Taken To Task Indian Trail Residents Guard Their Open Lots But Task Force Sees Increased Density As Avenue To Urban Services

Jammed into a stuffy school classroom, sitting in chairs made for eight-year-olds, three dozen Indian Trail residents traded jabs, glares and personal insults last week.

It was the latest round in the battle over development in the northwest corner of Spokane.

On the table was the fruit of three years of work by a neighborhood task force: the Indian Trail Neighborhood Site Specific Plan.

Instead of being embraced by the rest of the neighborhood as the answer to rampant development, many residents are shunning, ridiculing and criticizing the report.

In response, task force members are becoming increasingly defensive and angered by the attacks.

“I almost quit, right there,” said Cherie Rodgers. “I mean we have been at this for three years. I don’t think anyone else would have come up with anything different if they had spent three years of their own time on this.”

Last fall, members of several neighborhood groups, along with the task force, came together to convince the City Council to pass a moratorium so the plan could be finished.

Since then, that coalition has fallen apart over the issue of density.

“Their goal has become not to represent the citizens,” said neighborhood resident Glen Landram. “Their goal is to get the plan out. At this point they do not represent the community anymore.”

The task force is in favor of allowing developers to build as many as six houses per acre.

Critics want the restrictions to remain the same as they are now - 3.5 homes per acre.

At the meeting last week, residents accused the task force of selling out neighborhood concerns in favor of developers’ profits. In turn, task force members charged their critics with being elitist and even racist.

Neither side has even broached the subject of trying to resolve the differences.

At the meeting last week, Mike Page, an officer for the neighborhood group Citizens for Responsible Development, presented the task force with a line-by-line critique of the report. Page said he compiled the list with the help of several people who had seen a draft of the report.

By the end of the meeting, the task force dismissed much of the criticism and finalized the report. It will be presented to the city plan commission Feb. 8.

The plan commission will schedule a public hearing on the report, then decide whether or not to forward the document to city council or send it back for more work.

In a pre-emptive strike, several people in the neighborhood are calling on the mayor and city council members, calling for the report to be rejected and the task force to be reformed.

“I have to believe the City Council and the Planning Commission would disband the task force if they had seen how they were behaving at that meeting,” Landram said. “I think (task force members) are tired and they are not willing to accept feedback that is brought to them.”

Many critics think that developers and Planning Director Charlie Dotson exerted too much control over the task force. CRDA’s Holly Swanson said the process is designed to exclude the community.

At times Dotson, who is supposed to be an advisor to the task force, was running last week’s meeting, rather than task force chairman Tim Shelton.

Roger Flint, the city hall’s neighborhood liaison for the Indian Trail area, said he disagrees.

“I think (the critics) feel like they are not being heard,” Flint said. “But their issues have been heard. There is just a difference in opinion.”

What is being lost in the name-calling and finger-pointing is the fact that both sides agree on 90 percent of the plan, Flint said.

But the fight over the density portion of the report has overshadowed that.

Members of the task force have concluded that higher density is needed in order to expand such services as public transit.

Critics said the task force cannot produce any evidence that higher density will minimize such problems as traffic congestion and school crowding.

Planning Director Dotson said the state Growth Management Act requires that Indian Trail take on urban characteristics because it is inside the city limits.

“There is no suburban,” Dotson said. “There is either urban or rural.”

That’s what irks many opponents, who say they moved to the Indian Trail area because of its large lots and low density.

“I feel like they are telling me that I have a couple of choices here,” Page said. “I can move, or I can endure it. I don’t think either of those is acceptable.”

The Indian Trail neighborhood plan is the first such plan required to pass a computer analysis by the Spokane Regional Transportation Council.

The computer test will determine if the plan will adversely affect air quality throughout Spokane, said Bill Bennett, senior transportation planner.

Bennett said the computer model does not favor density one way or the other.

Task force members said they feel that unless they increase density, the neighborhood will not reach the critical mass needed to support expanded service from the Spokane Transit Authority.

The plan also encourages more alternative types of housing, including apartments and duplexes.

Some task forces members said they feel the attacks on the plan are from people who don’t want lowerincome people living in the area.

Page, Landram and others counter that denser housing will alter the quality of life that attracted them and others to the area.

“There is no direct relationship between density and quality of housing or quality of life,” Dotson said during the meeting. “It’s the quality standard that the community set for itself.”

But the issue is one on which the two sides show no signs of forging a compromise before it goes to the Planning Commission.

“If the plan isn’t approved then there will be no neighborhood plan,” Flint said. “It would be great if (the neighborhood) could go in unified. But … I don’t think so.”