In a relatively sleepy vote, the Flathead County Commission approved updates to the Lakeside neighborhood plan last week. Yes, that plan; the three-year effort that provoked lawsuits, a third-party investigation and perhaps cost former Planning Director Jeff Harris his job. But when the decision came on Dec. 1, it was almost as if accusations of Las Vegas hot tub improprieties never happened. Well, they did.
That was just one of the stranger charges leveled at the planning office after legitimate transparency questions were raised in May 2009 over a private online forum used to share information used by those rewriting the neighborhood plan. When the Yahoo! chat group came to light, a handful of citizens criticized the validity of the committee’s work to that point and Harris, especially, for being part of it. Soon after, the account was made public and a paper file created at the planning office. And everything went a little crazy.
A debate over a neighborhood plan, which almost everyone agrees is not even regulatory, turned into a broader indictment of the planning office. Landowners filed a lawsuit against the county. Citizens circulated a petition demanding that Harris be suspended and called for an independent investigation. But that’s not all.
In one of the weirder accusations, former County Commissioner Dale Williams called spending at the planning office “appalling” and cited, as one example, expenditures at a campfire social on Flathead Lake and, as another, a trip to Las Vegas where the planners enjoyed lavish rooms with a “Jacuzzi at the foot of the bed” and a walk-in shower. As someone who frequents Vegas, these accommodations certainly sound posh – but our county planners never enjoyed them.
Both charges were unsubstantiated, but the calls for an investigation were too loud to ignore and Moonlighting Detective Agency was told to get to the bottom of the matter. Essentially, the commissioners heeded the call of the planning office’s critics, eventually paying $10,000 to a private gumshoe to investigate one of its own departments. But when the results were released, and they found no wrongdoing, it settled nothing. What began as a dispute over a neighborhood plan that would have little teeth anyway had sparked accusations ranging from inappropriate hotel upgrades to Harris running his office like a totalitarian.
It didn’t matter that investigators cleared the office of wrongdoing or that the county seemed satisfied with their findings. The inevitable happened when the commission in April opted not to renew Harris’ contract. At the time, Commissioner Dale Lauman said, “It’s not a personal issue.”
That may be the case. In fact, the commissioners didn’t have to give any reason for not renewing Harris’ contract and, in hindsight, they probably shouldn’t have tried. Between then and now, opposition to the Lakeside neighborhood plan lost much of its firepower. And last week, Lauman rejected the idea of any improper conduct by county planning employees and said, “I support the plan in its entirety.” Commissioner Joe Brenneman backed it and Jim Dupont, who wasn’t present at the meeting, suggested he would, too.
The Lakeside neighborhood plan passed in its 27th iteration. And a small crowd in the commissioners’ meeting room cheered the decision. No doubt, not everyone’s happy with the plan and it’s too early to tell whether property rights groups, such as American Dream Montana, will criticize commissioners for supporting it.
But someone or something beside the planning office, which is now a skeleton of its former self after a steep development decline, must be targeted. Harris is long gone. Property rights disputes are here to stay.