Hitting the road to manage growth

Implementing any of the growth management tools presented in the Kootenai County Community Development "white paper plan" will take combined support — and regulation — between cities, special interest groups, and the public. 

So, Community Development Director David Callahan is hitting the road to gather input. 

An idea floated in a discussion between Callahan, the board of commissioners, and county legal counsel Pat Braden is creating one Master Area of City Impact to regulate development across Kootenai County. 

Required under Idaho Code § 67-6526, ACIs are intergovernmental agreements that define a geographical area within the county where cities expect to grow through future annexation of land. The agreements also set defined plans between a city and the county regarding ordinances and development standards to manage growth. 

Kootenai County has ACI agreements with all of the incorporated cities except Fernan and State Line.

While the white paper states the agreements have been helpful, it also states that many are outdated, like the Coordinated ACI agreements with the county, Post Falls, Hayden, and Rathdrum, which was last amended in 2005. 

"It's been, you know, over a decade and a half, and conditions have changed considerably in that area," Braden said. "Part of it … will be finding out whether the three cities involved want to still have a Coordinated ACI or if they want the room."

To avoid what the document calls "poor planning of the past" which has left "unincorporated islands surrounded by development within the city," the department recommended ACI agreements should be a joint effort between Kootenai County and each city. 

"There is an opportunity with this group that Chris (Fillios) and I are a part of, Kiki Miller and all the planners in the area," Callahan said. "We're talking about growth management countywide. I think we could bring up the notion of a Master ACI that would include as many cities as we can get because the kind of thing we're discussing really only works if we pull all this together."

Before coming to Kootenai County, Callahan was a planner in Boulder County, Colorado. Since the 1990s, Boulder County has implemented an open space program that leased development rights on county-owned agricultural land to qualified farmers. 

"What happened in Boulder took decades," Callahan said. "It started in the '70s, but it wasn't until the '90s that they actually implemented an open space plan. It took them that long to get the citizenry involved sufficiently to buy into it, but once they did, both the city and the county had a war chest to buy land." 

When Callahan left the county, that open space amassed 50,000 acres. Today it is about 100,000, he said. 

"It's fair to say today that the community is so immersed in it and bought into it to such a degree that they wouldn't have it any other way," Callahan said. 

That plan might not be a perfect fit for Kootenai County, the officials recognize, but it begs the question of how jurisdictions can better save the open space residents love. 

"I think we need to have the conversation with all the cities about what they support because we need to know," Commissioner Leslie Duncan said. "We have an opportunity to be San Francisco. We can demolish half of Coeur d'Alene and build high-rise apartments, or we can say this is who we are. This is how we're staying. This is what we like to be." 

Dates for Callahan's growth management roadshow haven't been determined yet. However, he has spoken on the topic to the North Idaho Pachyderm Club and plans to bring it forward to the Regional Housing and Growth Issues Partnership soon. 

"There are constraints in Idaho law that help ensure that we don't go too far with this," Braden said. "This would be an Idaho solution, a Kootenai County solution."