County Officials To Discuss Development Rules

Kootenai County’s elected leaders and planning commissioners today will hash out the role that written promises should play in development decisions.

Last week, two planning commissioners threatened to resign after county commissioners approved a 150-acre zoning change without requiring a development agreement.

Those agreements often provide the only guarantee that developers will block their industrial or commercial project from view of residential neighborhoods, hook up to a sewage treatment system and put in necessary roads before starting construction.

The planning commission typically vetoes zone-change requests that aren’t accompanied by an agreement. Planners were angered when new county commissioners Dick Compton and Dick Panabaker approved a change near the airport last week with no commitment from the developer.

Panabaker said he didn’t know that was a standing policy. Compton said it was a communication problem.

“It was a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing,” Compton said.

While the two boards don’t plan to revisit earlier decisions, they will attempt to find common ground for future action.

The meeting begins at 11:30 a.m. at the Seventh Day Adventist Church, 111 Locust Ave.