“Many residents of Flathead County are concerned with preserving the aesthetic and environmental attributes of the area. It is obvious that unplanned expansion of the population into and through the countryside produces visual external diseconomies of monumental proportions. Suburban sprawl has been characterized as a ‘landscape of tract homes, neon lights, and commercial strip development.’ Fears of development patterns such as this have surfaced at numerous public hearings in Flathead County. One particularly outspoken county commissioner succinctly said that Flathead County is ‘a little Switzerland turning into miles of California-style taco stands.’”
If only mom-and-pop taco stands were the extent of Flathead County’s development dilemma today. But much has changed since William C. Carlson, having attended numerous planning board meetings and hearings from 1978 to 1984, authored the 1986 University of Montana paper, “Regulating Land Use in Flathead County: Political Limitations and Administrative Alternatives.”
It was forty-odd years ago that this county’s voters approved the first-ever comprehensive plan to guide growth and development in the Flathead Valley – 15 miles wide and 28 miles long with 128 miles of shoreline – and surrounding ecosystem.
Or so many of us assumed.
In short time the master plan came under bombardment – and incredibly enough not only from land-needy developers and their legal teams. The very elected Flathead County officials charged with steering the valley through its predictably precarious future similarly condemned the document, which short of anything else lacked teeth.
“The county commissioners argued that the plan was purely advisory and need not be followed,” Carlson wrote.
The maladministration reached a point where the Montana Supreme Court entered the fray, ruling in 1981 that the three county commissioners, whether they endorsed the plan or not, must adhere to the document when considering zoning cases.
The high court asserted what should have been obvious: lack of compliance with the county’s master plan defeated the whole idea of planning in the first place.
Despite the court’s opinion, controversy ensued. Wealthy developers through their lawyers charged that the plan was too vague and confusing. And rather than rolling up their sleeves to help fine-tune the document, the county’s top officials all but agreed.
“In several controversial land use decisions, the county commissioners had voted for the approval of subdivisions that were in direct conflict with the county master plan,” Carlson revealed. “Reasons cited by the commissioners for not closely following the plan included that it was old and in need of revision.”
County officials, quite amazingly, approved 98 percent of all proposed subdivisions through that date, with a whopping 80 percent escaping any government review whatsoever.
Worse yet, 80 percent of the development was occurring outside the population centers of Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls, what Carlson described as a “proliferation of rural development” resulting in “a checkerboard settlement pattern in Flathead County.”
Thus was the start, as I opined at the time, of the ill-considered and haphazard development of Flathead County. Fast-forward to a burgeoning Flathead population today that demands unprecedented development of a previously rural landscape – homes and subdivisions to highway interchanges and power supplies (the proliferation of self-storage facilities permitted in the most scenic of the valley’s viewsheds is staggering).
The question is to what end does Flathead County declare that enough growth is enough?
Montanans, as Carlson pointed out, have a “simple aversion to planning,” with unencumbered property rights and land ownership the highest of values. But as cherished as these values have been through Montana’s history, they ironically now threaten the very thing Montanans value most: the land.
Montana is currently tied for second in the United States in population growth, with newcomers arriving in droves. This summer, Kalispell (read the Flathead Valley) unseated Bozeman as Montana’s fastest growing “urban center.”
Flathead County, if it so chooses, wouldn’t be the first endangered locality to climb into the driver’s seat, where the local government and its collective citizenry dictate growth boundaries.
New development policies, stricter zoning laws and regulations, better oversight of existing housing, and strengthening public and private partnerships in pursuit of conservation, are all conceivable options to help stem the flow of migrants and their needs.
With fewer zoning changes and subdivisions on their agendas, the valley’s planners could then focus on housing our local workforce that increasingly can’t afford to live here.
John McCaslin is a longtime print and broadcast journalist and author.