Our County Commission is considering interim zoning for a portion of the Helena Valley under the guise of an “emergency.” What is the emergency and how long has it existed? Commissioner Murray says he is protecting a “silent majority” from a minority of land owners who oppose five acre minimum lot-based zoning. Our ranching neighbors in Canyon Creek recently defeated a similar zoning effort by legal appeal. I have heard some non-specific lip service of the threat growth in the Helena Valley poses to ground water quantity and quality. However, the real threat to Lewis and Clark County citizens is the apparent intention of our County Commission to implement zoning at any cost. This approach to first time county zoning is squandering any chance of reasonable, consensus based and perhaps legal county-wide zoning for years to come. That is the real zoning emergency.

In November our County Commission passed a resolution to create the Helena Valley Zoning District. A legal process which began months ago, and entailed countless hours of effort by smart growth advocates, real estate and builder interests and interested citizens, culminated in the November resolution. However, the poisoned process that pushed this resolution to a rushed vote harvested a fruitless bounty. No vetted list of effected land owners was compiled before the County started the process. The County then refused to make a land owner list available because the County was unsure who should be on it. The County also refused to provide an example appeal form.

Then there’s the brouhaha over who or what is “50% of the titled property ownership who’s property is taxed for agricultural purposes …or who is taxed as forest land” that may appeal and prevent a county from enacting zoning regulations. The Canyon Creek landowners rejected the proposed Canyon Creek Zoning District using this appeal process. After the Canyon Creek appeal, legal counsel advised the County Commission it could request an attorney general opinion questioning the constitutionality of the appeal statute. Commissioner Varone was then chastised for seeking attorney general guidance regarding the very same statute. To promote public awareness and comply with due process, the appeal statute states, in part, “the board of county commissioners shall publish notice of passage of the resolution of intention once a week for 2 weeks in a newspaper of general circulation.” Our County failed to publish the second public notice of intention to pass the resolution in what this paper’s headline trivialized as a “legal snafu.” When did violation by a county of a state law designed to guard against the unlawful taking of private property become a mere snafu?

Having previously adopted the Lewis and Clark County Growth Policy, our commissioners may proceed under what is referred to as Part 2 zoning, by creating their own resolution to adopt a zoning district. However, the proposed Helena Valley Zoning District is not citizen initiated zoning, under what is referred to as Part 1 zoning. Part 1 zoning is citizen initiated because it requires “60% of the effected freeholders” to propose a zoning district by filing a petition to a county commission. Nor is Part 2 zoning consistent with the citizen initiated “neighborhood zoning district” implementation strategy that was touted to sell passage of our Growth Policy after four years of consensus building. Part 2 zoning is a raw, in your face, powerful county government exercise of authority. An appeal process safeguards all of us from this power.

Now we learn of a new emergency coincidentally percolating to our valley’s surface in the hours and days after we learned of the “legal snafu” – the groundwater in the failed Helena Valley Zoning District is running dry and is full of contaminates, and we must act emergently to save ourselves from our own toilets and insatiable thirst. One can either conclude our County is reacting to this newly discovered threat with a poor zoning solution, or is moving forward with a predestined result, without any cognizance of the harm Part 2 “interim zoning” will cause to legally defensible zoning for years to come. If the rationale for zoning is preventing immediate harm posed by growth in the Helena Valley, there are better scientific based means available to mitigate this “emergency.” Unlike Part 1 citizen initiated or Part 2 County resolution zoning, there is no legal means for an affected landowner to appeal Part 2 “interim zoning” other than by filing a lawsuit.

A circus of conflict afflicts our county commissioners as they plummet towards emergency zoning. Personality conflicts and politics have supplanted progressive land use planning and zoning. There is a pragmatic recognition by the “silent majority” that our growth requires zoning as a tool to balance personal property rights with preservation of our environment and quality of life. This recognition presents an opportunity that will be squandered if we allow our county commissioners to enact emergency zoning.