Discussion of the latest draft of Flathead County’s growth policy is expected to continue at a  meeting tonight.

The county Planning Board meets at 6 p.m. in the second-floor conference room of the Earl Bennett Building in Kalispell.

A continuation of the board’s discussion from last month about the growth policy is the only major business item on the agenda. The board meeting is open to the public, but public comment on the growth policy draft has been closed.

Once board members conclude their discussion Wednesday, they likely will take some action related to the draft growth policy, either to send it to the county commissioners with a recommendation for approval or to make more changes to the draft.

The board continued discussion from the June 13 public hearing so members would have time to review 400 pages of written comments and literature submitted at that meeting.

One item expected to be discussed today is an explanation from county Planning Director BJ Grieve about why Flathead County has a growth policy, how it’s used and what happens if a county doesn’t adopt a growth policy.

Board members asked Grieve to compile that information.

Grieve wrote that some board members asked “what would happen if, to avoid controversy and potential lawsuits over the updating of the growth policy, they simply recommended that it be repealed.”

Jurisdictions are not required to have growth policies, Grieve wrote. Because Flathead County commissioners have adopted resolutions requesting a growth policy be prepared and updated, one exists in the county. The master plan used by the county prior to 1987 was not in compliance with state law, leading to a growth policy.

Repealing the existing growth policy “could have impacts beyond simply whether or not we have a growth policy,” Grieve wrote. But, he pointed out a growth policy “is a prerequisite to do some things and other things have to be done in conformance with it if you have one.”

He cited some examples of what would happen if the growth policy was repealed.

Those included that neighborhood plans and subdivision regulations could be repealed. Also, “topic plans,” such as the county’s parks and recreation master plan, which are additions to the growth policy, could be repealed.

Grieve’s memo prompted Citizens for a Better Flathead to send out email notifications that the Planning Board wants “to consider rejecting the entire growth policy.”

Grieve disagreed with that assessment and said board members who weren’t on the Planning Board years ago when the growth policy was created simply wanted an explanation and some background.

“There are some organizations in the Flathead that have more to gain by their membership being outraged rather than genuinely informed by an open, but relatively boring, public process,” Grieve said.

Members of the Planning Board and employees of the planning department have been working on revisions to the growth policy for almost two years, Grieve said. The first public hearing on the process was held Oct. 20, 2010.

The growth policy, adopted in March 2007, calls for five-year reviews of the document, Grieve said.

In light of the number of meetings and length of the review, Grieve and Planning Board Chairwoman Marie Hickey-AuClaire take exception to criticism from Citizens for a Better Flathead that the format of the documents that reflect proposed changes is inadequate.

Essentially, board members worked through each chapter of the existing growth policy and told staffers what changes to make, Grieve said.

“Each chapter had three to five revisions before a draft was ready,” he said.

Workshops to gather public comment were held, leading to the first final draft of the growth policy being released in January. A public hearing was held in February.

Board members “wanted to do more work,” Grieve said, because they heard comments about some language in the draft and wanted to address recent case law issues and property rights issues.

Four more spring workshops were held, leading to the June 13 public hearing on the second final draft.

Citizens for a Better Flathead objected to the June 13 hearing and asked it be rescheduled later because the organization wanted a single copy of the growth policy that shows current language, language planned to be removed and changed language.

All of those versions exist, Grieve counters, but not as a single document.

He estimated that to create a version of the growth policy that met those requirements would have taken 400 hours of an employee’s time and resulted in a 300-page document, too long for most people to read.

In a letter to county officials requesting that a cumulative document be created before a public hearing was held, Citizens Executive Director Mayre Flowers said the absence of such a single document makes “it virtually impossible for the public at large or ourselves to understand and comment on the changes being proposed or to even identify changes made without going line by line to compare the two 160-page documents.”

Flowers acknowledged that the second final draft of the growth policy was available online, along with proposed changes and questions raised during the review process. She wrote that information doesn’t make it clear if all proposed changes are part of the second final draft or if the questions were addressed or finalized.

Grieve said all of the changes discussed and made at each meeting were documented, meeting by meeting, and that information is available to the public.

Citizens for a Better Flathead didn’t ask for any of that information before submitting its request that the hearing be delayed, he said.

In addition, the changes between the first and second drafts of the growth policy were posted online as the changes were discussed, he said. That information was removed from the website after the second final draft was posted because “we wanted to make sure the website remained understandable,” Grieve said.

Given the work they had done, Planning Board members became frustrated at the June 13 hearing, Grieve said, when public comments accused the board of “rushing the process, doing it under the table, ignoring science and overturning the growth policy.”

Board members acknowledge that the content of the growth policy will never please everyone, Grieve said. “But, two years and 30 public meetings is a process of which they are proud.”

All of the public meetings were publicized in the Daily Inter Lake and on the county’s website, Hickey-AuClaire said.

“I’m getting frustrated,” she said. “I don’t know what else we could have done to let people know our process.”

Reporter Shelley Ridenour may be reached at 758-4439 or sridenour@dailyinterlake.com.