Connect Whitefish plan gets OK from planning board

The Connect Whitefish bicycle and pedestrian master plan will pedal ahead with a positive recommendation from the City Planning Board.

The board Nov. 17 recommended approval of the plan to City Council with two amendments to the plan, which replaces the city's 1998 bike and pedestrian master plan.

The first recommended change involved a line on the plan's map indicating a future trail. The line runs through property south of Reservoir Road formerly owned by Margaret Murdoch and now owned by her daughter, Sharlot Battin. The property has a conservation easement over it owned by The Nature Conservancy.

According to Planning Director Dave Taylor, for many years Whitefish has shown a future trail on previous plans, but Battin requested that the line showing the future trail be removed from the plan.

The parks board recommended removing the line through Battin's property and instead adding arrows generally showing the route rather than an unbroken line.

After discussing the issue, planning board chair Ken Meckel made a motion to remove the arrows and show no reference at all to a trail through Battin's property.

Meckel said he didn't see the need to show a future trail on the property.

“I just think it does show sensitivity and I think that having arrows on the map could be a problem for Sharlot,” Meckel said.

Board member Rebecca Norton agreed, saying the arrows insinuate that at some point the path will go through the property.

City Councilor Richard Hildner opposed the idea, saying the arrows respect Battin's desires.

“I think the arrows say we will find a way around the conservation easement, I think that's all the arrows show,” he said.

That motion passed to remove the arrows. Hildner was the only vote against.

The second change recommended by the board was to add an amendment for the plan to support concurrency by developers with regard to paths and sidewalks. The city has a concurrency program in place for motorized pathways that requires new developers to accommodate changes to the existing pathways or mitigate deficiencies through financial or in-kind contributions.

The city has only basic concurrency standards in place for paths and sidewalks, and city planning staff wants to improve that to have greater focus on non-motorized systems and require concurrency on all levels of development.

Taylor said the city does have some basic standards in place, but the current program could be improved to have a greater focus on non-motorized systems.

During public comment, Heidi Van Everen, executive director of the Whitefish Legacy Partners, said she's excited to see the plan realized over the next couple decades.

“I want to commend everyone, because I think it is an asset to have an updated plan for our community going forward for the next 20 years,” she said. “Thank you for everybody's hard work.”

The Connect Whitefish plan was created by WGM Group and is intended to help guide city decision-makers in creating and maintaining bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure over the next 20 years.

The plan looks at the current state of bicycle and pedestrian options, uses input from the community to choose priorities and then offers suggestions on how to achieve selected goals.

Whitefish's current pedestrian and bicycle network comprises 41 miles of sidewalk, 13 miles of shared use paths and two miles of bike lanes on city streets. The new plan calls for $23.5 million worth of trail development for the next 20 years, divided into immediate, intermediate and long-range priority tiers.

The completion of the Whitefish River Trail as a 10-foot-wide shared-use path with lighting and wayfinding signage from the Skye Park footbridge to JP Road is the top priority for the plan. About $5.6 million for trail development is included in the first tier, with $2.3 million dedicated to the proposed trail from Lion Mountain Road to Twin Bridges Road, which is expected to be completed by the Montana Department of Transportation.

Fifty-seven projects are included in the connectivity category and 28 in the safety category. Safety concerns include standardizing design guidelines to fix narrow bike lanes, unsafe path crossings and dysfunctional bike racks.

The city adopted its current bicycle and pedestrian master plan in 1998 and adopted amendments to the plan in 2003 and 2007.

The plan will go before City Council for a public hearing on Jan. 3, 2017.