Growth Task Force to address city's future

SANDPOINT — City C ouncil member Stephen Snedden attended a community forum last year to get a feel for what local residents think about growth in Sandpoint.  What he got was an earful.

The message that came across loud and clear was that residents wanted to get in front of growth — to steer it, as opposed to be rolled over by it in the manner of so many other community jewels that were discovered, packaged by high-end developers and summarily sold off to the highest bidders.

According to Snedden, many of the comments at the forum were about what role city government should play in managing growth.  Residents also expressed frustration because they felt left out of the important decisions that were — more rapidly all the time, it seemed — directly affecting the future of their community.

Starting on Thursday, and continuing on a weekly basis through the rest of this month, Snedden will help spearhead a Growth Task Force designed to gather ideas from Sandpoint residents and carry them into the council chambers as action items.

“The genesis for this task force came out of the debate at the community forum I attended,” he said.  “Sandpoint residents said they were concerned that our town wasn’t heading in the right way.  People wanted a vehicle for getting those concerns in front of city government — they wanted to participate in the decisions being made.”

Snedden received unanimous council support to go forward with the weekly meetings.  The only revision to his original proposal came in the form of a name change, from a “committee” on growth, which council members thought signaled a long-term entity, to a “task force,” which was decided to be better suited to the month-long confines of the group.

Members of the Growth Task Force project will work within a framework devised by city government over an 18-month period and further vetted through 22 council sessions held between June and November of last year.  That framework, the city’s comprehensive plan, provides an overall direction for the community’s development. 

The items that come out of this month’s task force meetings are meant to define the community’s character.

The comprehensive plan, which goes before the City Council for final consideration on Feb. 11, got “a big thumb’s up” from the council members when it came out of the revision process, said Snedden.  The city now looks to the task force meetings to be a way for residents to take their collective vision for growth and color inside the lines of the proposed plan.

“The comp plan is our blueprint for growth,” Snedden said.  “We worked through it page by page and it came out of the City C   ouncil as a better plan than it came in.  But laying out that vision was the easy part.  Implementation is going to be tougher.”

Community surveys conducted during the drafting process outlined the priorities that would be incorporated in the plan itself.

“A few of the things that came out very strongly were alternative modes of transportation, like walking and biking, having neighborhoods that are livable, development that fits the character of the town and keeping our historic buildings,” the councilman said.

Jeremy Grimm, planning director for the City of Sandpoint, views the task force as a complementary effort to a planning process that has consumed his department’s focus for nearly two years.

“The comp plan is the 30,000-foot perspective of where we want to go and what we want our community to look like in 20 years,” he said.  “I would describe it as a progressive document that provides assurance that our future reflects the wishes of the community.  The Growth Task Force is a refinement of that vision.”

And while the planning process involved considerable compromise in order to come up with a document Grimm hopes will meet with unanimous council approval, the informal conversations Snedden has had with residents who are interested in working on the task force have been uncompromising in nature.  More than anything, he said, citizens of Sandpoint want to avoid the “Aspenization” of their hometown.

“Residents who have been here a long time say, ‘I really like Sandpoint the way it is’ and people who have moved here from other resort areas say they don’t want it to become what they moved away from,” Snedden said.  “The fear is that we could become like Ketchum, where it’s too expensive for people to live.”

About 40 local people already have expressed interest in joining the Growth Task Force, the councilman said, with a large number of potential members coming from the ranks of business and education.

“I’ve been surprised by who is interested and the high level of interest from both old-time residents and newcomers — it’s all across the board,” Snedden added.  “One of the neat things is that it’s people who have not taken an active role in politics.  They have a lot of great ideas and I’m excited to see what comes out of this.”

At its first meeting this Thursday, the task force will establish areas of interest for member research, with a homework assignment for coming back with examples of how other communities have handled similar problems and opportunities.  In subsequent meetings, the group will begin to formulate policy ideas and, where members wish to, work with city departments to get their input along the way.

“At the fourth meeting, we’ll pick out the best ideas and put it all together for council presentation,” Snedden said.

If the council approves the comprehensive plan, the timing for the task force presentation could dovetail with the larger planning timeline.

“The final step will be for the planning department to recreate city zones that jive with the directive of the comp plan and the specifics that come out of this Growth Task Force,” Grimm said.

The planning director admitted that some residents might think the city is out of touch as it prepares to meet growth head-on during a time when all economic indicators are pointing the opposite way.

“Although it might seem counterintuitive to start a Growth Task Force during a period of contraction, these slow times are when you want to do your planning,” Grimm said.  “They mark an ideal time to plan for the future.”

The Growth Task Force is open to all interested residents who can participate in the series of four meetings.  The meetings will be held on consecutive Thursday evenings on Feb. 5, 12, 19 and 26 from 5:30-8 p.m. at Sandpoint City Hall. 

It would be helpful for interested participants to become familiar with the proposed comprehensive plan before attending the first meeting, Grimm said.  A link to the full text of that document can be found on the city’s home page at: www.cityofsandpoint.com.