New year begins for Hamilton City Council

by Nathan Boddy

The Hamilton City Council had its first meeting of the year on Tuesday, January 3rd, during which time they appointed council representatives to various commissions and boards for 2023, and elected Councilor Robin Pruitt as Council President for the new year. Also on the agenda was the appointment of members to the Zoning Commission and the Planning Board. One new member of the Planning Board, Roger Gantz, will begin in 2023, while the Zoning Commission finds itself in need of an additional member following the resignation of Roch Turner.

Mayor Dominic Farrenkopf gave his report, informing the council of a car accident that has left the front entryway of the Bitterroot Public Library in need of structural repair. The car accident occurred on December 23rd, when a car struck and damaged a supporting pillar adjacent to the library front steps.  According to the Mayor’s report, further investigation revealed structural damage to the integrity of the roofline above. 

Fire Chief Brad Mohn made a brief presentation to the council, detailing an agreement between the Hamilton Rural Fire District and the City of Hamilton establishing a “Length of Service Award Program.” That program would allow for a small financial incentive to be awarded to firefighters according to their accrual of ‘training and incident’ points. Mohn said that he hoped the incentive would serve to improve retention and recruitment of volunteer numbers.

Speaking about the program before the vote, Mayor Farrenkopf added that Chief Mohn had been instrumental in getting the agreement before the Council. “I feel this award program will be a great tool not only to attract new talent but to retain who we have.” 

Chief Mohn also gave public thanks to David Evans of Evans Ace Hardware for partnering with the Firefighter Association during the community Christmas dinner on December 23rd. During that event, the Association was able to give out over 150 detectors and provide valuable education about their installation. Mohn said that it had been a great opportunity to have Hamilton Fire interacting with the public.

City Planner Matthew Rohrbach gave a department update, informing the Council of a recently awarded Community Development Block Grant which will be used to study several infrastructure and development issues within the North Hamilton Urban Renewal District (NHURD), including water and sewer connectivity and transportation. He also informed the council that the City would be working with the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) on an environmental assessment of the old fire station to better determine what course the city might be able to take on the over one-hundred-year-old building. As that report begins to materialize, a number of topics including structural analysis, potential uses and/or sales potential will be addressed. Rohrbach also reminded the council that the City Planning Department is beginning its Zoning Code update with a public open house on Monday, January 30th at 6 p.m. at city hall.

Hamilton to begin zoning code update

Hamilton’s Planning Department is looking forward to a busy year as it moves forward with the process of updating the city’s zoning code, a crucial next step to accompany the recently adopted Comprehensive Plan. That plan, which took effect in August of last year, spelled out a wide variety of policy visions for the future of Hamilton, including such cornerstone values as: “maintain small town character,” and “grow in a thoughtful and proactive way.” The comprehensive plan is a legally required document for municipalities in Montana, but much of the strength of the plan can only be truly implemented with the nuts and bolts of regulation found in a zoning code.

City Planner Matthew Rohrbach points out that the current Hamilton Zoning Code hasn’t been truly updated for two decades. “Development demands and development pressures on the community have changed a lot in the last 20 years,” said Rohrbach. While several small scale amendments such as accommodations for accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and lot size requirements have been made more recently, the code is due for a large-scale overhaul to bring it into alignment with the city’s new comprehensive plan.

“Zoning is not one of these things that is intended to remain static,” said Rohrbach. “It is intended to grow and evolve with the community.” Still, as the new zoning code gets underway, Rohrbach says that he wants to be sure that the future code “lines up with the community values as outlined in the comprehensive plan.”

Rohrbach and Assistant Planner, Mark Rud, will have their hands full with the project since the work will be done in-house over the course of the year. Starting on Monday, January 30th at 6 p.m. with an open house at city hall, they plan to begin a series of what Rohrbach says will be a “very deliberate public process.”  To that end, a website has been dedicated to the zoning update, which will serve as a clearinghouse for information on the process and invite community members to get involved. That website can be found at: https://www.hamiltonzoningupdate.com.

The first phase of the zoning update will be largely focused on organization of the code, and making information easier to find. Rohrbach anticipates that phase to run through the spring. By summer, he hopes that the focus will shift toward analysis of district regulations, ie. topics like setbacks, size, form and shape of developments, height standards, parking requirements etc. Those topics are almost certain to garner a fair amount of interest on behalf of the public since, as Rhorbach puts it, those elements really, “shape what Hamilton looks like in the future.”

Those conversations can certainly lead to tough decisions, but Rohrbach says that city staff is dedicated to making the process open and accessible in order to “coalesce around something that works for the community as a whole. That’s what we are striving for.”