Whitefish Planning Commission Approves Updated Growth Policy

After a nearly four-and-a-half hour meeting mulling over the final details of the document that will guide the city’s next 20 years of growth, the planning commission Monday night approved an updated growth policy, initiating a hand off to city councilors who will begin their review next week.

Although the commission reached a consensus to move forward to the next step in a jam-packed sprint to meet a state-mandated May deadline, some commissioners admitted to giving their OK begrudgingly following the multi-year process that has recently been marked by contention. 

“This is not an easy process,” City Manager Dana Meeker said. “It wasn’t an easy process in 2005 through 2007, so you’ve made a big step today getting through that document. It’s not perfect, but this document will not be perfect with the timeline we have by the state.

“So, we know that this will be updated, and not in five years, but it will go through revisions as we go through potentially even zoning, and as we go through the next year.”

Monday night’s meeting marked the conclusion of countless hours spent by city staff and the planning commission over the last three years to update its 2007 growth policy to ensure its compliance with the Montana Land Use Planning Act (MLUPA). 

The legislation, which passed in May 2023, requires 10 cities across the state, including Whitefish, Kalispell and Columbia Falls, to adopt a new land use plan to replace their existing growth policies and update local zoning and subdivision regulations in accordance with MLUPA. The planning commission’s upcoming meetings will now shift focus to getting the city’s zoning regulations in compliance.

During Whitefish’s policy update process, a mix of planning commissioners, residents and local advocacy organizations have been at odds, largely over different interpretations of public feedback and accurately depicting what the community envisions for its future. Density, housing projections, mixed-use development and affordable housing have all served as points of disagreement.

These same issues surfaced Monday night as the planning commission completed review of the land use chapter and gave the nearly 300-page growth policy one final look, ultimately voting 6-1 in favor of recommending the policy to the city council, who will begin its review at its March 2 meeting.  

The growth policy’s only opposition vote came from Commissioner Mallory Phillips, a board member for the local affordable housing advocacy organization, Shelter WF, which supported MLUPA’s passage and has been a lasting voice throughout Whitefish’s policy update. 

“I think [staff’s] done a great job engaging the public,” Phillips said. “I’ve been pretty disappointed around the ways in which certain voices are leveraged over the voices that aren’t able to make it every week. Because of that, there’s a lot, even outside of the economic development [chapter], that bums me out pretty good.” 

While Commissioner Marti Brandt, who was one of the two new city council selections to join the seven-member commission in January, voted to approve the growth policy, she made it clear she wasn’t in support of the economic development chapter — a stance she’s long expressed. 

Chair Whitney Beckham acknowledged that there will be parts of the growth policy each commissioner doesn’t agree with, suggesting commissioners go to city council to express their thoughts and offer their insight. 

“There will be sections that I will go to council and state, I don’t like the outcome of this, or this is not what we intended, or we were rushed,” Beckham said. “And I fully anticipate the majority of us will do that. But we can send the document forward … and say the parts that were too hairy, too rushed, not a product of the full board, because we weren’t all here with the whole thing, and council knows that.”

Vice Chair Mike Hein, who also began his tenure on the commission in January, questioned the commission’s final product if each member still needs to voice their disagreements to council.

“As a commission, there’s a lot of work here, and … if the response is that each of us is going to go to city council and then basically say, here’s all the things we don’t agree with, we haven’t accomplished anything,” Hein said. “We just haven’t accomplished anything. We’ve got a big document that we made changes to, and each of us will then go and make statements to the city council. There seems to be very little agreement. I don’t know what the solution is.”

With the planning commission reviewing the growth policy in its entirety on Monday night, the document’s most contentious chapter — economic development — got one final look and discussion.

The economic development chapter saw one of the highest volumes of public comment and feedback, in addition to having the most noted concerns from staff about planning commission changes to the chapter’s original draft. 

In a city council workshop last month, city staff highlighted eight concerns with the planning commission’s edits to the chapter, including the removal of all objectives and discussions regarding locally needed goods and services and the removal of all objectives and discussions regarding reviewing or revising zoning to consider additional commercial areas or mixed use.

The presentation also noted a non-linear adoption of the chapter, noting that the planning commission in May voted 4-2 to approve the entirety of a rewritten version of the chapter submitted by Heart of Whitefish, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advocating for the economic health and vitality of downtown Whitefish and its small businesses.

After concerns from the public, the city council directed the commission to do a line-by-line review of the approved chapter submitted by Heart of Whitefish, which was again approved by the planning commission with minor changes, according to the staff presentation.

Even before joining the commission, Brandt consistently voiced her opposition to how the chapter was adopted, saying Heart of Whitefish’s perspective needs to be considered on a level playing field with other public comments. When reviewing the economic development chapter Monday, Brandt motioned to revert the entire chapter back to the staff’s original version, noting it would be the most efficient way to handle public’s concerns.

“Looking at the amount of red marks in this section is pretty alarming, especially when you consider that they all came from one group,” Brandt said. “I think that there might be things that we want to keep, but ultimately, I think city council should make that decision.”

Beckham asserted the notion that Heart of Whitefish authored the chapter is “very much not true,” saying the version included perspectives from multiple local groups and individuals that was compiled by Heart of Whitefish as a community stakeholder. 

“I will not support reverting work that was done by the community in total,” Beckham said. “It doesn’t represent every voice because some voices were not in keeping with what the majority of the community said. But I do not support reverting to an old draft.”

Frank Sweeney, the city council representative on the commission, also spoke in support of maintaining the economic development chapter as is, arguing that the chapter is representative of “the commission’s work, not the Heart of Whitefish’s work.”

“I think we need to be clear that the city council is going to see all of those changes and all the original and be able to evaluate as well,” Sweeney said. “By reverting it back, it will not want, it will not be … what I’ll call collective work that’s going forward to council.”

Although Hein also expressed a desire to “roll it back” and look at each individual line item in the chapter, he conceded the commission simply doesn’t have the time. Brandt’s motion failed 2-5, with Brandt and Phillips voting in support of reverting the chapter to its original version.  

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