County Inaccuracies…

Dear Editor,

There is a recent onslaught of letters from Steve Temple and Carol Jenkins concerning Planning and Zoning. It’s almost as if there is a race to see who can spread the most disinformation.

What Mr. Temple forgot in all of his discourse is that the P&Z Commission is appointed by the Commissioners, works for the Commissioners and is an advisory board to the Commissioners. Steve alleges that the P&Z Commission is removed from future code changes. Not true! There is no loss of transparency, loss of public input (hearings) nor exclusion of the P&Z Commission from the process. What Mr. Temple is up in the air about is that the P&Z Commission can no longer block the Commissioners from making a decision on an ordinance by refusing to make a recommendation. They attempted to do that with the passing of 12-262 even after they received advice of our civil counsel.

Title 12-214, as it was written, stated that the Commissioners couldn’t pass an ordinance unless they received a recommendation from the P&Z Commission. That violated State statute because it gave the P&Z Commission de-facto ordinance approval authority it didn’t possess. The Commissioners changed Title 12-262 to streamline the appeals process for land owners and make it cheaper to appeal. The rest of Steve’s rambling allegations don’t bear comment.

The same goes for Carol Jenkins’ misinformation about the Commissioners violating the revised code to make the changes. By the way Carol,  I have never demanded that anyone break the law, never! The public has benefited from recent code changes in that paternalism has been diminshed and personal responsibility has been restored. That increases property owner rights.

Todd Sudick
Bonner County Commissioner
Sandpoint