By Jim Rokosch, former Ravalli County Commissioner, Stevensville
The October 26th edition of the Bitterroot Star covered the commendable progress of the Town of Stevensville’s efforts to update the town’s growth policy in order to plan for the future of the community and balance the challenges growth presents with the existing values the community wants to maintain as it grows. When towns grow more like an onion, out from the urbanized core instead of leap-frogging chaotically, the challenges to the community and taxpayers are not as great or expensive, because needed public infrastructure and services are nearby. Planning for growth with a growth policy protects the public’s interests and taxpayers’ pocketbooks. Developing ‘urban clusters’ significant distances outside established cities and towns, farther from the needed infrastructure and services, puts a burden on taxpayers, harms agriculture, and can cost communities values, like important agricultural soils, wildlife habitat and clean water; values they want to keep and pass on to future generations their children, and grandchildren. Those that insist on doing leap-frogging developments at the public’s expense, cross the line where self-interest becomes selfish-interest, rather than merging their self-interest with the public interests. One government official attending the Stevensville growth policy meeting, County Commissioner Greg Chilcott, made it abundantly clear he is far more concerned with promoting his selfish-interest than the public’s interests.
Judging by his comments, Commissioner Chilcott still has not learned to take public comment seriously or to incorporate public comment into the decision making process. He continues to believe that public citizens and organizations are nothing but a nuisance and a hindrance to business as usual, and his personal interests. It’s clear that for him, public comment is about nothing but personal relationships and vendettas, not about the value of the data or evidence submitted. That is precisely the thinking that puts the county taxpayers in a defensive position in court with his history of costly, arbitrary and capricious decisions such as with the Legacy Ranch proposed development that would have dropped a new town larger than Stevensville on the boundary of the Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge, 450 feet from the Bitterroot River, consuming ‘prime agricultural soils’ and ‘soils of statewide importance’. Too bad our “leadership” has to behave in such a manner. It is truly shocking to the conscience.
Commissioner Chilcott should have recused himself from his seat on the Stevensville Planning and Zoning Commission given his obvious conflict of interest with his own private property. But the Planning and Zoning Commission should not allow Mr. Chilcott or anyone else acting solely in their own private selfish-interest at the expense of the public’s interest to bully them into sacrificing public values, such as wildlife corridors and critical fish habitat such as Burnt Fork Creek. Such corridors and habitat are critical to maintaining gene flow and the viability of fish and wildlife populations that are the foundation of the second largest economic engine in the state, the Tourism and Recreation industry, which is second only to Agriculture.
Pointing to the amount of public input that went into the draft update, clearly the public has identified the values that Mr. Chilcott disdains as important values the community wants to maintain as it PLANS for growth. If he doesn’t like extra-territorial zoning, he shouldn’t have worked to abolish the county’s growth policy and balanced county subdivision regulations, and should not continue to make arbitrary and capricious decisions that get successfully overturned in court and cost taxpayers thousands of dollars that could go towards economic development that actually brings a net gain to the county tax base, which sprawling subdivisions do not. Nearly every jurisdiction the American Farmland Trust has analyzed clearly shows that residential developments require more tax dollars to support the increased need for public services (public health and safety, law enforcement, licensing, etc.) and public infrastructure (roads, schools, water supply, sewage systems) than the tax dollars that such developments add to revenue.
But Mr. Chilcott continues to act in favor of development interests that subdivide their property at taxpayers’ expense. He has never explained why he and the county commission gave two developers up Eight-Mile over one million taxpayer dollars in a court settlement when the judge had ruled damages were not an issue and a rehearing of their proposal was the court’s remedy. The commission then was sued successfully by the Bitterroot Star for hiding the crafting of the settlement from the public and had to pay legal fees. He has never explained why another developer up Eight-Mile was given over $50,000 of road work beyond what a court settlement, which he signed on to, stipulated was sufficient and agreed to. He then was party to the wrongful discharge (firing) of the county road department head whom had resisted the additional road work, which cost taxpayers another $165,000. The arbitrary and capricious Legacy Ranch decision by Mr. Chilcott and the County Commission was ruled illegal and cost taxpayers legal fees again. And now he is trying to get the legislature to develop language in Montana’s subdivision laws that might legalize the county’s illegal phasing regulations and turn the court’s ‘Hard look’ standard into the ‘Hardly look’ standard so he can continue to ignore public input and the information and data the public brings forward, and give development interests a blank check to pass on the costs of their developments to taxpayers and their children for thirty years or more. Again, too bad our “leadership” has to behave in such a self-serving manner.
If you value your tax dollars, if you value agricultural lands, wildlife habitat, clean water, planned growth and predictable development, if you care about what is left for those that come after we all depart for the great beyond, then let the Stevensville Town Council know what public values you want the town’s growth policy to maintain and protect. The Council needs to hear from you. If we snooze, we all lose, and so do future generations.