Planning board OK's Twin Peaks zone change

The Columbia Falls city-county planning board again recommended for approval a request for a zone change on a 10 acre plot of land east of Columbia Falls Tuesday.

The zone change request was identical to the one the board approved for the same piece of property two months earlier.

The current applicant,Twin Peak Farms, LLC who owns the 10 acre parcel, resubmitted the request after the previous applicant, a prospective buyer of the property from Arkansas, withdrew their application before it was reviewed for final approval by city council.

Twin Peak Farms, who was not represented at the hearing, still has the parcel listed for sale and is pursuing the zone change for marketing purposes, according to planning staff Eric Mulcahy.

The request seeks to change the zoning from the current CSAG-10 designation, suburban agricultural with a 10 acre minimum lot size, to a CSAG-5, suburban agricultural with a five acre minimum lot size. Permitted land uses would not change for the zoning, the only difference would be density— essentially allowing two houses rather than one to be built upon the parcel.

The change to a five acre minimum lot size would be consistent with many parcels of land located in the area, mostly southwest of the property along River Road, where 57 of the 75 parcels are less than 10 acres, according to map data given to the board by staff upon request by member Mike Shepard.

Public objections to the request were similar to the ones expressed at the March hearing, mainly focusing on concerns of increased development’s impact on possibly shallow groundwater tables within the area.

Board members addressed those concerns by deferring to the expertise of the Department of Environmental Quality, which has groundwater safety standards in place that planned developments must meet before being granted.

“There were statements made that people [objecting to the change] don’t trust the DEQ,” said Shepard. “Well, I trust the DEQ, because they are trained professionals, just like the health and human services. ... I trust their findings, I trust what they’ll do for water tests ... That is the system, and the system’s been in place for many years. So it’s a simple zone change: 10 [acres] to five. And as the map [data] proves out, there’s certainly no shortages of smaller tracts through that whole area.”

“We know the valley’s under pressure,” added board chair Russ Vukonich. “These things are going to come up more and more, people trying to split their properties. And [the zone changes] should be looked at and scrutinized, but [the impact on water quality] is not one that this board has the purview to dig deep on; we’re not scientists.”

The request was unanimously approved for recommendation by a board quorum including Sam Kavanagh, Patti Singer, Vukonich, Shepard and Clay Lundgren.

The application will be reviewed for final approval by the city council at a subsequent hearing at 7 p.m. in the council chambers of City Hall on Monday, June 7.