Neighborhood plan nearing completion

By MIKE RICHESON

Bigfork Eagle

The Bigfork Neighborhood Plan is inching closer to completion.

BJ Grieve, the assistant director with Flathead County Planning and Zoning, finished reading Bigfork's plan and delivered a brief summary to the Bigfork Steering Committee on July 12.

"The plan is really good. You did an amazing job," Grieve said.

The plan will, however, need further revisions, which will likely take place in public workshops beginning on August 23.

"Some things need work," he said. "There are a lot of really good policies in this document, but there are some that are really vague and some are not actionable items. Some are beyond the scope of what can be addressed in a non-municipal area and violate state law."

Grieve pointed out the plan's policies on height and size restrictions for signs as being too regulatory and more like ordinances instead of policy statements.

One of the problems of evaluating a neighborhood plan is the lack of specific guidelines for critique.

"There's no playbook to review this against," Grieve said. His comments were based on his experience and judgment, which means Bigfork can refuse certain suggestions.

Grieve also suggested including a future land use map in the document as a useful guidance tool for the county to use when determining zoning and growth issues.

Shelley Gonzales, vice chair for the Bigfork Land Use Advisory Committee, said Grieve's comments were a fair assessment of the plan.

"It was hard writing a plan in a vacuum," she said. "We did the best we could."

Gonzales was instrumental in creating Bigfork's plan by heading up the plan's executive committee. One of the biggest hurdles for the plan's writers came from a lack of direction from the county, which was still trying to put together its own growth plan. Gonzales searched for other county growth plans online and modeled much of the Bigfork plan after those.

"We were on the right track," she said. "We'll roll up our sleeves again and hopefully get it done in a month or so."

The draft Bigfork Neighborhood Plan was unveiled Sept. 14, 2006 during a Bigfork Steering Committee meeting at Bethany Lutheran Church. The BSC worked just under 12 months on revising the 1993 land use plan, ending up with a 100-page document that includes maps and diagrams.

An enormous amount of volunteer work went into the new draft.

Similar to the Flathead County Growth Policy, the format of which serves as a template for neighborhood plan content, the BNP consists of eight key areas of focus that are supplemented by objectives and goals for current and future conditions. Those areas include population and economics, housing, downtown and commercial, land use and natural resources, local and social services, transportation, public facilities and BNP amendment procedures.

Comprised largely of community survey results received in September 2005, the BSC turned over the document to BLUAC for hours of revision last winter. Once BLUAC signed off on the plan in mid-March, it went to the Flathead County Planning Board for review.