County's comprehensive plan lacks leadership

Several years ago, our county commissioners were forced into holding a public meeting to discuss land use:  The Comprehensive Plan.  This meeting was brought about because hundreds of local citizens saw their ways of life, their investments in their homes, and their quality of life being paved over by rapid, unregulated land development.  Prominently they saw the open spaces of the valley bottom and other prime agricultural land threatened by subdivisions and rampant speculation.

Years in the making and crafted largely by many hundreds of hours of volunteer effort, the recent Comprehensive Plan presented by the commissioners offers:  No change in protections for prime agricultural lands, and this point against all recommendations from volunteers, boards and surveys.  The minimal parcel size for prime agriculture land is 10 acres, exactly what it was before the process began, and this unanimously approved by our three commissioners.  Much of the farmland you see as you descend the North or South hills is now designated high density residential.  The city, so far recognizing the folly of this, refuses to annex it.  The Army Corp of Engineers, charged with protecting this bottom land, is alarmed.  Given the flood event of 2006, it’s madness to react by declaring threatened areas as prime home building sites.

Similarly, public input strongly recommended concentrating business and industrial development close to existing centers or such activity: Three-Mile Corner, downtown, and the South Hill.  Instead, the commisioners approved a plan that will end in strip development of the entire highway frontage from three-mile to Moyie Springs.  Our own Dover Highway or East Sprague.

Until recently, the planning and zoning board took the lead ion replenishing their ranks when members stepped down.  Now, the commissioners have taken away that power, and are weakening what protections the new Comp Plan does offer by booting good people off the board and appointing extremist members.  One new appointee first built his business on land zoned agricultural then dared the commission to not grant him a zoning variance.  Another said to me, “I don’t believe the county has any business telling us where or how to build.”  People like this don’t belong on the planning and zoning board.  Yet the commissioners, having interviewed them, found them excellently suited.

The Boundary County Commissioners, in their handling of land-use issue, have shown themselves shortsighted and unwilling to work toward the greater good.

John O’Connor