Rachel Ezell plans to incorporate her extensive local planning experience at the city of Kalispell. The former Flathead County planner started in her new role as Kalispell Planner 2 last week.

“I’m really excited about new opportunities here with the city of Kalispell,” Ezell said during her first day on the job.

Kalispell’s Planner 2 position has been vacant for a few months, ever since longtime Planning Director Tom Jentz retired in December 2019. Jentz was replaced by Jarod Nygren, who served as the city’s senior planner for the past five years. PJ Sorensen subsequently moved up from his role into the senior planner position.

Now, Ezell has been brought over from the Flathead County Planning and Zoning Office to complete the Kalispell Planning Department.

The Texas native has lived in Kalispell for about the past six years.

She did her undergraduate work at Texas A&M and received her master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

She started as an entry-level planner for Flathead County around six years ago and eventually worked her way up into the county’s Planner 2 position.

In her time there, Ezell said she “worked on pretty much everything,” including subdivision review, zoning changes and conditional-use permits.

She said she learned the “planning basics” from her work for the county, but she felt her background was more tailored to city planning.

“It’s a lot of similar work, just a different scope, you might say,” Ezell said of her new position. “There are different flavors of how different jurisdictions handle different types of projects.”

She acknowledged city and county planners sometimes tackle separate issues, such as lakeshore properties and floodplains. But she said, “there’s the foundational work that I’ve learned working for Flathead County that I’m definitely going to bring to this job.”

And she added, “a lot of the key elements” are consistent from one planning office to another.

Ezell said Kalispell has “a lot of interesting projects on the horizon.”

She said the city’s Pedestrian and Bike Plan, which has been in development since last summer, is a big transformational project she is excited to work on.

It’s part of her evident “desire to be part of future growth of Kalispell” that Planning Director Jarod Nygren said played heavily into Ezell’s selection for the position.

He added the Planning Department was impressed with Ezell’s relevant experience from years working in the valley, her work on similar projects like subdivision reviews and conditional-use permits and her qualifications like her certification with the American Institute of Certified Planners.

“She’s dedicated to the planning profession,” Nygren observed.

Reporter Bret Anne Serbin may be reached at (406)-758-4459 or bserbin@dailyinterlake.com.