City Hall hosts second joint working session on revised Comp Plan

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

Members of the Sandpoint City Council and Planning and Zoning Commission again gathered March 13 for a joint working session to go “chapter by chapter” through the city’s Comprehensive Plan — the document that sets out the community’s shared vision for growth over the next 20 years, and provides guidance on how to achieve it.

Work began on the revised document in 2019 — 10 years after city officials adopted the current plan — but that effort was paused with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020. P&Z and the City Council resumed the project in 2022, with a series of open houses, workshops and even a full public hearing following in 2023. 

The council seemed prepared to approve the final draft in October 2023, but tabled it to seek further public feedback. Town hall-style workshops took place in November and December, with the council and P&Z meeting Feb. 13 for a working session that addressed the first three chapters of the 138-page document (though with appendices, the Comp Plan totals nearly 300 pages).

Presiding over the joint session March 13, Mayor Jeremy Grimm noted that he would be filling the role of city planner for the evening following the departure of Amy Tweeten, whose last day at City Hall was March 6.

“In the absence of any planners on city staff, I am going to be running this,” said Grimm, who served as Sandpoint city planner from 2007-2015. “Rest assured, I have some planning experience but bear with me, we’re going to be doing our best here.”

In a text late March 13, Grimm confirmed to the Reader that Tweeten, who started her employment with the city in January 2022, had been offered a position with her former employer in Michigan. In the interim, the city will be contracting with Boise-based planner Daren Fluke, with whom the city contracted from December 2020 — following the departure of former-Planner Aaron Qualls — until Tweeten’s hiring in 2022.

No final decisions were made at the March 13 joint working session, as councilors and planning commissioners sought to identify areas in the plan to be considered for changes when it eventually comes before the full council for a final decision at an unspecified date.

However, certain sections in Chapter 4 — focused on “Land Use and Growth” — spurred more discussion than others. 

Among them was the identification of “heavy commercial/industrial” uses, which Grimm asked the council to consider changing to “light industrial” to avoid the potential for intensive uses such as smelting, processing, crushing and steel manufacturing.

Councilors and planning commissioners also discussed lot sizes for low-density residential zones, going back and forth on whether a 4,000- to 7,000-square-foot or 5,000- to 7,000-square-foot range was more appropriate for balancing infill development with the need for affordable housing and the protection of neighborhood character.

Council President Jason Welker said that smaller lot sizes enable greater density — and thus lower housing costs — for residents, noting that upwards of 50 people can be housed on “8/10ths of an acre” and “that’s pretty cool.”

However, “If everybody thinks we should aspire to prevent future developments as we’ve seen in the past few years, I’m not going to stand in your way, but that conflicts with those values of workforce housing and affordability,” he added.

Among the other discussion points was the controversy surrounding the extension of urban services to areas outside the city limits — something councilors and planning commissioners were unified in opposing. They ultimately settled on language that sought to “discourage” expansion of those services and directed consultation with parties in other areas of city impact before expanding services.

Eight chapters remain to be reviewed, with the next chapter focused on “Housing and Neighborhoods,” and Grimm said the council and P&Z would schedule and notice another joint working session to tackle what they can.

“I’m as anxious as anyone to get this adopted and start working on the zoning,” he said. “I understand the pressure and the aspiration to get this done as well as we can as quickly as possible.”

Watch the entire joint working session on the city of Sandpoint’s YouTube channel, and access the full Comp Plan draft document — as well as appendices — at bit.ly/3OaBXxH.