Comp Plan tops P&Z agenda

SANDPOINT — The city’s Planning and Zoning Commission held its first meeting of the year Tuesday, with a majority of the meeting spent on a final draft of the city’s Comprehensive Plan.

City Planner Amy Tweetin presented on public engagement collected through public workshops and online comments. 

“We had the plan online for just over a month,” Tweetin said. “Particularly on the online version we got a lot of comments. The public workshops, between the two nights, had about 60 or so attendees.”

While detailed information on what a “view” of the online document means is not available, as it could just be someone scanning a QR code, the document still garnered solid viewing. 

“Two thousand views is still a lot even if a fraction of those people read a majority of the document,” she said. 

Frequent themes that emerged from public comment included adding language on heritage trees, waiting on action until the new council is in place, building heights, adding language regarding climate change, addressing infrastructure, purchasing Baldy property for parkland, and adding more references to tribal heritage. 

Ultimately, the council will decide which comments to incorporate, Tweetin said. 

Following a question from Commissioner Grant Simmons concerning if the Comp Plan would be circling back to the Planning and Zoning Commission again, Tweetin explained the process moving forward. 

“It just depends on if city council wants you to weigh in on the comments to decide which comments.” There is nothing that requires them to unless they make some major changes. Then they would probably send it back. Realistically, none of the comments that I read indicated that there were any major changes needed to the document. 

The next steps for the city council include discussion about received comments, decisions about what to incorporate, discussion about a final, final draft form that will be brought back to the council and then scheduling of a public hearing. 

“So it will be a review, a cleanup, [and a] public review (hearing), Simmons confirmed.  

The commission also welcomed new P&Z commissioner Ivan Rimar and voted to appoint the current chair and vice chair to continue in their roles this year. John Hastings will serve as the chair and Mose Dunkel will serve as the vice chair.

The next Planning and Zoning meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Jan. 16 at Sandpoint City Hall, 1123 W. Lake St.