Why planning is a 'bad word'

Over the past several years in Flathead County, this failed and expensive experiment we call "planning" has led to dozens of lawsuits; the City of Whitefish and county government at each others throats; thousands of abandoned and disenfranchised citizens; ongoing attempts to regulate into extinction rural property ownership; numerous legally questionable new local government regulations denying property owners the lawful use of their property; and, on the county level, a legal 'settlement" that even by modest estimates chains taxpayers to several million dollars of debt.

This checkered history led to a recent letter to the editor asking "Planning? When did it become a 'bad word'?" Simple question, easy answer. Planning in Flathead County became a bad word:

¥ When the distinction became so blurred that even with experience we can no longer discern the difference between "planning" and "politics."

¥ When it was discovered that the "community" suddenly had "rights' and property owners had none.

¥ When local government's discretionary use over the control of private property was handed over to the "professional" planning bureaucrats by politicians too lazy or ignorant to concern themselves with the consequences.

¥ When well healed and influential special interests gained control of local planning policy, silencing and ignoring the concerns of citizens and property owners.

¥ When sworn oaths by public officials, regardless of political affiliation, became an inconvenient formality, not a sacred trust.

¥ Finally, "planning" became a bad word because Flathead County continues to suffer through a succession of county and city attorneys supported by local courts that claim "no legal limits' on the activities of local governments when it comes to their exercise of "control" over the use of private property.

That's right. The short answer is that "planning" became a bad word when, in its name, local property owners continue to be denied their lawful right to equal protection, and the rule-of-law by a system that has nothing but disdain for both.

Russell Crowder lives in Marion.