Work begins on city’s new growth policy called Vision Whitefish 2045

The City of Whitefish Planning Department is preparing to begin the process of updating the city’s Growth Policy.

The Whitefish City Council determined the creation of a new Growth Policy, which reflects current and future conditions and ties all subsequent plans together, is prudent. They have made this task a priority goal.

Montana State Statute requires review of a growth policy once every five years, at least. According to the staff report, the existing Growth Policy was last updated in 2007. However, updates like the highway corridor plans and the Downtown Master Plan have been added as recently as 2021.

Prior to their regular meeting last week, the council was treated to a presentation by Whitefish City Planner Alan Tiefenbach about growth policies in general and specific data he gathered as a starting point for creating the new plan.

In his report, Tiefenbach said a growth policy, or comprehensive plan, is an official public document adopted and used by Montana cities, towns and counties as a guide for making decisions about their future, particularly regarding land use.

While a growth policy is not mandatory, the requirements for plans state that a growth policy must be prepared for any city to adopt municipal zoning and that zoning must be consistent with the growth policy.

Additionally, a city’s planning board is the only entity authorized to prepare a growth policy.

According to the staff report, an early step to creating an updated growth policy, or comprehensive plan as they are often called, is to create an inventory of its existing characteristics and features using maps and narrative.

Tiefenbach shared several maps showing the corridor plans, age of structures, location of housing as well as other key elements.

“I drove and I walked every single street in the city and I mapped all the uses at a parcel level. So, I mapped what is actually there now and I compared it to Google Maps and property record data for the state,” Tiefenbach said. “This is a snapshot of what the City of Whitefish looks like.”

In order to encourage community involvement with the Growth Policy, a catchy name was chosen earlier in the month by the planning board. Vision Whitefish 2045 is the new name for the growth policy document.

“Generally, comprehensive plans look out 20 years into the future,” Tiefenbach said. “We’re figuring… we’ll get done with it somewhere late 2024, somewhere early 2025.”

A contest to design a logo for Vision Whitefish 2045, the newly-renamed plan, is in the works and public input during the process of developing the plan is a priority.

Staff has prepared a tentative timeline for the growth policy update process and they

intend to begin “kick-off” and visioning meetings with the public regarding the growth policy update in April and May.