Post Falls reviews zoning criteria in comprehensive plan

POST FALLS — Timing vs. traffic, growth vs. infrastructure and a municipality working to keep up with it all.

Post Falls City Council members participated in a workshop Tuesday evening during which they considered the adoption of proposed zoning criteria to update language in the city’s comprehensive plan. The discussion, which was tabled at a previous city council meeting, would simplify the language and condense the current zoning criteria from six items to two.

The proposed zoning criteria would update to consider:

Is the proposed zoning district consistent with the vision for the area contained in the currently adopted Post Falls Comprehensive Plan?

Does the proposed zoning district create a demonstrable adverse impact upon the delivery of services by any political subdivision providing public services within the city including, but not limited to, the Post Falls School District?

City Attorney Warren Wilson told the council the city needs to do something different with the criteria. He said it was never fully drafted or intended to align with the criteria now called for by the state.

“It’s entirely your world. We’re happy to take it whichever direction you want, with the caveat, I think we need to do something,” Wilson said.

The city’s present comprehensive plan was adopted in 2020. A comprehensive plan is an overall guide against which a city can weigh policies, procedures and goals to ensure they align with a municipality’s overall vision.

Council President Kerri Thoreson said adopting the updated criteria has twofold value, “for the people who are making the decisions as well as the people who are observing those decisions being made.”

“It is a good thing that we are doing,” she said.

Council members were fairly in agreement that the existing comprehensive plan does not need an immediate revamping at this time, but some tweaks to the zoning criteria are warranted. Mayor Ron Jacobson suggested Wilson and his team continue working on the draft language and bring it before the city council at a meeting in the near future.

Council members discussed what lies ahead for Post Falls, with topics of rapid population increase and traffic congestion finding their way into the conversation more than once. They honed in on two focus areas: Highway 41 north and the central prairie region.

“The thing that’s been so shocking to me and some of the people in town is just the rate of growth the past three years,” Councilman Joe Malloy said. “It’s happened so fast. It’s overwhelmed a lot of what’s already existing.”

He cited the Highway 41 project as an example, saying it’s behind schedule and not keeping up with explosive growth.

“That’s been my political struggle on these topics,” he continued. “The plan’s great. If it could somehow develop uniformly throughout the next 20 years, then I think most people, myself included, wouldn’t have any heartburn about it at all.”

View the current City of Post Falls Comprehensive Plan: www.postfallsidaho.org/PZDept/pzforms/Planning/CompPlan.pdf