Whitefish City Council Makes First Edits to 20-Year Planning Document
City councilors are set to wrap up discussion and adopt the state-mandated update to its growth policy at its April 6 meeting
By Lauren Frick
Whitefish city councilors on Monday night made their first edits to the planning document that will guide the city’s growth over the next 20 years, although decisions centering on the document’s most contentious points will wait until the third and final public hearing in April.
While city councilors began discussion and made some edits to the document’s most controversial chapter, which tackles economic development, decisions over hot-button topics like mixed-use development, density and sprawl were largely saved for next month’s meeting when city councilors take on the chapter regarding land use.
For nearly three years, the city has worked to update its 2007 growth policy to align with state legislation. Now, the city council must conclude its discussion on the policy and adopt the document at its next regular meeting in order to keep pace with the state’s May deadline.
The process kicked off in May 2023, when the Montana Legislature adopted Senate Bill 382, the Montana Land Use Planning Act (MLUPA), which 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.
Whitefish’s MLUPA process has triggered extensive community conversation on the city’s future — more than 900 pages worth of public comment — which has led to a range of disagreement and contention.
A mix of planning commissioners, residents and local advocacy organizations have been at odds throughout the process, 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.
Over the course of 30 planning commission work sessions on the growth policy, the document has accrued several line-edit, “red-mark” changes, a process that has generated concerns among city staff.
With several points of disagreement, the city council is positioned as the document’s final arbiter, ultimately deciding what makes the cut, whether that be the planning commission’s or city staff’s version, or something different.
Chief among the council’s impending decisions is the incorporation of mixed-use development in the growth policy, which has been a major point of community discussion and contention.
Discussion over mixed-use was first initiated in the transportation chapter when Caltabiano suggested restoring the mentions of mixed-use in the chapter, with city staff noting its original deletion by the planning commission as a concern. The motion didn’t gain traction, however, with other councilors agreeing the discussion over mixed-use is better suited for the land use chapter.
“The proposal for mixed-use is actually very small; it’s only in three areas of town,” Councilor Ben Davis said. “I don’t think it drives this document. Right now, the way that it was originally written, it was written all over the document, and I don’t know that that’s necessary. I’m generally happy to address this in a more nuanced manner in the land use plan.”
Offering a glimpse of next meeting’s discussion, Councilor Frank Sweeney told the council he’s “fine with encouraging residential uses in existing commercial areas,” but not OK with “encouraging new commercial uses in primarily residential areas.”
“In my view of life, we have plenty of commercial within walking distance of our neighborhoods and our housing,” Sweeney said. “I don’t want to confuse anything here by adding this language back in, suggesting that we need more commercial in our neighborhoods.”
Caltabiano pushed back against the notion, saying the feedback from the community has indicated they will want some commercial in their neighborhoods by the time 2045 rolls around.
“I believe … that this community sees neighborhoods where there will be some commercial and that’s because those neighborhoods will not be in practical, walkable distance to downtown,” Caltabiano said. “If we apply some of the criteria that come later in this document to current Whitefish, places like the Tap House probably would be forbidden.”
The final 30 minutes of the more than 3-hour meeting shifted focus to the economic development chapter of the growth policy, which had one of the highest volumes of public comment and the most noted concerns from staff about planning commission changes to the chapter’s original draft.
Like Commissioner Marti Brandt did last month before the planning commission’s adoption of the growth policy, Caltabiano kicked off discussion by making a motion to revert the chapter back to the staff’s original version. As was the case at the planning commission meeting, the measure wasn’t supported.
Commissioners, however, did acknowledge the intricate web that must be untangled to properly address and consolidate a final version of the chapter.
“The whole thing’s a giant red line,” Davis said. “I will admit, I don’t really know what to do with it. I think that there were a lot of good ideas brought into it. I also think that there are elements of it that are not written the way that I would like to see them. I looked at it and I felt that it was too complicated to do on the dais.”
“It felt to me like the draft that I would most like to see is probably something that is a little more harmonious between the [staff and planning commission drafts],” he added.
Councilor Andy Feury agreed with Davis and noted also having problems with the version of the chapter adopted by the commission, saying it “paints a rosier picture of things than I think needs to be painted.”
“I think some wordsmithing needs to be done to turn this thing around to satisfy a few more people out in the community, other than one particular group,” Feury said. “And not that everything that’s said in there is bad by any way, shape or form, but I think part of the way it’s presented is a problem.”
So far, city councilors addressed some of the staff’s economic development chapter concerns by altering references to “policies supporting moderate economic growth” and striking portions of text related to the benefits of tourism.
The city council is set to continue discussion and adopt the growth policy at its next regular meeting on April 6.