Missoula News

The Many ZZZZ's in Zoning

Missoula Gets Updated Zoning Rules, Finally

By Amy Linn, 10-06-09

Way back in 2007, a group of Missoula city officials decided it was time to (gulp) update the city’s outmoded zoning regulations. Zoning is never a simple matter and it tends to stir up fears and dogged opposition. Still, the city’s zoning rules hadn’t been overhauled since 1972; some of the impenetrable regulations harkened back to the 1930s. The crying need for a new document was becoming a screaming one.

“We are not the sleepy little one-horse town we were in the 70s,” as Mark Landkammer of the Office of Planning and Grants put it in July 2007.

More than two years and many wearying efforts later, the Missoula City Council on Monday finally approved the new zoning document, replacing an old ordinance that was outdated, baffling and contradictory, according to the Office of Planning and Grants (OPG) Director Roger Millar. (You can check out the new regulations online.)

But what a long, strange trip it’s been. The website 4&20 blackbirds estimates that wrangling over Title 20, as the new zoning document is called, has cost the city more than a year of OPG staff time, “and a cool $250,000 in the process.” (Read the story here.)

So let’s say hello to the new zoning rules, and goodbye to the kinks and controversies, including these:

--—In April, a fine story in the Missoula Independent by reporter Jesse Froehling revealed that Ward 5 Councilmember Dick Haines and Ward 2 Councilmember John Hendrickson, though they hadn’t previously admitted it, were part of an “anonymous group circulating a petition protesting the city’s proposed new zoning code.” The petition asked property owners to file a formal “notice of protest” to the then-draft version of the new zoning code. It expressed concern that the proposal would dramatically change neighborhoods, allowing unwanted infill and density. In some cases, the petition was also “factually misleading,” said the OPG’s Millar.

-- On July 9, three conservative-leaning Missoula City Council members filed an application for a “writ of mandate” against the city of Missoula in an attempt to stop the council from proceeding with its review of the zoning rewrite. The lawsuit was filed in Missoula County District Court by Dick Haines and Renee Mitchell of Ward 5, and Lyn Hellegaard of Ward 4. The suit alleged that Missoula residents were inadequately informed about how the new zoning ordinance would affect their property, and that the city council did not follow proper procedures.

-- On August 20, all four judges in the Fourth District Court of Missoula declined to hear the lawsuit.

-- On Oct. 2, Helena District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock ruled against the three council members who filed the suit, declaring that the city had complied with all laws regarding zoning changes. The city had done everything it should to tell residents about the rewrite in direct mails, by e-mail, and at numerous public meetings, among other things. (The city also asked for help from a public participation consultant, Soapbox Enterprises, and it offered citizens an Office of Neighborhoods’ bus tour to help them see and discuss the city’s challenges.)

“We’ll get a new zoning ordinance in the end,” City Councilman Jason Wiener said at one point in this two-year struggle. Amen to that.

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