Four Senior Planners Resign From Commission Sandpoint Officials Accuse Mayor Of Trying To Control Zoning Decisions

The four senior members of Sandpoint’s seven-member Planning Commission resigned Monday, saying they are frustrated by a battle over who calls the zoning shots.

Anne Cordes, Teresa Deshon, Craig Johnson and Bob Fischer submitted separate letters of resignation, accusing Mayor David Sawyer of trying to control the commission, filtering the information it receives, tinkering with its agendas, and subverting the commission. Cordes has been on the commission since 1978, Deshon since 1985, Johnson since 1988 and Fischer since 1994.

A special City Council meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Thursday to deal with the resignations. The City Council tentatively will meet Nov. 4 to appoint at least a few replacement members so the board again has a quorum. A Tuesday night Planning Commission meeting had to be canceled because so many members had resigned.

Mayor Sawyer is disappointed and saddened, he said, but says there’s no truth to the allegations. “I don’t know how we got from where we were to here,” Sawyer said.

“Somehow they have the perception they have been eliminated from the dialogue and that’s not true.”

A key meeting last Thursday - between a few planning commissioners, the city attorney, City Planner Greg Doyon and Sawyer - appears to have triggered the mass exodus. The memos discussed at the meeting “made a decree of how things will be done,” said Johnson, one of the resigning commissioners.

Johnson was unhappy that the commission was being told not to contact city staff directly, but to ask all questions it had for city staff through the planner. He objected to the planner setting the commission’s meeting agendas.

He didn’t like the mayor and planner trying to have city staff make the zoning and project reviews instead of the commission. “These are not the type of things that can be done in-house, by staff,” Johnson said.

“It was a bit of a power struggle - is the Planning Commission in control of what they do or is the mayor in control, indirectly through the planner?” Johnson asked. “It just isn’t worth it anymore to continue this war with the planner and the mayor.”

Fischer, another departing planning commissioner, also cited frustration with the mayor allegedly trying to control the commission and the planner. “The planner needs to work with the commission instead of being more sensitive to what the mayor wanted,” Fischer said.

Sawyer acknowledges he and city planner Doyon were discussing whether it was efficient to have the Planning Commission do every zoning change and plan review. But “it wasn’t going to be a unilateral effort to take those out of their hands,” Sawyer said.

Having them ask questions through the planner merely sets up an accountability process, the mayor said.

Overall, one of the questions in the spat is who manages the city staff, and who decides which projects they focus on.

“As the mayor of the city staff, I’m going to make that decision,” Sawyer said.

“They don’t have the right to manage staff.”

Everyone seemed to understand these points after last Thursday’s meetings, Sawyer said.

“We said we are going to meet every two weeks, we are going to move forward and we are not going to bash each other.

“Bull,” Sawyer said.

, DataTimes