By Soncirey Mitchell
Reader Staff
The Bonner County Planning Commission, Planning Department and GIS began updating the Comprehensive Plan map in 2022 and have devised a new plan to drum up public comment — hosting open houses around the county.
The department scheduled 10 events from 3-7 p.m. each, the first of which was held Dec. 12 in Sandpoint. Planning commissioners and staff will attend each event to answer questions, returning to Sandpoint for the final open house Tuesday, Feb. 11 in the Bonner County Administration Building (1500 Hwy 2).
Members of the public who do not want to travel can also access the map, presentations and related documents, as well as submit feedback at bonnercountyid.gov/departments/Planning.
After all public comment has been taken into consideration, Planning Director Jake Gabell estimates the Bonner County board of commissioners will be able to make a decision on the proposed map in May 2026.
“So, our goal here — as given to us by the Planning Commission — is to help get as much public input as possible on the proposed Comprehensive Plan map,” Gabell told the Reader.
To help members of the public visualize the proposed changes, GIS worked with planning commissioners and staff to create an interactive map showing current and proposed land use designations side by side. These changes will affect land uses ranging from home construction to founding a business and more. Every element of the project has been handled in-house.
“We’ve had a $0 budget from the very beginning, so we’re sticking with that,” said Gabell.
One significant change will be to reduce the number of land use designations from 10 to seven, eliminating the Prime Ag/Forest and Urban Growth designations and combining Alpine Community and Resort Community into the Recreational Resort Community designation.
The Planning Commission determined that Bonner County’s most densely populated areas are still technically Suburban, not Urban. Further, the commissioners decided that soil type and slope — which determine whether land is “prime” — should no longer be considered when assigning potential use, and so did away with the Prime Ag/Forest distinction.
“If somebody wants to farm somewhere, they’re going to farm there,” said Gabell, adding that, regardless, the soil data was not very accurate.
The commission will instead rely on the property’s proximity to transportation systems and amenities such as water and sewer to determine potential uses. To ascertain whether a property can support a desired use, the land owner will need to consult various agencies such as the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, Panhandle Health District and the Idaho Department of Water Resources.
The commission has also proposed eliminating the 10-acre overlap between Ag/Forest 10/20 and Rural Residential 5/10 by reducing the Rural Residential designation to strictly five acres.
Gabell said that “a lot of frustration” has come from property owners seeking to convert their 10-acre Ag/Forest or Rural Residential parcels into five-acre Rural Residential parcels and finding that the criteria for 10-acre Rural Residential and 10-acre Ag/Forest were vastly different.
“To get to five acres, people will have to go through a more stringent process that’s going to take longer. It will likely reduce the number of applicants,” he added.
The Planning Commission has proposed a few minor changes, including renaming the Transition designation “Mixed Use” and cleaning up the map’s borders to better account for property lines, city limits and waterways. Most of the commission’s suggestions seek to reduce redundancies and problem areas, align land use designations with the current use and direct where growth should occur.
“You want to see higher densities on bigger roads, so as the road system gets worse the farther you get out, the less dense everything should be,” said Gabell.
In addition to the online land use plan map, GIS also used historical parcels and building location permits — factoring in land that will likely never be built on — to create a site that can calculate potential growth scenarios in the county based on the current zoning. The public can view these interactive scenarios at bit.ly/GIS_LandUse, though Gabell recommends reducing the final numbers by approximately 30% to account for submerged land and otherwise unbuildable lots.
Gabell expressed his gratitude to GIS — especially Director Mike Bolling — for crafting the program from massive amounts of data. GIS hopes to update the map with new data each year to aid future planning commissions when the time comes to update the Comprehensive Plan map again.
“So when [the Planning Commission] looked at all this information, they came down to it and said, ‘We have enough [space] to last for a long time — like 15, 20 years — without changing any other zoning,’” said Gabell, adding that, consequently, the commissioners didn’t propose many zone changes to “allow for additional growth in different places.”
Gabell stressed the importance of attending the upcoming open houses or submitting feedback either in person or online.
“This gathering of public input is a really important part and I hope people show up because it’s a big effort by the county and by the Planning Commission,” he said.
“As a government, you rarely have the privilege of looking ahead and trying to solve problems that are going to happen. This is one of those scenarios where we’re responding to issues that have happened, and we’re also looking ahead to try to prevent other problems from happening,” he added.
Upcoming Comp Plan map open house dates
• Selle Valley; Tuesday, Dec. 17; Northside Elementary (7881 Colburn Culver Road)
• Blanchard; Tuesday, Jan. 7; Blanchard Community Center (685 Rusho Lane)
• Sagle; Friday, Jan. 17; Sagle Elementary (550 Sagle Road)
• Cocolalla; Tuesday, Jan. 21 at Southside Elementary (307 Southside School Rd.)
• Clark Fork; Tuesday, Jan. 28 at Clark Fork Jr. and Sr. High School (502 North Main St.)
• Coolin; Tuesday, Feb. 4 at The Inn at Priest Lake (5310 Dickensheet Road)
• Sandpoint; Tuesday, Feb. 11 at The Bonner County Administration Building (1500 Hwy 2)
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