BLUAC clears up bylaws at slow meeting
By ALEX STRICKLAND / Bigfork Eagle
During a rare meeting last Thursday with no applications to consider, the Bigfork Land Use Advisory Committee took care of some wording issues in its bylaws and discussed a few issues that have cropped up over a busy last few months.
The group decided that a meeting with Jeff Harris, director of the Flathead County Planning and Zoning Office, was in order to discuss the timing of staff reports for applications that come before BLUAC.
Because planning staff is legally required only to have their report completed before the Flathead County planning Board meets, sometimes BLUAC is forced to make a decision with unavailable or incomplete information from the planning office.
Secretary Sue Hanson pointed out that though BLUAC holds meeting on the final Thursday of each month, that day could be changed to accommodate staff and ensure that BLUAC has access to the report.
"It's not set in stone," she said.
The committee also discussed rewording a few bylaws for the sake of clarity. One change involved switching from a calendar year to a fiscal year on the committee's attendance policy. That policy dictates that any member who misses three meetings in a row or a total of five in one year — now defined as June 1 -May 31 — will be removed from the committee. BLUAC Chairman John Bourquin said the change better reflects the term cycles of members, as new members are elected in May and start serving in June.
The last change, other than correcting a few grammatical errors, was put in to clear up the procedure surrounding appointments in the event there is a mid-term vacancy. That recently occurred when Mary Jo Naive resigned and Chuck Gough was appointed to replace her on the board.
The new language stipulates that an appointee will serve until the next election. The person elected to fill that position will then serve out the remainder of the original term, not a full three-year term.
When Gough — who is running for the seat in BLUAC's May 6 election — was appointed, however, the Flathead County Commissioners errantly appointed him until 2010, the conclusion of Naive's term.
That mistake was made, members agreed, because of the ambiguous language in the bylaws. Though there are four candidates running for three seats in the upcoming election, Al Johnson, who filed before the slate was full, has pledged his support to Gary Ridderhoff, making it extremely likely that Gough will be elected anyway, rendering the elongated appointment moot.