"Baffle them with BS"

Spanish Peaks Lawsuit Alleges Deception on Landslide Risk

The Club at Spanish Peaks, a luxury second-home development in Big Sky, allegedly failed to disclose to at least one buyer what it knew about geological hazards on the property, according to a previously unpublicized lawsuit, shining a bright light on a complex issue that confronts many developers in Big Sky and other mountain locations.

In a lawsuit filed in 2007 in Gallatin County court, Terrence O’Reilly, the former Vice President of Construction at Spanish Peaks and the owner of lot 87 on the Spanish Peaks Estates subdivision, alleges that the developer deliberately withheld information about potentially unstable geology on his lot.

Internal Spanish Peaks emails obtained as part of the discovery process in the lawsuit appear to show that, as a matter of policy, Spanish Peaks did not disclose to potential buyers the results of geotechnical studies conducted on the property.

In one email, the vice president of development suggests that the response of the sales staff to customer inquiries about the issue should be to “baffle them with BS rather than provide the actual reports.”
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Trading With Blixseth

Proposed Idaho Land Swap Exposes Shifting Attitudes, Shifting Economics

On a pleasant Saturday afternoon in late May, a group of woodsmen, retired foresters, local landowners and others gathered in the school gym of the Idaho panhandle town of Potlatch to talk about a land trade. Specifically, they had come to rally opposition to something which, historically, a logging community like this would have praised: the proposed transfer of local U.S Forest Service lands to a private timber company.

In a deal known as the Upper Lochsa Land Exchange, the Forest Service is looking to swap a hodge-podge of parcels in the Palouse district of the Clearwater National Forest (as well as some acreage in the Nez Perce and Panhandle Forests) - 28,000 acres in all - for almost 40,000 acres of checkerboard land in the Upper Lochsa River valley, near the Montana border. Consolidating the Upper Lochsa lands into public ownership would greatly solidify the wilderness ecosystem in the Bitterroot Mountain range, and would link up with other lands that are being protected as part of the Montana Legacy Project. Elk hunters - and, notably, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation - are especially enthusiastic about the idea, and in fact just about everybody agrees that the Upper Lochsa lands should be in public ownership.

The rub is that the lands on the Western side of the Clearwater National Forest - unlike the Lochsa lands - are pretty close to Potlatch, Moscow, and other Idaho panhandle towns, and people use them. They have been managed relatively carefully over the years for "multiple use," according to several retired Forest Service rangers, and while much of the acreage has been logged, it's wet enough that trees return quickly. Some of the tracts, such as those near the resort area of Elk River, are good candidates for real estate development.

On top of all that, the person trading for the lands is Tim Blixseth, a well-known - and not very well-loved - timberland trader and founder of the famously troubled Yellowstone Club. The Upper Lochsa property, while spectacular, was heavily logged by Plum Creek Timber before Blixseth bought it in 2005, and much of it has burned in recent years as well.

"We all support blocking up the Upper Lochsa," retired Forest Service ranger John Krebbs told the crowd. "But not at the expense of the Palouse district."

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The Great Recession

Missoula Real Estate: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

If you look at the most basic measure of the health of the local real estate market, you might conclude that Missoula doesn't have much to worry about. The median home price in Missoula County -- $217,000 as of June 30 -- has fallen less than 1 percent since its peak in 2006, according to the Missoula Organization of Realtors. By comparison, the National Association of Realtors reports that the median home price in the U.S. has dropped 21 percent during the same period, from $219,000 in 2006 to $173,000 in May of this year.

But when you dig a little deeper, you find plenty of indicators that all is not well in the local real estate market -- especially when it comes to new development.

New construction has hit a 20-year low, foreclosures are on the rise, and the list of active real estate listings is growing long enough that prices may continue to creep downward. Some two-dozen conversations with local builders and realtors, moreover, reveal no small amount of nervousness about the state of the market.

“So far we’ve fared fairly well,” said Bryan Flaherty, president of the Missoula Organization of Realtors (MOR).

The lower end of the market in particular is continuing to see a lot of activity, and some realtors are reporting sales numbers that are comparable to years past. Remodeling activity is also stable, and helping to keep some contractors in work.

But even Flaherty admits to seeing worrisome signs. [more]

Suit and Tie Up?

Missoula Council Members File Lawsuit Over Zoning Revamp

The effort to replace Missoula’s flawed zoning ordinance with a more clearly written version is being challenged in court, potentially delaying an already two-year-old process.

Three Missoula City Council members July 9 filed an application for a “writ of mandate” against the city in Missoula County District Court. If granted, the legal action would prohibit the council from proceeding with its review of the zoning ordinance rewrite.

The lawsuit was filed by Dick Haines and Renee Mitchell of Ward 5 and Lyn Hellegaard of Ward 4. They are being represented by the Wittich Law Firm in Bozeman.
[more]

From the Flathead Beacon

Flathead Planning: Will Nasty Debate Ever Abate?

In the last two weeks, rumblings over planning issues in Flathead County have escalated to explosive debate, with heated public meetings, a lawsuit, calls for the planning director’s resignation and allegations of illegal planning activities and fiscal abuse.

As a result, much has been left in limbo. Fed up citizens continue to push for drastic changes within the county’s planning and zoning department, while the office staff and community supporters of neighborhood planning have moved to defend their work.

The recent controversy began simmering when a handful of citizens raised questions over an online Yahoo! group being used by the volunteer committee rewriting the Lakeside neighborhood plan. Because the forum wasn’t accessible to the public, detractors called it secretive and illegal, arguing that it violated open meeting laws.

Then, a public meeting in Somers meant to provide information on neighborhood planning dissolved into a shouting match when opponents interrupted.
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Trending Topics Overview

Near-Demise of Boise’s Micron Technology - Part of a Global Pattern?

The near-demise of Micron Technology's chip fabrication plant and the more than halving of its workforce is yet another way Boise is changing, and it may fit into a national trend of fewer big employers and more small-to-medium businesses, and a sea-change in the nature and values of work.

According to some business analysts, these changes probably mean less job security and more young people and women in charge. From Time Magazine:

Ten years ago, Facebook didn't exist. Ten years before that, we didn't have the Web. So who knows what jobs will be born a decade from now? Though unemployment is at a 25‑year high, work will eventually return. But it won't look the same. No one is going to pay you just to show up. We will see a more flexible, more freelance, more collaborative and far less secure work world. It will be run by a generation with new values — and women will increasingly be at the controls.

Is this just a temporary trend, or is it the future of work in America? Will reducing operations budgets and payroll be the only tactic that will restore employment? What went wrong? [more]

Let There Be Dark

AMA Links Light Pollution to Cancer, Health Woes

The American Medical Association this month passed a resolution that recognizes a host of problems with light pollution, including health issues -- such as breast cancer -- that are "associated with human eye exposure to light at night."

The AMA resolution (view it in full here) explains that the increasing amount of light in the world, including streetlight glare and intrusive light that "trespasses" into bedroom windows and homes, is linked to higher rates of cancer and other health woes. It harms wildlife as well, the medical group says.

As the AMA puts it: "Light trespass has been implicated in disruption of the human and animal circadian rhythm, and strongly suspected as an etiology of suppressed melatonin production, depressed immune systems, and increase in cancer rates such as breast cancers." In addition, it "disrupts nocturnal animal activity and results in diminished various animal populations’ survival and health," the group says.
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Planners Under Fire

Flathead Planning Lawsuit: Secret Meetings, or Sour Grapes?

Flathead County planners might be saying amen to that this week, in the wake of a lawsuit and ongoing allegations by a group of vocal locals who claim the county and a planning committee conducted a too-secretive planning process that violated Montana's open meeting laws.

Planning processes everywhere in the state, it seems, are a battlefield in which elected officials and disgruntled private landowners are accusing planners and others of violating proper procedure. Insert the nation's legendary litigiousness into this recipe and you get a sulfurous stew, one that makes it increasingly difficult for anything with the word "plan" in it to get off the ground.

The battle gets particularly strident where property-rights groups like American Dream Montana -- whose members are among those who filed the Flathead suit -- campaign against people they denounce as "smart-growthers" and (in their view) socialists run amok.
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Deja Boo

Missoula City Council Hears Nays and Yeas About Zoning Rewrite

After more than five hours of hearing public comment Monday night, the visibly exhausted Missoula City Council sent the proposed zoning rewrite ordinance revision back to the Plat, Annexation and Zoning committee for re-evaluation.

If passed, the new zoning ordinance would replace the existing zoning ordinance, which Office of Planning and Grants Director Roger Millar described as confusing and contradictory.

“Everything we do depends on zoning, and our regulatory foundation is broken,” Millar said during his brief presentation last night. “It’s time for a change.”

Following Millar’s presentation and continuing until past midnight, about 50 Missoula residents representing commercial, organizational, neighborhood and personal interests lined up in the aisles of the Council Chamber and, one by one, voiced their concerns before the weary Council members, Mayor John Engen and City Attorney Jim Nugent. The meeting was adjourned at 12:30 a.m.
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The Smart and Narrow

Doing Density Right

Stand in the shadow of any giant residential megablock in Seattle and you can't help but wonder: Isn't there a better way to do this? The reality of massive buildings now being auctioned off at fire-sale prices seems proof that bigness alone is neither necessary nor a sufficient condition for successful development in Seattle.

Developers have long crowed — and local politicians have cowed to — the notion that "we can't make money in Seattle unless we build six-story buildings." After a round of developer-driven up-zoning we now behold the post-bubble result: fleets of full-block behemoths standing half-empty, unsold, even half-built.

What will we make of this enforced economic pause? Will we carve out urban and mental space in which to think about growing smartly and sustainably instead of just bigger and faster? Or will we simply wait for the banks to resume shoveling debt so the bulldozers can resume shoving dirt?

A few blocks from the lively Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill is a place that could change our thinking about Seattle urban density. [more]