Business as usual in Whitefish

As a seasonal resident of Whitefish, I found several items in the May 1 edition of the Pilot worthy of comment and indicative of “business as usual” by Whitefish leadership.

The editorial by my friend, Turner Askew, points out the folly and waste of building a combination legacy city hall building and parking structure in downtown Whitefish. Downtown parking is a problem, but a reasonable and much more financially feasible solution other than an expensive to build and maintain parking structure must be found.

The reasons for approving the zoning change at the old Baker Avenue Master Plumbing site makes sense, but I found outrageous one of the comments from the planning office justifying such a change. The planning office’s staff report is quoted as saying, “The type of business proposes are compatible with the current businesses along Baker Avenue and would not compete with those in the downtown business district.”

In all of my years of involvement in land planning and zoning, this was the first time I’ve ever seen a planning office promote any legal business within a zone over another. I love the downtown area, but using city authority top promote downtown businesses over other such businesses in the city is protectionism at its’ worst. And we taxpayers are also to provide downtown businesses with parking?

Reading about the 93 West corridor study made me wonder why the city even bothers with a bid process. Am I to understand that Applied Communications submitted not only the lowest bid, but posted the highest score in the evaluation process, and yet lost the job to WGM?

That sort of process leaves me shaking my head.

— Ben Whitten