Despite Frustration Over Site Process For Approval Works

Back when men wore hats and told morbid mother-in-law jokes, a popular one went: “A mixed feeling is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff - in your new car!”

The recent approval of a building permit for a McDonald’s restaurant in Rathdrum prompted some of those “mixed” feelings.

Most of the distress was occasioned by McDonald’s execrable choice of a building site. If you are not familiar with the location; let me set the scene.

It is morning, imagine two busy state highways intersecting amidst a cluster of three large public schools. Visualize a line of slow-moving buses lumbering through their turns while being passed by high-speed automobile traffic. Now, see a constant, steady stream of very, very, small pedestrians threading their way through cross-traffic with about as much care as teenagers and young children typically exercise in crossing streets.

Got it? You are now ready to throw yet another attraction into the mix, on yet another street, bisecting all the others at an odd angle. This is our McDonald’s. Oddly enough though, as frustrated as I am with the location, as frustrated as everyone is, I believe that the process that led to the McDonald’s permit being issued served the public well.

As an architect working with an office that has watched the steady growth of various small jurisdictions in this area over the past 40 years, I can attest to a universal, natural progression of these agencies from Hooterville-like places to the kind of Byzantine bureaucracies most people only associate with former Soviet republics.

There is a brief, golden era between these two extremes when expert, yet approachable, city staff, usually local citizens, are allowed the freedom to work creatively with design professionals to fulfill the letter and spirit of the ordinances.

Rathdrum first entered this period in 1995, when the Planning and Zoning Commission adopted a policy of allowing staff to offer approval recommendations, at their own discretion, in certain limited instances, not involving large parcels, large water use, rezoning, annexation and so on. This move cut some building permit review periods by two months, and protected certain overly politicized applications from the possibility of arbitrary and capricious denials that could be reversed in court at a later date.

With the McDonald’s approval the system has fully come of age. Extensive traffic studies were required by, and provided to Rathdrum city staff. As unbelievable as it may seem to those of us who drive by the site everyday, those studies indicate that the particular orientation of the building access will not result in increased traffic - at least on paper.

In the aftermath of the uproar that the approval raised, Rathdrum is reviewing its building permit policies and procedures. It will be unfortunate if that review results in an additional layer of bureaucratic oversight. As it presently stands, with regard to the McDonald’s, the staff seems to have made the only decision possible based upon the law and the facts presented to them.

If, God forbid, some child is injured on the highway, McDonald’s alone will bear moral responsibility for the flawed site selection it has so adamantly refused to reconsider.