County takes look at Comp Plan policies

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SANDPOINT — Updated goals, objectives, and policies for the county’s Comprehensive Plan moved a step closer to adoption at a Thursday hearing held by Bonner County commissioners.

The updated policies, which had been drafted by the Planning Commission over the summer, will guide the different components of the document.

Since the policies had already been approved by the Planning Commission, they were sent to the commissioners for the last stage of the hearing process. The hearing Thursday was continued from Oct. 26, when they first looked at the proposed changes. However, commissioners postponed a decision, saying the language needed to be clarified and simplified, setting up this week’s hearing.

Since the commissioners made substantive changes to the policies, they will need to hold another public hearing before voting on whether to adopt the new draft.

In the first component, property rights, where the Planning Commission’s draft said they would seek to avoid reduction or increase in land use intensity in a given zone, the county commissioners decided to reference Idaho’s Land Use and Planning Act.

“[I want] to make sure we referenced LUPA because it is really the guiding document,” Commission Chairman Dan McDonald said.

Due to the verbiage, specifically the word “avoid,” commissioners said they felt the Planning Commission’s draft was too open to different interpretations.

The next substantive change came in the economic development portion, where there was some reluctance at an objective intended to protect the environment.

Planning Commission members suggested that commercial and industrial uses should be “located and operated in a manner to ensure the protection of our natural resources” including clean air and water, dark skies, and overall environmental quality and rural character of Bonner County.

“Clean air and water, we don’t regulate that,” McDonald said. “Dark skies, I guess we can regulate that to a degree. Overall environmental quality, we don’t regulate environmental quality.

“These are the things that give me pause as we seem to overstep into areas where we don’t have any authority over.”

County planner Swati Rastogi said the Planning Commision opted to include the language because, while the county does not directly regulate these topics, land use actions and policies affect them.

Matt Linscott said these objectives would be better suited for the land use section.

Others said that the objectives have been the subject of multi-year period research and review by sub-area committees in the county. As a result, those items should be included in the land use section of the Comp Plan.

“The night sky issue has been a big deal here,” Susan Drumheller said. “As someone who lives in Sagle, it's been really a bummer to see how the night sky has been degraded over the years because of all the storage units being built everywhere.”

Drumheller told commissioners that while they say they can’t regulate the environment, their decisions have a major impact on it.

“So much of your decisions affect the environment,” she added. “That’s why there’s a lot of language in our Comp Plan now and there's been encouragement to include language in our Comp Plan to approve development if it’s in line with protecting our natural resources.”

“Yes, other agencies regulate them but when you … ignore your responsibility to protect things like groundwater or surface water, it falls through the cracks and then we start to see a degradation of our quality of life,” she added.

Ultimately, the commissioners moved that objective to the land use component. Another objective encouraging clustered development for medium and large scale commercial and industrial uses was also moved to the land use section.

Commissioner Jeff Connolly asked Drumheller to define natural resources for him. Drumheller said she would yield to the planning experts to define that, but listed water, air, trees, and wildlife, “ all the things we hold in common that are natural.”

After a spirited back-and-forth exchange with commissioners about natural resources and who has the authority and responsibility to regulate such topics, Drumheller said it was her opinion that commissioners have that responsibility and that authority.

“I think you have the authority to, before you approve a development, to make sure that the provisions are in there to protect our water, to protect our wildlife, to do those things,” she added.

Commissioner Steven Bradshaw said that is why they route through those agencies.

Drumheller called out how the requirement to notify Panhandle Health District at the subdivision stage was removed. Connolly told her the commission put it back “in a different form” at the building location stage.

Drumheller said that every other jurisdiction she has looked into for land use issues, including Kootenai County, has language that “helps to protect the environment through land use policies.”

Referencing Rastogi, Drumheller said it is about how the commission steps into it. “You can step into it in a way that's completely consistent with state statute under LUPA,” she said.

“But what it does is it creates confusion,” McDonald countered.

The last substantive change made was in the public services, utilities, and facilities section. The board added an objective to “require the developers to provide infrastructure, utilities or financial support to offset the capital costs of expansion of services, required by the proposed development.”

As of yet, a new hearing date has not been scheduled. To read up on the entire Comp Plan revision process, go to BonnerCountyID.gov/ComprehensivePlanUpdate.