Public: Planning issues need community input

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A public hearing on proposed amendments to the county’s subdivision ordinance dominated the recent Bonner County Planning and Zoning meeting.

Planning Director Milton Ollerton told attendees that he was not the author of the changes, but that they were a culmination of hard work by a former staff member and the Planning and Zoning Commissioners at workshop.

After Ollerton presented the document, the meeting was opened to public comment. Three aspects of major concern were addressed by most of the 15 individuals who spoke. The first was the proposed change to the definition of minor land division, which would change the wording, “any division of land into four or fewer lost or parcels,” to “any division of land into 10 or fewer lots or parcels.”

A second area of concern was deleting the necessity to provide notice of a proposed plat in the local newspaper, but to keep notification by first class mail to “all property owners of record within 300 feet of the external boundaries of the land being considered.”

In the section regarding endorsements required on a final plat a debatable change was proposed regarding Panhandle Health District’s approval for sanitary restrictions by adding a subset that reads, “All plats proposing lots below 2.5 acres shall have the sanitary restriction lifted.”

“I can see you’re trying to fix some of the problems with the subdivision ordinance. However I think if you want to protect the quality of life in Bonner County and don’t want a buyer beware environment here, we need to strive for more than rock bottom requirements established in state code,” Sagle resident Susan Drumheller said. “I don’t think the fixes go far enough.”

“Please bring back legal notices for all land divisions and the public comment period. You might learn something about the property that changes the situation. The lack of public involvement, no legal notices, no agency review and the fact that subdivision standards now are not going to apply to anything that is ten lots or less increases the problems we’re going to have.”

Marsha Stephens from Spirit Lake agreed. She said that MLD should remain at four parcels. She also said she’s concerned about the notification of land owners within 300 feet of the proposed plats and made a recommendation based on a practice in another state.

“They required a big board public notice on the property visible on the street to the public as they drove by. They could see land use action, what was going on, and that was the opportunity for them to provide comments. You could give people time to see the sign, stop, look it up if they cared to, and then offer comments,” Stephens said.

Kathryn Kolberg from Panhandle Health District told officials that Bonner County is under tremendous growth right now. Panhandle Health is handling more than twice the septic applications than they were handling last year.

She stressed the importance of getting septic approval prior to designing building sites. She said that too often property owners make a decision as to where they want to put their dwelling without knowing where the septic system should go resulting in serious problems.

“The sooner we get involved in the process the better,” Kolberg said. “We cannot issue permits if the building isn’t in compliance.”

Kolberg put it into perspective for attendees when she explained, “In Idaho, septic systems are planned and permitted based on designs of wastewater flows coming out of structures. The established flows are based on the number of bedrooms in the specific dwelling.

“So for example, a 3 bedroom dwelling would be permitted and designed for 250 gallons per day. So if you think of 250 gallons per day, times 715 septic permits we issued last year (some permits for more than three bedrooms, some less) but for the sake of conversation, that’s almost 180,000 gallons of wastewater that we issued permits to discharge legally into our environment.”

She cautioned that as density increases it will be even more important for Panhandle Health to be at the front-end of the design process. “You don’t want to spend over $500,000 for a house to have your septic fail every spring.”

Other attendees reinforced what Kolberg, Stephens and Drumheller said. One overriding feeling from the public was that they didn’t want to lose the rural appeal of Bonner County by turning all available land into tract homes.

Ollerton said that the goal was to make it easier for land owners and to eliminate any vague language. P & Z commissioners agreed that the public had some good points and at first thought the best course of action would be to make a motion for denial of the proposed amendments in hopes that the county commissioners would send it back.

At the end of the evening, Commissioner Taylor Bradish made a motion to request a continuance from the county commissioners to April 1. It was unanimously approved.

The next step will be for commissioners to re-evaluate whether the proposed amendments are in accordance with the comprehensive plan and their effects on land use. The proposed ordinance can be found at Bonner County Planning and Zoning website as can a link to the entire planning and zoning meeting.