The Whitefish City Council gave direction to staff regarding the zoning and subdivision regulation changes required to comply with the Montana Land Use Planning Act. 

To make the mid-May deadline for compliance, city staff sought direction on minimum required changes now and will update the code more comprehensively later. The issues were notifications, making some conditional uses into permitted uses and the increased building height limit. 

One big change is that cities with a population of greater than 5,000 cannot include zoning regulations that limit building height to less than 60 feet for buildings located in downtown commercial, heavy commercial or industrial zones.   

Thomas Eddington, czb consultant, suggested a band aid approach to the height limit. 

“Look at amending, revising the WB3 zoning for downtown to allow buildings over 45 feet for full-time, multi-family residential units and mixed use with full-time multi-family residential units,” said Eddington. “Allow those up to 60 feet and then include language for short-term rental units and other commercial uses that maintain the existing 45-foot limit.” 

Whitefish City Planner Dave Taylor said most of the permits that currently come to the Planning Commission and the Council are going to be administrative, including variances, conditional use permits and major subdivisions. 

“Basically, MLUPA says you approve it, you can either approve, approve with conditions, or deny,” said Whitefish City Manager Dana Meeker. “Those are the three options that our planning administrator will have.” 

The city currently has about 200 different uses. Eddington is working on this aspect of the code and suggested consolidating the uses into more general categories to start. 

“A next step would be looking at how to carry over some of these conditional uses to permitted uses in line with MLUPA's new requirements that all conditional uses now are administrative,” Eddington said.  

The council agreed with comments made by Whitefish resident Rhonda Fitzgerald, who urged caution about turning all conditional uses into permitted uses and directed staff to provide more options. 

Site-specific conditions and conditions based on public comments may be placed on projects. Planned unit developments will still go through the Planning Commission and City Council. 

“It's a negotiating tool. It allows flexibility and allows the city to ask for community benefit if someone wants to do a project,” Taylor said. “It also gives the developer flexibility to be able to deviate from some of our standards.” 

“What we're going to have to do with our zoning ... it's going to have to become even more prescriptive than it already is, because we're removing the public review process out of it, essentially, and we're also removing a lot of things out of it that we used to be able to add as conditions to an approval. So now we have to have all of that anticipated on the front end.” 

Taylor agreed and said Phase 2 of the changes will see very specific development standards outlined. 

“In general, a lot of communities do regulate how they grow and develop through the ability for the, you know, elected officials to be able to decide when something is a little controversial, whether it should go in or not,” Taylor said. “That's being taken away from us, so the only way we can combat that is to be very prescriptive about what we want.” 

A small change in the way the city notifies the public to projects is also needed. 

Currently the city notifies the public of conditional use permits, or major subdivision by mailing those within 300 feet of the site. For minor subdivisions, expedited subdivisions, variances, it is 150 feet. A sign is placed on the property, and notices are also posted on the city website and in the newspaper. 

Staff recommended the distance for some noticing go to 150 feet, but council said they prefer to keep it at 300 feet. Only notices for appeals will be posted in the newspapers. 

Reporter Julie Engler can be reached at 406-862-3505 or [email protected]. If you value local journalism, pledge your support at whitefishpilot.com/support.