P&Z Commission recommends dissolving zoning ordinance

The Plannning and Zoning Commission recently voted to dissolve a Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) ordinance after the committee came to the agreement that the ordinance was not being implemented properly and therefore should be done away with.

Boundary county adopted the TDR ordinance sometime around 2012 in order to follow in accordance with the state of Idaho’s statute 67-6515A, which established procedures that would authorize landowners to voluntarily transfer the development rights to their land for use at another location.

John Moss, who serves as the zoning administrator for the Planning and Zoning Commission, believes that part of the reason the ordinance has not been implemented properly is because, as he says, “the language in the ordinance makes it hard to administer.” Moss has a point. The TDR program can be a fairly confusing and complex process, but the jist of it is as follows.

Say, for example, that a farmer owns a plot of prime bottomland bordering the Kootenai River.

If the farmer were to take advantage of a TDR program as it is outlined in Idaho statute 67-6515A, he could sell the development rights to the environmentally sensitive and agriculturally rich land. He could still live there and work the land, which would then be designated as a “sending area”. In fact, nothing about his relationship with the land would change except for his ability to build on it.

The buyer of the farmer’s development rights could then use those purchased rights in a specified “receiving area”: an area like the outskirts of downtown Bonners Ferry, which already has the infrastructure in place to allow for such development.

The TDR program allows for the development values of these receiving areas to be enhanced by allowing for new or special uses, greater density or intensity, or other regulatory flexibility that would not be permitted under standard zoning laws. The developer could, for example, build twice as many houses in the receiving area than he could have without the TDR program.

If used properly as a zoning tool, the voluntary TDR program creates incentives for both landowners and developers to protect environmentally sensitive and agricultural areas from overdevelopment while simultaneously promoting development in areas that can better handle that growth.

However, according to Tim Patton, a local natural resource planner and landscape designer, the county’s TDR ordinance that was created years ago fails to follow the original intent of statute 67-6515A.

“By allowing the receiving areas to be established almost anywhere in the county, [the ordinance] is defeating the whole purpose of the statute,” Patton says.

The Naples resident is alluding to the county’s designation of the McArthur Lake Wildlife Corridor as a receiving area. This area is a well-known migration corridor for wildlife moving from the Selkirk to the Cabinet Mountains and is by all definitions an environmentally sensitive area.

Patton spoke up during a board of commissioners meeting in November in order to explain why the current TDR program is failing, and how the county might go about enacting the program as it was originally meant to be used.

“As it is, you’re better off getting rid of it,” Patton told the board.

The Planning and Zoning Commission has recommended doing just that, and the Boundary County Board of Commissioners will most likely follow through on this recommendation.

According to Moss, who says that, “since the incorporation of the TDR verbiage to the present time, there has been no request for any activity related to TDR,” local landowners and developers will not be affected by this decision.