Land planning advocacy group shutting down

A funding shortfall has forced Citizens for a Better Flathead to temporarily suspend operations and close its office after nearly 30 years of advocating for Flathead Valley’s water resources, agricultural heritage and the environment through planning and policy solutions.

Executive Director Richard Turbiak said Citizens has been facing a lack of financial resources and is no longer receiving enough financial support to sustain the group’s operations. He said most of the decrease in funding can be attributed to fewer grants and donations.

Turbiak said the board of directors for the nonprofit is “unsure of how to move forward,” but decided it was in the organization’s best interest to do “everything short of dissolution.”

Board Chairwoman Wendy Coyne said the board will still remain intact and will meet on a semi-regular basis, but Citizens will stop receiving regular donations, the office will close its doors and the organization’s normal operations will be suspended.

Laws governing nonprofits allow a cease in operations and other measures to be taken without an organization having to completely dissolve. Therefore, if Citizens decides to resume operations down the road, that option is available so long as there is a functioning board, among other minimal requirements.

“If something comes up and we think Citizens can be a leader in the community, we hope that we can get up and running again and that funding will be available to do that,” Coyne said. “We have been lucky enough to have a lot of wonderful donors, but the bottom line is we had to raise so much money to keep Citizens going and we were unable to do that.”

Turbiak said all programming work has come to a halt, including the Waste Not Project. That collaborative project was established in 1993 and has served as the Flathead Valley’s guide for recycling and reducing waste. The organization’s Go Local Flathead magazine might be picked up by Highline Design Co. LLC of Kalispell, but Turbiak was unable to say for certain.

He said the organization came up about $100,000 short of what is required to maintain the operating budget. The budget supported all of the group’s ventures as well as three employees’ salaries.

Turbiak and Coyne both said the decision to suspend operations and close the office was not an easy one.

“The board had angst over this for months and months,” Coyne said. “None of this was done without a lot of thought. We have such a long history here in the valley.”

Despite the decision, current and former board members and Turbiak hope the organization can continue in some capacity and can once again find successful financial footing.

Mayre Flowers, the former director who helped create the organization some 27 years ago, called on the board to consider a public meeting with stakeholders to see if the issue of funding could be addressed.

“It’s incumbent on the board to host a meeting so that the many, many supporters who have donated both financially and time-wise to the organization can come together and look at if there is a way to continue operating. And I think it should happen soon,” Flowers said.

Since 1992, the watchdog organization focused on addressing various challenges that rapid growth has brought to the Flathead. In addition to encouraging public participation in “planning for the future of the Flathead,” the organization ran two programs that sought to promote sustainability — the WasteNot Project and Go Local Flathead.

Citizens for a Better Flathead is perhaps best known for its involvement in several land-use lawsuits.

For example, the organization successfully sued over the development of Section 36 in 2001 after that portion of state trust land was gradually converted from grasslands into a commercial district in North Kalispell. Citizens had fought to insure city services were taxed and paid for despite the development being on leased state land. A judge ruled the state was required to conduct a thorough study of proposed alternatives and impacts on the state land.

Then in 2014, Citizens challenged a Flathead County policy that slashed the required 45-day public comment period for zoning changes. Its efforts successfully reversed the decision and paved the way for other changes to flawed planning policies.

One of the biggest legal wins for Citizens was in 2016 when the Montana Supreme Court affirmed a District Court ruling in favor of Citizens that invalidated the Flathead County commissioners’ decision to rezone about 60 acres of the U.S. 93 corridor north of Kalispell into a B-2HG, or greenbelt zoning classification. The high court ruled it was incumbent on the county to more broadly assess the impact of the proposed map amendment on Kalispell’s growth plans.

Most recently, the watchdog group, in tandem with other local advocacy groups, has spearheaded efforts against operations at the highly contested Montana Artesian Co. water bottling plant in Creston.

Among other successes, Citizens played a vital role in the landslide passage of a ballot initiative in 2018 that expanded the Egan Slough Zoning District to include the bottling facility. The expansion placed tighter operating restrictions on the facility in addition to other feats, some of which have been recently challenged in court.

Flowers, who hung up her director’s hat in 2017 but remains an active advocate in the community, encouraged supporters of Citizens remain involved in the bottling plant and other land-use issues.

“There is no end to opportunities for the public to be involved and maybe there are new ways to reconfigure how Citizens operates. I think people want to continue having a watchdog organization,” Flowers said.