Council holds on to plan

The Lakeside Community Council opted to hang on to the Lakeside Neighborhood Plan for another month before sending it on to the Flathead County Planning Board.

Last week, the Lakeside Neighborhood Plan Committee did a review of all of the revisions made to the plan since the workshop with the planning board in October and voted unanimously to accept them and pass the plan on to the council the following day.

The council voted unanimously to accept the roughly 60 changes and requested that Barb Miller, committee secretary and council member, prepare a cleaned up, final version of the document for council members' review within the next two weeks.

"You guys have done an outstanding job documenting everything," Chair Keith Brown said. "I'd like to have the chance to read it cover to cover again."

Changes ranged from grammar adjustments to the language of the suburban-mixed land use designation to wording adopted from the Bigfork Neighborhood Plan.

The council will then take up a vote on whether to send it on to the planning board at its Feb. 23 meeting.

The final version of the document will be available on the committee's Web site, lakesideplan2008.com, or through the Flathead County Planning and Zoning office. The track changes version of the plan, which highlights the revisions, is already available on the Web site.

County Planner Andrew Hagemeier said the plan is effectively in the hands of the planning board and the LNPC was working on its request, but said it wouldn't hurt for the council to review the changes and send on a recommendation.

Hagemeier said the planning board may wish to hold another workshop on the plan given the amount of revisions prior to scheduling a public hearing.

A group of Lakeside and Somers property owners still have a pending lawsuit and request for an injunction to stop the plan filed in the Flathead District Court. A hearing on the suit had been continued pending the results of a private investigation of the planning office along with the Lakeside plan and the process under which it was developed. Those results were released last week by the Flathead County Commissioners and reflected favorably toward those who have worked on the plan.

The judge in the case, district judge Stewart Stadler, has said the planning board could not schedule a public hearing until the judgment has been made.

Read more about the Lakeside Community Council meeting in next week's West Shore News.