Hoodoo Valley rezone sent back to square one

By Lyndsie Kiebert
Reader Staff

An application for a zone change in the Hoodoo Valley has seen it all, from denial to approval to a full-on scrapping, as the board of Bonner County Commissioners voted June 24 to send the file back to the planning department and Bonner County Planning & Zoning Commission.

The application, put forth by property owner Daum Construction out of Hayden, requests to change the zoning on 160 acres from agricultural/forestry to rural residential, allowing five-acre parcels instead of the current 10-acre minimum.

While planning staff recommended denial earlier this year, with the P&Z commission following suit, the BOCC approved the file in April. The board then held a reconsideration hearing on June 24 following an appeal by those opposed to the project.

The reconsideration hearing ran more than two hours, with representatives for both the appellants and the applicant giving statements, as well as numerous community members opposed to the zone change taking to the microphone during the public comment period to express concerns about increased traffic on nearby Spirit Lake Cutoff Road, possible impacts from drilling several new wells in the area, and more.

At the core of the applenants’ case was the question of whether, in changing from an ag/forestry property to a rural residential one, the land would qualify for five-acre parcels. According to Norm Semanko, the attorney speaking on behalf of the concerned neighbors who brought the appeal, Daum’s property qualifies only to be split into 10-acre parcels.

“The underlying issue here isn’t whether … it’s rural residential or whether it’s ag/forestry,” he said. “It’s whether it can go into five acre [parcels]. That’s the real issue. If you go to five acres, A, you have to be rural-residential, and B, you have to meet the criteria in the code.”

Semanko argued that using the fact that there are five-acre parcels nearby as a reason to allow them on the Daum property was not following county code.

“You don’t get to swoop kitty-corner and look at other lots,” he continued. “That’s just not consistent with the code, and it’s not consistent with how the code was interpreted by staff … They only looked at the subject property, and that was the right thing to do.”

Commissioners opted to send the file back to the planning department and P&Z Board, citing discrepancies between the original staff report — which failed to route the Idaho Department of Fish & Game for comment — and the staff report presented at later hearings. While the original staff report recommended denial of the file, the one presented to commissioners in April recommended approval.

Commissioner Dan McDonald called the original report “problematic,” and said it contained “mistakes and errors.”

“The new staff report is far more complete, actually does follow the comp plan and does follow the zoning laws,” said Commissioner Dan McDonald. “However, we would be remiss to try to make a decision on this today with the conflict seen between the two [reports]. I don’t think it’s fair to the folks here, or to the applicant for that matter, to move forward with a decision right now because of the conflict.”

After brief deliberation and consultation with county counsel, the board voted unanimously to send the file back to square one.

“Moving it back to P&Z does kind of reset the clock,” said Deputy Prosecutor Bill Wilson, “to make sure that everybody’s on a level playing field procedurally.”