Local residents defend planner

A group of Mineral County residents spoke with county commissioners in defense of planner and sanitarian Tim Read at a meeting in Superior Tuesday.

“As far as our experience with Tim Read as the county planner has been, it’s been very positive,” developer Mike Albert said. “I couldn’t ask for better relationships. Tim’s been very honest, he’s been very upfront, he’s been very well informed of the laws, regulations and policy. He’s tried to stay within the time constraints.”

Albert was one of many people who defended Read at the meeting. Their comments came in stark contrast to statements made at two previous meetings held last month.

Attorney and landowner Lance Jasper accused Read of using “obstructionist tactics” to prevent developers from subdividing in Mineral County. Some developers have called for Read to be fired while others insist that he be relegated to only county sanitarian. All of the developers have demanded a mission statement or set of regulations surrounding the county planner job, and Jasper has said that if the county commissioners do not act on their concerns there may be a lawsuit against the county.

However, at Tuesday’s meeting, Mineral County Planning Board Chairman Denley Loge said that these complaints really stem from a change in regulations that Read has been following to a tee.

“I think the commissioners would be doing Tim an injustice if you gave him any kind of a bad review over what’s been going on,” Loge said. “I think you did the right job when you hired Tim and you’re getting your money’s worth, probably more than your money’s worth.”

The Mineral County Planning Regulations changed for the first time since 1975 in 2004, when Read said he worked with state officials to get Mineral County’s regulations to fit the new state model in 2006. Read said that this effectively put Mineral County nine months ahead of the rest of the state in terms of regulations.

According to Loge, there was ample time for public input during the construction of the new regulations, but for the most part no one came to meetings or made any effort to participate in the process.

“We have a process and there was public hearing when the subdivision regulations were changed a few years ago and to try and get people to those meetings is like pulling teeth, they just don’t show up,” Loge said. “And to come in later and say the regulations are too tough? They need to do it through the process that is available.”

Mineral County Conservation District Administrator Sharon Patterson told the commissioners that she likes the regulations and they are necessary to protect Mineral County’s resources.

“As I look at the subdivision regulations, I think they are fair to all involved,” she said. “I would hate to see you backpedal on your subdivision regulations.”

Loge said that in contrast to previous county planners, Read has actually been the most by-the-book and knows the most about the county’s regulations. He added that many of the planners before Read had allowed variances to the regulations that came back to bite them later.

“Through the years with the planning board we’ve made variances in different situations and sometimes when you try to make those variances, sometimes for convenience, sometimes because you think making a variance isn’t going to hurt in that subdivision, we’ve come back later and some of those variances have been a mistake because of what happens down the road,” Loge said.

Albert, who is working on a subdivision called Albert’s Riverside Acres, said that he has personal problems with the regulations and thinks they may need work, but Read has been very helpful in his experience. He added that many developers are used to not having to follow every single regulation and that the variances they are demanding in their projects subvert the process designed to protect the county and the environment.

“Whether I agree or not doesn’t matter, the fact remains that your county planner, Tim Read, the planning board and the county commissioners all made sure that our project complied with written, established laws and policies,” Albert explained. “My personal feelings are that if you don’t like the current laws and policies and regulations, work to get them changed, don’t start making allowances around the edges and eroding away our laws and policies.”

Albert and Loge, along with several other speakers, said that the only real problem Read may be facing is that his workload is too high.

“If there’s any delays that’s probably the reason for it,” Albert said. “For crying out loud, the guy’s overloaded.”

Developers echoed that thought at previous meetings. On June 19, Ron Warren, a developer with Rocky Mountain Surveyors, suggested the county contract out their planning duties and allow Read to focus on being the county sanitarian.

After the meeting, Read showed Mineral County Attorney Shaun Donovan and the Mineral County Commissioners documentation of his workload in the past years that indicated a rise in huge subdevelopments that Read calls mega-subdivisions.

According to Read’s documentation, since 1995, Mineral County has approved 141 subdivisions with 1,015 parcels between them. In 2004, when Read started as county planner, there were 12 subdevelopments approved with a total of 32 parcels between them. In 2007, there were only seven subdivisions approved, but between them there were 211 lots.

Patterson said that larger developers can be a threat to the county and that the Mineral County Commissioners should not back down.

“I also feel that a lot of the developers, these developers that are coming in here are frustrated with what they’re seeing in Missoula County and they’re coming to Mineral County because Missoula County has such a stringent and heavy workload down there that it is backlogged,” Patterson said.

She added that these developers may be a threat to Mineral County and the qualities it has to offer.

“I don’t want to see Mineral County becoming a bedroom county to either Missoula and/or Coeur d’Alene,” she said. “Sometimes these developers are coming out of bigger cities because they’re tired of the regulations down there and they think that they can walk into a smaller county and say, ‘Well your regulations are too strict too.’ I don’t agree with that, I think we have a wonderful county. We have a lot of natural resources and we have a lot of wildlife and it’s through the planning office that this is protected.”

The Mineral County Commissioners said that they will take all of the comments submitted in both writing and in person and come up with some recommendations and preliminary ideas that will be presented at a meeting on July 23 at 3 p.m. in the commissioner’s meeting room in the Mineral County Courthouse.

Read did not speak publicly at the meeting and has not publicly addressed any of the complaints directed at him of his department. He is expected to respond in writing to the commissioners before July 23.