City considers new annexation policy that would simultaneously rezone property

The Whitefish City Council held a work session last week to discuss the city’s annexation policy and rezoning procedure and consider a more streamlined approach.

According to the city, land is annexed so that city services such as municipal water and sewer can be made available to the property; it results in taxpayers equitably sharing the cost of city services. When a property is annexed into the city, the parcel needs to be reassigned to an appropriate city zoning district.

Currently in Whitefish,this process involves the landowner submitting a petition for annexation to the city clerk, a contract agreement for annexation and an application for a zoning map amendment.

The city council considers and makes a decision about the annexation requests. The zoning amendment goes before the planning board once the annexation occurs and the public has been notified. City council then receives the planning board’s recommendation and holds a public hearing before approving an appropriate zoning district.

According to the city staff report, the zone change may happen three months or more after the annexation approval due to the need for public notices and the planning board hearing before the request reaches the city council.

“There is concern about the time lag between annexation and when the city zoning would go into effect, as the property would remain under county zoning rules,” said Whitefish Planning Director Dave Taylor.

At its regular meeting on June 20, Whitefish City Council passed an ordinance rezoning approximately 13 acres of land east of Highway 93 that was annexed into city limits on March 21.

During the work session, Taylor presented the annexation policies of two close-by cities that Whitefish could use as potential models in revamping its own policy.

Taylor explained that the process Kalispell uses is similar to Whitefish but they process the zone change through the planning board before the annexation request goes to city council and that shrinks the gap to less than two months.

Taylor’s report explains that in Missoula, the shift from county zoning to city zoning is not considered to be a rezone. Instead, they apply city zoning upon annexation.

In Missoula’s two-step process, the city council passes a resolution of intent to annex and apply city zoning. After publishing public notices for two successive weeks, the council holds a hearing and accepts or rejects the resolution.

“Missoula uses a truncated process for annexation zoning allowed under state law which bypasses the planning board and has one council hearing before adopting the ordinance,” Taylor said. “We are looking at using Missoula’s process and adopt both at the same time at city council.”

With the approach used in Missoula, the planning board meeting is deleted, the time gap between annexation and rezoning is eliminated — the entire process is shortened to a matter of weeks.

Taylor presented a draft of a new annexation policy to the council at the work session on July 5 for their consideration, though no changes have been made to the policy yet.