Neighborhood plan process fast becoming comical

Alex Strickland

I have written in this space before that the very first week I worked at the Eagle, I was taken to a Bigfork Steering Committee meeting where the Flathead County planning staff was giving a review of the Bigfork Neighborhood Plan. I was told at that meeting that the plan was entering the proverbial bottom of the 9th; nearly finished.

Well if that was the case, the plan is now mired in a 0-0 tie in the 15th inning and there are very few spectators left in the stands.

The Bigfork Neighborhood Plan has, in my view, become somewhat of a farce. This is not to denigrate the work of the many volunteers who have dedicated immense amounts of time crafting and revising the voluminous document, but rather to say that the process which it must endure is a complete joke.

A planning board member raised the issue of out-of-date information in the plan at last week’s very lengthy planning board meeting as one of its flaws. It was a concern completely representative of the whole insane process. Two years have now passed since the plan was first submitted to county planning staff for review. Of course the information is out of date, and a healthy portion of the blame lies squarely at the feet of the board.

Now the process has been delayed further, despite the Bigfork group’s complete compliance with the planning board’s requests from a workshop in December in which the board went through the document line by line and made suggestions.

It is not a surprise that the loudest voices of opposition from the planning board came from three members who did not attend that workshop, with George Culpepper Jr. having the only real excuse since he had not yet been appointed.

At the rate this process is going — that would be “glacial,” for those of you scoring at home — the work on the plan may well stretch into its fifth year.

Whether you agree with the plan or not, the spirit of volunteerism that has surrounded it is impressive and the driving forces behind it have donated thousands of hours toward its creation. For the planning board to be unwilling to take a simple vote to advance the process or not is ridiculous. To not do so after the Bigfork group complied with each of their laundry list of requests is pitiful. To observe the whole process at work is becoming, well, pretty funny.