Zoning options for two neighborhoods just outside Whitefish city limits — Karrow Avenue and Houston Tracts — are the focus of a Flathead County Planning Board workshop April 8.

The board will use a Whitefish transition issues report completed by the county Planning Office as it decides how to move forward with county zoning in those areas.

Flathead County is in the throes of assuming planning jurisdiction of the area outside Whitefish that previously was under city control. A Montana Supreme Court ruling gave jurisdiction to the county after a years-long legal battle between the two government entities.

Several residents of Karrow Avenue expressed concerns over zoning that road, a key north-south connector. Zoning on Karrow between Lund Lane and West Seventh Street is one-family residential, but zoning is different on opposite sides of the road.

South of Lund Lane to Blanchard Lake Drive is a mixture of suburban agricultural, rural residential and one-family residential zoning. There’s also a discrepancy between the city and county’s definition of minimum lot size for suburban agricultural zones.

Residents of the Houston Lakeshore Tracts area also would like to have more consistent zoning within their subdivision and the Stocking Development Tracts subdivision.

The Planning Board also will discuss the pre-2005 zoning (before a city-county interlocal agreement gave Whitefish control of the two-mile “doughnut” area). This discussion will include areas that previously were unzoned or zoned agricultural under Whitefish zoning.

The board will review draft county zoning text that creates county zones similar to the previous Whitefish zoning designations, and will talk about a draft zoning map for rural Whitefish.

Public comments will be taken at the workshop, which begins at 6 p.m. April 8 in the second-floor conference room of the Earl Bennett Building, 1035 First Ave. W., in Kalispell.

The transition issues report and other information related to the transitional planning and zoning in the rural area around Whitefish is available on the county website at http://flathead.mt.gov/planning_zoning/Drafts.php.