broader public. It's a win-win situation. What do you think?