I concur with and commend Mike Jopek’s April 15 Flathead Beacon column decrying the legislature’s assault on local planning. Senate Bill 243 is a clumsy and ineffective pretense to make housing more affordable with potentially disastrous consequences for the future of Whitefish as we’ve come to know it.
The ability of communities to make decisions affecting their local infrastructure and sustaining the quality of life for their residents has been a bedrock of American government since the turn of the 20th century. It’s imbedded in the Montana Constitution for good reason. The best decisions about the future of any community are made by the people who live there, support it with their local dollars and understand what their capacity for growth is. In other words, people with skin in the game. Their lifetime of investment in the community should not be sacrificed to the short-term profits of a few.
One of the most ironic features of the legislature’s takeover of our towns and cities is the strange bedfellows who have made it possible.
Republicans have for at least the past 75 years extolled the virtue of local control of local standards when it served their resistance to civil rights, environmental protection, educational standards and equal opportunity. What happened to that philosophy when it comes to preserving open sky, scenic vistas, green grass, property values and limiting the density of housing to what our infrastructure, including streets, can handle?
Democrats have for the last 100 years railed against exploitation of Montana’s resources by out of state corporations for corporate benefit at the expense of Montanans. How did they suddenly become the willing tool of out of state developers and land speculators with no regard for local interests? Why can people in need of housing only be raised up by tearing down what others have built? Do the creative minds who used to aspire to public service no longer believe the experience is worth the price. And why must communities that have succeeded and become desirable destinations through their foresight and planning be punished by those that haven’t had the will to do so?
With all the critical issues that go unsolved because political parties are unable to agree on a solution it is ironic that the one “solution” they finally agree on creates more problems than it solves.
Terry N. Trieweiler is a former Montana Supreme Court justice. He lives in Whitefish.