Planning fee unfair

Like many communities in the county, the North Fork neighborhood will start the planning process all over again soon by creating a new neighborhood plan. It promises to be a rocky road.

Already the whole process of creating such a plan has become a strange bureaucratic mess, particularly since the county planning office and county commissioners recently opted to charge the Helena Flats neighborhood about $10,000 to adopt its plan.

Whoa, hold the phone. This sounds a bit like double dipping to us.

Taxpayer dollars and other fees fund the county planning department. Then it turns around and charges you again to adopt a plan that you, the neighborhood (i.e. taxpayer), took your own time and effort to write?

Give us a break. We can see charging developers to amend neighborhood plans. They have a financial motive at stake. But neighbors just want to, in many cases, preserve their quality of life and some stability in their neighborhood. They're not out to build a shopping mall or a strip development. They're worried about their own backyards.

Unfortunately, too many in our county government and planning office can't see the means to that end. Their message is different. It goes like this: Sure you can have neighborhood planning, as long as you have deep enough pockets to do so. How sad.