Our long county nightmare is (almost) over. Last night, the County Commissioners finished their yearlong line-by-line editing of a new Kootenai County Comprehensive Plan. The long, slow failure of a process came to an anti-climactic end at precisely 7:10 pm when Chairman Currie ordered that the edited document be re-printed for a final public hearing.
Now, the bazillion of mostly-pointless edits to the plan will be consolidated by staff into a revised document to be released in a month or so. According to the Commissioners, another public hearing will be scheduled some 30 days after that. The Commissioners will then deliberate yet again.
In theory, the re-hearing will give a final opportunity for the Commissioners to remedy a fundamental flaw in their version of the plan. Recall that the Commissioners removed guidance for development densities at a deliberation meeting in May, essentially stripping the plan of much of its meaning. Revision of the horribly out-of-date zoning code and development regulations will be made all that much more difficult by this failure. We still believe that this is a critical mistake, and we will certainly urge the Commissioners to revisit the density decision before finalizing the document.
So, we’re keeping our September calendars clear. There’s only one more comp plan hearing to go.
[…] Plan is set for yet another hearing Tuesday at 5pm. However, with the same three commissioners who took a year to edit draft number three, now considering their own draft number four, we don’t expect them to make major changes, or take […]