Search begins for planning manager

COEUR d'ALENE - Kootenai County Community Development director David Callahan said Wednesday he plans to hire a planning manager.

The new planning manager will spend roughly the first six months to a year on the job making technical fixes to the existing land use development code, Callahan told the Kootenai County Planning Commission at the body's meeting.

"The earliest regulations you saw on the (projection) screen when we started today go back to 1973," he said. "We've had all of these additions since then and none of these things talk to each other."

Callahan hopes to have the planning manager hired within two months to begin the needed technical fixes.

The ideal candidate would have a master's degree in planning, have experience working for both counties and cities, and have development code writing experience. Hopefully, the person would have 10 years or more of experience.

Long-range planner and former community development department director Scott Clark resigned last month, before completing the writing of a new development code.

"He was going to be trying to write new code and implement new comprehensive plan stuff," Callahan said in an interview after the commission meeting. "Now, that's a formidable task."

The new planning manager will fix the existing code, repairing or eliminating parts that don't make sense and organizing the document so it's easier to use and more logical.

If the technical fixes are completed this year, he said, that would be a major step for the county.

A repaired code would provide a solid foundation for a second stage of the work, he said.

"Adding the comp plan concepts to (the code) will be a little bit like adding a room to a house," he said.

The planning commission will continue working on a schedule Clark had created, which recently included public workshops on shoreline protection.

"That's advisory information I can use, since I'm new," he said.