The Flathead County Planning Board on Wednesday delayed a recommendation on how to proceed with Whitefish area zoning and lakeshore regulations because the board hadn’t received all of the public comments and correspondence.

Planning Director BJ Grieve told the board he inadvertently failed to copy and distribute to the board a number of written public comments turned in during an Oct. 30 Planning Board work session.

He also didn’t distribute copies of past Whitefish City Council minutes that Whitefish resident Rebecca Norton had asked be given to the board prior to Wednesday’s meeting.

Grieve said he intended to deliver the documentation to the board for its Nov. 12 meeting, but discovered Wednesday afternoon that hadn’t been done.

He apologized for the oversight and recommended scheduling a special meeting of the Planning Board next week to give board members time to digest the hundreds of pages of additional documentation.

“This is truly an effort to be transparent,” Grieve said.

The special meeting will be at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 17, in the second-floor conference room of the Earl Bennett Building, 1035 First Ave. W. in Kalispell.

The county is in the throes of determining how to move forward with permanent county zoning in the “doughnut” area around Whitefish following a Montana Supreme Court ruling in July that ceded planning control from the city of Whitefish to Flathead County.

Also to be determined is how the county should handle lakeshore protection regulations for Whitefish and Lost Coon lakes.

The Whitefish Lake and Lakeshore Protection Committee, a joint city-county advisory group that had handled lakeshore issues for about 30 years, was disbanded following the high-court ruling.

Currently any lakeshore permit applications for Whitefish and Lost Coon lakes that involve county property are being processed by the county, with the commissioners giving final approval for lakeshore permits.

Six options are under consideration by the county for a permanent solution to lakeshore regulations in the Whitefish area:

q Amend the Flathead County lake and lakeshore protection regulations to include Whitefish and Lost Coon lakes.

q Include the two lakes in the county lakeshore regulations but review, revise and update the regulations within the next year.

q Continue using Flathead County’s Whitefish-area lake and lakeshore protection regulations that were used prior to the interlocal agreement that created the planning “doughnut” around Whitefish.

q Adopt Whitefish lakeshore regulations used by the city of Whitefish when the interlocal agreement was in place.

q Work with the public and Whitefish to create new Whitefish and Lost Coon lakeshore regulations agreeable to and adopted by both governing bodies.

q Discuss with the city of Whitefish a mutually agreeable arrangement to give the city lakeshore jurisdiction for the two lakes.

Regarding the planning and zoning of the doughnut area, three options are on the table: Take no action and allow interim zoning to expire; update the 1996 Whitefish City-County Master Plan; and update the 1996 plan using Whitefish’s 2007 Growth Policy as a starting point.

Interim county zoning has been put in place in the doughnut area for one year, with a possibility of a one-year extension.

Norton said she asked the Planning Office to distribute meeting minutes from the Whitefish City Council and the city-county planning jurisdiction interlocal agreement committee to give the Planning Board a historic overview of Whitefish residents’ perspective.

She said many city residents are “heartbroken” over the loss of city planning control in the area bordering Whitefish.

“Even if we never get it [city planning jurisdiction in the doughnut] back,” Norton said, “it might be good for the Planning Board to see some of the history and ideas that came up to solve the issue of representation in the doughnut without deregulation of everything that Whitefish had put together to guide our growth over a number of years.”

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.