Letters to the editor April 19

Environmentalists

A recent letter suggested that “So called environmentalists” were nit-picking forest management. 

As a proud environmentalist and ecologist, I spent many decades researching, studying and working with highly-qualified and trained scientists to evaluate public land management projects and work on solutions that would allow products to be produced while maintaining sustainability of the complex, exquisite, interrelated processes that allowed those products to be produced. We complied with the many laws and regulations (some of which were conflicting) to develop legal and responsible management. 

I often felt the regulations weren’t adequate to maintain sustainability and avoid long-term consequences, but I respected the deep science-based development of those laws and policies, and accepted thoughtful compromises made with other specialists. 

However, I also noted the intense political pressure applied to managers to under-fund evaluations, speed up timelines, push the economic outcomes and ignore regulations and scientific information. Some managers succumbed to this political pressure..and violated the law.  

These pressures have been accelerated to the extent intricate and essential ecological processes are threatened, and laws and regulations have been by-passed. Healthy ecological systems are remarkably resilient if the pieces are maintained. Forest fires, which are a natural disturbance, have been accelerated by many things including climate change, past poor fire management decisions, and non-tolerance of the smoke from prescribed fire that would affect recreational use and air quality such that catastrophic fire risks exceed the natural processes that would support recovery. 

Quick fixes such as increased tax-supported roads, the use of aerial chemicals to try to stop any new fire starts (as proposed in the proposed poorly-developed Fix Our Forest Bill) will have long-lasting consequences and not meet the desired objective.  

We should be grateful that the “so-called environmentalists” are demanding the land management agencies comply with law and policy and use the well-documented best science to address these concerns, and not bow to political and economic pressure.  

One does not have to visit our natural areas to benefit from the cleaner air, improved soil and water quality, disease and invasive reductions, pollination, and multiple other benefits, but I suspect most “so called environmentalists” do visit those areas.  

Environmentalists are not the enemy and are certainly not terrorists. I invite Mr. Appel to join me on a hike when we can discuss some positive solutions to some very real challenges.

— Carole Jorgensen, Kalispell

Building height

At the latest legislative session in Helena, Senate Bill 243 was passed which mandated that small towns across Montana allow by-right development of 60 foot (6 story) tall buildings in all downtown and heavy commercial zoning districts, ostensibly to help lower housing prices. Here in Whitefish, at every City Council meeting, I walk into city hall past the old grainy photos of our historic downtown that still has some of the same facades it did decades ago, with a vibrant downtown carefully stewarded over generations. As we work through our Vision 2045 land use planning process, you can imagine how hard it is to square this latest mandate out of Helena with some of the realities of what small Montana towns really are, and unique aspects of Whitefish specifically.

For downtown, there are unintended consequences for such a tall building policy. The reality is it’s not economically feasible to build a large volume of rental apartments in downtown – the land is too expensive, the lots too small, and there is nowhere to park. Unique to Whitefish, we manage our short term rentals by zoning district, and downtown commercial is one of the few areas in town where short term rentals are allowed. It is far more likely that we end up with a large short term rental project that we don’t need, than rental units that we do. The proposed solution coming out of our growth planning is to bifurcate downtown zoning to separate out the historical district (Central Avenue, which is three blocks long) from other ancillary areas adjacent to downtown, to allow the taller buildings in the periphery, keeping historic downtown intact. I still don’t like it, but it’s a reasonable compromise.

For commercial zones, which may include the WB2 zoning district (U.S. 93 South area), a similar solution is proposed for different reasons. This zoning district is uniquely large, and the southernmost portion is the furthest point from downtown that exists in city limits. Consistent with our other planning objective to prioritize growth inward, the proposal is to separate the zoning district into sub-zones to graduate the intensity of uses with smaller scale commercial furthest out and larger scale closer in. The alternative is sprawl, which nobody wants. Again, a thoughtful implementation.

It appears not everyone agrees. A long legal letter was received at the 11th hour from Sen. Ellie Boldman, a state senator from Missoula, at the apparent urging of Shelter WF making legal threats to the city for “evading” the statute that 60’ buildings must be allowed everywhere. The letter is long on “the state says you have to do this” and doesn’t address in the slightest “should or why we should do this”. That might be a fine policy in Missoula, almost 10x the size of Whitefish, and popular with various special interest lobbies. But this perspective is out of step with small town Montanans more broadly, and the citizens of

Whitefish specifically. I grow tired of writing letters about the list of poorly implemented big-brother zoning mandates from Helena. There are very good reasons why city planning has always been done at the local level, and we must restore the rights of communities to control their destiny.

— Ben Davis, Whitefish City Councilor