Comp plan: Bid it adieu

It takes wisdom and fortitude to admit when it's time to start over.

President Obama has expressed willingness to start over on what he called the most important platform of his presidency, a massive overhaul of the nation's health care system. We encourage the Kootenai County Board of Commissioners to make the same decision for the good of their constituents and start over with the enigmatic comprehensive plan.

We understand the urge by some to just get this thing over with. It's taken three years, hundreds of meetings and countless hours to reach this point.

Proponents of no or extremely limited growth are pulling with all their might in one direction. Advocates of moderate or strong growth are pulling hard in the other. And in the middle are many county residents who have become lost in the dizzying, dusty trail of revisions, amendments, revisions to the amendments and amendments to the revisions.

Snapshot: After all this time, all the testimony, all the documentation and yes, even professional editing, it was rather startling recently to see our commissioners penciling in their own wording to this ever-fluid 17-chapter document, which is now in its third revision.

This isn't a headache or even a migraine. This is a bureaucratic brain tumor, and in its current form it is inoperable.

One example: The law requires that the zoning ordinance must be in accordance with the comprehensive plan. However, with the comp plan outlining densities in a site-specific map, the county won't have the necessary flexibility to balance various and often competing interests like economic development vs. affordable housing vs. protection from hazardous areas.

That's not a minor philosophical difference to be settled over a cold beer or a warm debate. It's a deal breaker that suggests we have gone much too far down the wrong path and we must now retrace our steps and start anew.

Our recommendation is to table the process now until after the commission elections this year. Then begin with the end in mind: Create a truly collaborative process and develop a much shorter and simpler visionary document, starting from square one.