City Hall holds work session on revised Comp Plan

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

The revised Sandpoint Comprehensive Plan took a step toward completion Feb. 13 with a joint work session of the City Council and Planning and Zoning Commission.

Officials gathered to parse through the 138-page document “chapter by chapter,” as Sandpoint Mayor Jeremy Grimm said, discussing what language may need to be modified and addressing public comment received on the plan since early December 2023.

It has been a long process. Work began on the revised document in 2019 — 10 years after city officials adopted the current plan — but that effort was paused when the COVID-19 pandemic surfaced in spring 2020. P&Z and the City Council resumed the project in 2022 with a focus on community vision, housing and neighborhoods. A series of open houses, workshops and even a full public hearing took place throughout 2023, and the council seemed poised to approve the final draft in October 2023, but opted to table it to seek further public feedback.

Photo by Ben Olson.

Two additional town hall-style workshops were hosted in late-November and early-December, during which time citizens could leave comments on the digital version of the plan on the city’s website. The Feb. 13 joint work session represented a continuation of that outreach.

Grimm, who served as the city planner during the crafting of the current Comp Plan in 2009, noted that it took 22 special meetings before adoption, but, in the case of the revised version, “I don’t think this is going to take that long.”

About a dozen residents gathered in City Hall Council Chambers on Feb. 13 to weigh in as well, with the biggest discussion points surrounding removal of the Downtown Waterfront Design Competition report from the appendices of the Comp Plan, the addition of language surrounding a “sustainability commission” and the inclusion of protections for “heritage trees” in the body text of the plan, as opposed to what one resident referred to as “a footnote.”   

Grimm kicked off the session with the suggestion that the design competition report be stricken because it isn’t a “plan” in the same way as the adopted Multimodal Transportation; Parks and Recreation; Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation; and Little Sand Creek Watershed master plans, among others.

“I guess my concern with including it in the Comprehensive Plan is it suggests we’re going to have a whirly-go-round and ice skating rink,” Grimm said, adding, “Putting it in the Comp Plan gives it an elevation and direction that I don’t think we have come to as a community.”

Councilors Joel Aispuro — who participated remotely — Justin Dick, Pam Duquette and Deb Ruehle agreed. Councilors Jason Welker and Kyle Schreiber were absent.

“I kind of perceive the downtown plan as an unfinished plan — something that’s still in motion,” Ruehle said, adding that the Comp Plan is a “fluid” document, and whatever comes of the design report’s recommendations relative to establishing historic district boundaries, height restrictions and other downtown design guidelines could be added later as amendments.

Meanwhile, Duquette advocated for including language in the revised plan that addresses the future effects of climate change such as reduced snowfall and  precipitation, and what they might mean for future development.

Aispuro and Dick both said they felt that would be inappropriate for the long-range planning document, which is intended to “guide Sandpoint’s development and growth patterns for the next 20 years,” according to its introduction.

A handful of residents said they felt that it would be a useful topic to address, and the council added a bullet item in Chapter 2 to support the creation of a sustainability commission. 

Overall, public comment on the document leaned against downtown building heights of 65 feet and emphasized the importance of retaining the community’s “unique character.”

Elle Susnis, who serves as the chair of the Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation Commission, said she was “really pleased with how arts, culture and historic preservation is woven throughout this document.”

Resident Mary Wilkosz applauded city officials for hosting a work session that was “functional, calm and boring in a good way.”

Ultimately, the work session parsed through the first three chapters, and will take up the remaining eight chapters at a subsequent meeting, with date to be determined. After that, the plan will return for a public hearing — “the big show,” as Grimm put it — followed by final adoption.

Find the document at bit.ly/3OaBXxH.