Rathdrum's long-range look

RATHDRUM — The city’s Comprehensive Plan has been approved following a 3-1 vote at the City Council meeting on the twenty-second.

Outlining a twenty-year plan, “it is our vision for the future,” said city administrator, Leon Duce. “But a comprehensive plan is a guideline, not a regulatory document.” The plan will be reviewed every five years.

The next step is aligning city codes with the plan and out of these processes will emerge a strategic plan, the city budget, buildable lands and growth analysis, the transportation and parks plans.

Duce said that the plan “sets the feel for everything that follows.”

With the people of Rathdrum in mind, the plan reduces the density of future growth while supporting the development of Rathdrum as a “self-sustaining” city, Duce said. “You can work here, shop here, play here and live here,” he said.

Surveys sent to Rathdrum residents for years have reflected this desire, Duce said.

While a self-sustaining city depends on the population growth currently happening, one thing it won’t include is more R3 zoning.

“As the city expands beyond the center, you should expand into a more low density,” said Duce. “You have higher density in the center and we already have our center.”

Most future zoning will include only R-1 and R-2 with some highway commercial mixed-use development along Highway 41.

Other inclusions in the comprehensive plan will allow “neighborhood nodes” of small commercial development on the four corners of an intersection such as a convenience store or cafe with the surrounding development being light to medium residential or commercial nodes with no surrounding residential properties.

On 41, mixed-use zoning will allow commercial properties up to three-stories or 35 feet in height. No more than 20% of those properties will be allowed for housing. For example a building could have commercial offerings on the lower floors with housing up above.

“We’ve also recommended more green space buffering in areas like that,” Duce said. “You can’t just put up a little commercial building and then put in a whole bunch of apartments.”

Property currently zoned R-3 may see apartment developments, Duce said. But once city codes are passed, high-density R-3 development will not be a part of Rathdrum’s future growth.

The city strategic plan is another guideline document, Duce said. It’s used to create the city budget. The strategic plan allows the public to view connections between city expenditures and goals set forth in the comprehensive plan.

“It’s something that we want to do to fine tune how we spend our money,” Duce said. “And to make sure we’re spending it in a way that meets future goals.”

An engineering firm has been contracted to do traffic counts determining how many local cars travel Rathdrum roads and how many others pass through as well as studying the “level of service” provided by internal streets.

This study paired with comprehensive plan guidelines will influence the transportation plan in process.

The transportation and parks plan must be in place to calculate impact fees. Impact fees are used to maintain the level of service, not to increase it. Then the proportional cost share of that maintenance is attributed to new residential and commercial developments, Duce said.

Currently there is a new traffic light that will go in at the corner of Highway 53 and Meyer road and a round-a-bout is going in at the Meyer and Lancaster intersection.

The parks plan will maintain the comprehensive goal of maintaining five acres for every thousand people in the city. The impact fees collected for that are based on the cost of one acre of development, Duce said.

Impact fees can only be collected for eight years, Duce said. A lot of careful planning goes into collecting and using them.

Developing new parks maintains a level of service that city administrators are committed to. “With the growth that we’ve experienced, it takes time to save that money and be able to apply it,” Duce said.

A lot of this planning is based on census results from 2020, Duce said. The census put Rathdrum’s population at 9,211.

“We’re verifying that because we believe that it’s a bit more than that,” Duce said. Census results may be skewed due to complications caused by COVID.

“It’s really critical that we get the numbers right,” he said.

All of the planning documents work together to guide the city’s future. “It’s a big future and a big kind of project,” Duce said.

Council members Paula Laws, Darrell Rickard and Steven Adams voted to approve the comprehensive plan, Councilman Mike Hill voted against.

The projected date to have all zoning codes passed is August of 2022. The comprehensive plan can be viewed on the City of Rathdrum website at Rathdrum.org under the Departments tab.