Council approves necessary Whitefish code amendments

The latest state legislative session passed a number of bills that caused Whitefish City Planners to make amendments to the city’s codes regarding zoning, subdivisions and architectural reviews. At last week’s Whitefish City Council meeting, the council heard and adopted all the needed changes.

As part of a long meeting, Whitefish City Planner Wendy Compton-Ring and Planning Director Dave Taylor explained the amendments and the reasons for them. Some of the legislation requiring the changes went into effect immediately and other bills will go into effect in a few months.

“These proposed zoning changes are a direct result of some of the bills that were passed by the state legislature recently,” said Taylor. “They impact where and how we allow duplexes and multi-family within our zoning districts as well as their associated parking requirements so each of the city’s zoning districts were modified to make several changes including some housekeeping changes.”

Senate Bill 245 went into effect immediately and required many changes to commercial zones to allow multi-family mixed-use developments by right. Taylor said the city’s bulk and scale standards were also amended in commercial zones.

The bill had other requirements including one that meant the city needed to change its zoning standards for its parking requirements, as well.

“We also redefined multi-family to match that state law which is now five units. We used to define it as three units,” said Taylor. “Senate bill 245 also limited what we can do for parking so now we can't require anything more than one per dwelling unit for multi-family.”

Senate Bill 323 requires duplexes to be permitted everywhere single-family homes are permitted. It also states cities cannot regulate duplexes more stringently than single-family homes. It goes into effect Jan. 1, but Taylor said it was easier to combine the two bills since most of the same zoning sections were being changed.

He added the bill effectively doubles the density in single-family zoning districts and staff had to make amendments to the Planned Unit Development (PUD) chapter regarding maximum densities.

As far as housekeeping changes, the word “shall” is no longer preferred and every “shall” was changed to “must” which, Taylor said, is more defensible.

While they were knee-deep in the codes, Taylor said they added tables at the beginning of the zoning chapter to make it easier for the public to view the code and see what the setbacks and lot coverages are.

Four residents spoke in favor of the changes during the public comment period.

“Generally… less stringent zoning regulations usually, in this case, is going to result in more density. More density results in more affordable housing,” Leanette Galaz said, trying to clarify the issue for the public.

OTHER AMENDMENTS affected the architectural review committee, standards and the sign code. In part, it changed the Whitefish Architectural Review Committee from a decision-making body to a recommendation body in preparation for Senate Bill 382.

Whitefish Senior Planner Wendy Compton-Ring said the committee will still review everything in the residential districts except duplexes and detached single-family homes and they will make recommendations to the staff.

“The new bill talks about that variance to design standards would go to the staff, so we’ve added that section as well,” Compton-Ring said.

Councilor Ben Davis asked if the Architectural Review Committee will work the same way it does currently and Compton-Ring said it would.

THE THIRD area of amendments concerned the city’s subdivision regulations. Eight bills passed the legislature last session pertaining to subdivisions.

There are bills related to lots of subdivision exemptions including family transfers and the expedited review.

Compton-Ring said the council had seen three or four subdivisions with an expedited review. In those cases, there were no variances requested and the applicant could bypass the planning board. Now, with the new bill, applicants can ask for variances.

“Honestly, with all the bills that happened here, I don’t think there’s going to be an instance where planning board will even be looking at subdivisions anymore,” Compton-Ring said.

There were no questions nor public comments and the council approved all the amendments unanimously.