Land Use and Zoning 101

If a new business wants to open in Missoula County, there’s a good chance the property owner has spoken to someone in local government about it. Then it goes through the development review process, which is dependent on the location, type of business and many other variables. Does it have to be this complicated? What kind of discretion does county government have when it comes to growth and development?

Enter: land use planning and zoning. This week, the commissioners spoke with Karen Hughes, director of the Missoula County Planning, Development and Sustainability department, about these questions and more.

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Comprehensive Plan Update
• Swan Valley Neighborhood Plan

 
Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:11] Welcome back to the agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners. I'm here with my commissioner and friend, Juanita Vero Dave Strohmaier is not here. I believe he's in a in a booth at a venture capitalist conference. Well, he'll be back soon. Today we're joined by Karen Hughes, director of Missoula County Planning, Development and Sustainability.

Karen Hughes: [00:00:30] Hi. Thank you for having me.

Juanita Vero: [00:00:31] Well, before we launch into our regular. Tell us about yourself.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:35] Yeah. How is it you landed here, Karen?

Juanita Vero: [00:00:37] Planning.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:38] She made a plan. She's a planner. She made a plan.

Karen Hughes: [00:00:41] You know, a long time ago, I worked internationally, and I was really interested in what drives communities, how they grow, how they develop, how they figure out where they want to go. Not in Canada. Nope. We're in the third world in West Africa.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:55] And on whose behalf were you doing this work?

Karen Hughes: [00:00:57] I was doing that for the Peace Corps.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:58] Yeah. That's two. We outnumber people at the table right now. Two former Peace Corps volunteers.

Karen Hughes: [00:01:03] And I figured that I could probably do all that work more effectively if I was in my own country. So that's how I ended up. I didn't really think I would be doing as much land use sorts of stuff, but that's part of what planning is. And so, and I love rural areas. And so the, the graduate school program I went to was all about rural and regional planning.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:22] Where do you go to grad school?

Karen Hughes: [00:01:23] At the University of Oregon.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:24] Awesome. Great. Not too not too distant. Yeah. What brought you back to Missoula? Brought you back. What brought you here in the first place?

Karen Hughes: [00:01:31] My husband brought me here because it was back to Missoula for him. Yeah. And we both wanted to live in a more rural area in the west. And the I-5 corridor was not was not on the table for that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:43] Totally hear that. So we're going to jump right into land use and development. Yeah. So when I imagine for a lot of people, when they hear the phrase land use and development, they're thinking, oh, you're talking subdivisions. Right. Well, let's say somebody wants to develop a subdivision. Can they just do whatever they want? How does that whole process work in the county? I know knowing that it's different in the city and the county.

Karen Hughes: [00:02:06] Yeah. You know, usually most people come in at our information desk and just try and ask what they can do with their property. And they might have an idea or they might not. But that's usually the best place where we talk to people is at our information desk, and they find out what rules and regulations might apply, what things they might need to think about, and start asking questions. And that's, that's how we start.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:29] Does it cost anything to have that conversation?

Karen Hughes: [00:02:31] It costs nothing to have that conversation. And in the in the process of doing that, when we find out what they might be thinking about, we try and give them an idea of what process they might have to go through, what the costs might be, what the rules might be. Each case is really it really depends on the person coming in and what their circumstances are.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:49] Well, then this segues to the next kind of question here. Why do some applications come before the Board of County Commissioners and others to the new Consolidated Land Use Board and others simply just go through staff administrator. Right?

Karen Hughes: [00:03:04] Yeah, those are great questions. You know, it really has to do with the rules and regulations that are set up by the state and that are set up by the county as to what process you have to go through. So some just require a permit. And so that's typically.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:18] Like a an example. So like people can kind of like imagine that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:20] Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:22] Sure.

Karen Hughes: [00:03:22] So if someone wants to put in a grocery store, for example, they might contact our office and say, hey, here's my property, here's where it's located. I want to do a grocery store. What rules apply? And so if it's zoned.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:35] First, big, first big thing that needs that box needs to.

Karen Hughes: [00:03:37] Be changed, right? If it's zoned, then we look to see what the zoning says. And most of the time when you do what's called a zoning compliance permit, that is a staff review process. Now, if you're going to divide land or you want to change the zoning on the property or ask for a variance from zoning, then most of those processes require that you go and talk to a board. So you would come and talk to staff. We help you figure out what the application requirements are, what the rules are, and then you apply. Staff's checking to see that all the materials are provided with your application. And then depending on what the project is, you might end up for a subdivision before the board of county commissioners for a decision. If it's a zoning variance, you end up in front of the Consolidated Land Use Board. If it's to rezone a property, you end up at the Consolidated Land Use Board for a recommendation and the commissioners for decision. So those rules are set out both in our local regulations and in state law.

Josh Slotnick: [00:04:36] So yeah, you answered this already, but I'm going to ask it just to put a really fine point on it. Somebody could hear that and say, oh my God, that is just mired in bureaucracy. Why don't you guys just make a different system? Why don't you streamline this thing, make it easy? Do we have the luxury of monkeying with this system?

Karen Hughes: [00:04:53] For. Some things we do. When we did our zoning code in 2022, we made a vast number of uses, allowed them to just go through standard permitting. So administrative review, they, they just when they put in their building permit, they come in, they put in a zoning compliance permit and they say, here's how we meet your regulations. And then it just requires no board.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:14] Has to.

Karen Hughes: [00:05:14] Approve, no staff just signs off on it. And so by choosing like a lot of housing types in different neighborhoods, making those permitted uses, then those could just, they would just show how they met the rules and we sign off on it. That's a really a simpler review.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:31] And that saves time off the process.

Karen Hughes: [00:05:33] Saves time off the process, right? For more complex projects like, say, maybe a data center in Bonner.

Juanita Vero: [00:05:42] She said the word.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:43] She said the.

Juanita Vero: [00:05:44] Words.

Karen Hughes: [00:05:45] Those require, in certain circumstances, what's called a special exception review a higher level of permit that is required to go to a board, in this case, the Consolidated Land Use Board, where those permits go was a choice that Missoula County made, not the state in the case of subdivision who reviews those mostly is guided by state law, and we carry those out in our local regulations.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:09] So there's a real delineation there. Some things we have to do because we're in the state of Montana. Some things we've decided we want to do it this way or not do it this way. Exactly. So in your answer, you use the word zoning a bunch, and I'm sure people out there listening will understand they have a sense of what zoning is. But man, it is really complicated. If you were to describe what zoning is and why we should have it in some places, and why we don't need it in other places, what would you say? And imagine you're providing this answer to somebody who doesn't know at all what zoning is.

Juanita Vero: [00:06:38] And maybe also answer what zoning is not. Okay, you can have at it something else.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:45] It's got a fourth question in there. Should we hit her with a Paraguay? Uruguay?

Juanita Vero: [00:06:49] Oh, yes, of course.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:51] Or the Yugoslavia.

Juanita Vero: [00:06:52] Yugoslavia.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:52] We'll save those to the end.

Karen Hughes: [00:06:53] Okay, great. So zoning is the tool that communities use when they have a vision for how they want to grow and develop or places they want to protect. Zoning is the primary tool that they can use to identify what uses or development densities or intensities are appropriate.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:10] Where what does development density mean?

Karen Hughes: [00:07:12] Yeah, that's a great question. So development density is the amount of development that can occur in any location. So when we think of residential density, it's like the number of units you can put on an acre, right. Or the minimum lot size development intensity might be like what scale? Like how big of a big box store can you have? Or how big of an industrial facility can you have? When we think of use density, intensity and then design how it looks, those are all things that zoning can be used by communities to carry out their vision for how they grow and develop. In some communities, They might not really care about lots of things, but maybe only care about large scale resorts or cell towers. You can design zoning that only addresses a few issues. Other communities, like the Missoula urban area. There was a lot of interest when we did the land use element in making sure that there was adequate housing, making sure that it was designed and where it's more dense in in a community that it's it looks nice and that it, it feels like a neighborhood. And so the zoning for higher density housing includes things like requiring porches and things that speak to the people walking by.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:30] Sure. So you mentioned the land use element. Can you describe that process?

Karen Hughes: [00:08:34] Yeah. The land use element was something that went through about 18 months, two years, period of time where we engaged community members throughout the urban area to talk about how they envision their future, what their kind of common goals were for and vision were for the area, what they wanted to protect, where they wanted to grow. And then the plan, the Missoula area land use element was an amendment to our growth policy that described that the vision for growth and development. And it had a series of what we called place types, descriptions of how what the land use should look like in different areas that were applied. And then when we came through in 2022 with zoning, the zoning carried those out by creating zoning districts that looked similar to the land use plan.

Juanita Vero: [00:09:21] And some of the things that people wanted to protect were.

Karen Hughes: [00:09:24] Ag land was really important, protecting areas where there's natural hazard concerns like wildland fire areas, flood, flooding areas were were really important. Also, people really wanted places where we could have new housing and have some variety of housing. Really wanted to have neighborhoods like East Missoula and Bonner feel like neighborhoods and whole communities. So making sure that the zoning kind of matched up with how they saw the future.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:52] Yeah. That's great. One thing I just want to restate because I think it's super important. We did a ton of public engagement, listening to people on how they wanted their places to look, and then took those visions and turned it into zoning. Zoning is where the teeth is. And there may be a misconception that it's the three person board of county commissioners that dreams up a vision for a community X, and we're going to make it be that way. And it's actually nothing could be farther from the truth. We make zoning match with the community vision is, which is why it takes so long, because we have to do a ton of listening. And then when we dreamed up zoning, or you guys do bring it back to communities in the form of public meetings and talk through it some more. And, and that zoning got redone, tweaked a few times before. It was something that pretty much everybody could live with. And I'm really proud of that process.

Karen Hughes: [00:10:39] Yeah. You might remember we had some conversations with the land use element about how low the density maybe could be in the Grass Valley area. And there were people who had various opinions about that, and we ended up kind of striking a compromise with requiring lower densities, but allowing for increased development by using conservation development design in areas. So that was kind of an example of where people on different sides saw it differently. But we found some way to kind of get there.

Juanita Vero: [00:11:06] Yeah. No, it was it was a pretty cool process. Had you experienced any of that or something similar in your planning career?

Karen Hughes: [00:11:14] No, I don't think I can think of anything quite along the lines of that that made it to that point.

Juanita Vero: [00:11:18] Because my, my memory is, is that this is kind of like a transformational. Exactly. Yeah, it's pretty transformational and really exciting that we were able to accomplish that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:28] This is a good segue. This next question is really about people speaking their minds. So I called this the other day, the county triumvirate, gravel pits, travel plazas and data centers.

Juanita Vero: [00:11:39] You can order t shirts at Missoula county.org.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:42] It's the county triangle that we're dealing with right now. So there's been a lot of public outcry about all three of these things. It feels like when you're reading some of the email that people have, the sense that we could just make these things stop if we wanted to. Can you describe the process on something like that?

Karen Hughes: [00:12:02] Sure. So in much of Missoula County isn't zoned. So we talked about places that are zoned. And then but most of the county isn't zoned.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:10] So functionally, what does that mean?

Karen Hughes: [00:12:12] So in areas where there is zoning, we follow the zoning. And that doesn't always turn out exactly how people thought it would. And so we have to work through that. But we have to follow those rules in places where there aren't zoning and there's a proposal for development. And it's related to use, not subdivision, then we don't have any zoning to fall back on. There isn't there aren't those kinds of rules in place.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:34] So so if a person owns land and the land is zoned, they can do basically whatever they want with it.

Karen Hughes: [00:12:41] Yeah. They have to meet all the other codes like sanitation and building codes, but there isn't a land use.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:47] Sanitation means they got to deal with there.

Karen Hughes: [00:12:49] They have to deal with their septic system.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:51] Build and build. They're going to build something, but they can build a ball bearing factory or a fourplex.

Karen Hughes: [00:12:55] Yeah. Yep. That's why communities often choose zoning. It's not because it's easy. It's hard to to compromise on values that might be competing a little bit. But that's why communities choose zoning as a way to make sure that they're okay with how development mostly turns out.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:12]  [00:13:12]And it could imagine if a place is very small and really rural and not growing and doesn't feel like change is coming over the horizon, you might not need any zoning because what your neighbor does doesn't really mess with you. Right. But when you have a lot of people living close to each other, what one person does absolutely messes with everybody else. And if you feel change coming, like, oh, look, a gravel pit, travel plaza or data center is coming on the horizon, you might want to have some zoning. We all know that county counting commissioners, but we who live here have a sense of what sort of thing is going to be where. [00:13:46]

Karen Hughes: [00:13:46] Right. And the other side to that is that property owners who want some certainty about what they can do with their land also sometimes want zoning to help make sure that, well, I have a vision for my property and I'd like to be able to do it. And when when there isn't zoning in place, it ends up being a community conversation instead of there are rules and we all know what those rules are and we need to follow them.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:10] So is zoning permanent?

Karen Hughes: [00:14:12] Well, no, it's never permanent. It should always be something that you can grow and amend.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:16] It's good because times change.

Karen Hughes: [00:14:18] Times change. Right? There's things that.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:20] We talk about zoning over the last century because there's been a lot.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:22] Of. Yeah, that's a cool.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:23] Question.

Karen Hughes: [00:14:24] Over the last.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:25] Century. Well, I'm thinking of like Euclidean zoning was, I mean, had its heyday.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:30] Century is only 26.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:31] Years. Oh you're right. Good point, good point. But.

Karen Hughes: [00:14:35] Um, yeah, zoning.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:37] Zoning has evolved.

Karen Hughes: [00:14:38] As an example in the 1970s zoning that we had before we adopted the 2022 zoning, we didn't have things like data centers or cryptocurrency mining or lots of other. I mean, they didn't have cell towers really at that point. So lots of uses that we are thinking about and struggling with today weren't even considered as part of it. And the kind of the rule is you find something that's similar and you apply those rules to it. We didn't even have rules that were remotely similar. Right? Also in the 70s, there was kind of like a lot of difference of opinion about what housing was appropriate. Now people are thinking, oh, I want some smaller housing. Maybe I'm okay with a little bit of density in my neighborhood, but we didn't really have rules set up for neighborhoods that had a mix of housing types. And so that's those are the kinds of things that have really changed over the years.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:27] So can you go back to that, [00:15:28] that other question, could county government just say we don't like business activity X? So we're just not having any of that? [00:15:35]

Karen Hughes: [00:15:35]  [00:15:35]Not usually. Usually you have to identify what rules apply and apply those rules and and objectively review it against criteria. And if there aren't rules like it isn't zoned, then you can't really review it. If there are rules, then it's not whether or not you like it or not. It's whether or not it complies with whatever rules are in place. [00:15:54]

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:54]  [00:15:54]So can we do an example? Let's say, of the county triumvirate, you can pick which one you like, where people would be saying, oh, I'll make some up. We have enough truckstops. They're awful. They're hotbeds of crime during the night and every sort of terrible human behavior. Let's just not have any more travel plazas. Can we just do that? [00:16:13]

Karen Hughes: [00:16:13]  [00:16:13]No. Probably not. [00:16:15] Uh, I'm trying to think of how that would work. So in most cases, you have categories of uses that are allowed. And truck stops would be a kind of commercial use. Right. And so any place where commercial uses are allowed, if it's zoned, you have to allow the range of commercial uses. You might require them to meet certain standards.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:32] What would that be? What kind of things could we do to mitigate impacts from.

Karen Hughes: [00:16:36] You can limit the amount of asphalt that you know of.

Juanita Vero: [00:16:41] Acreage.

Karen Hughes: [00:16:41] Acre. Yeah. The acreage that's paved, you can require screening and landscaping. You can limit or require certain things in relation to signage. You can require lighting that's downward cast. So it's not shining in people's eyes. Like all of those sorts of things that you can apply in terms of design standards. And so in areas where it's zoned, if it's zoned to allow a truck stop, we can't say no, but we can require them to meet the rules. Right. Got it. So that's the basic rules. And if there isn't zoning, we can't make them meet rules that don't exist.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:16] Mhm. That's a really good one, too. Yeah, it's.

Juanita Vero: [00:17:19] Oh. Go ahead. No. Go ahead.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:20] It's an interesting question because there are things that we as a society need, right. And really don't like. Yeah. And it isn't hypocrisy. It's just humanity. Like no one wants to live next to something that's loud and unsightly or a hotbed of bad activity. Nobody would want that. And yet these things need to exist. So it feels like zoning might be part of the answer on how you kind of square that circle.

Karen Hughes: [00:17:44] Yeah. That's where communities come together and try and figure out how to plan for all the things that they might need to plan for, and then ideally find some level of zoning that helps implement those plans, because the plan only gets you so far. You can have a great vision, but if you don't put some rules in place, you will end up in the same problem.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:02] So our last zoning, it lasted like 50 years and we we cleaned it up. What do you think is a better kind of shelf life for zoning in terms of how often do you think we should be revisiting these things, reconsidering them in a kind of global, holistic way? Not not a zoning amendment here and there, but let's redo the zoning.

Karen Hughes: [00:18:20] That's a good question. I'm not sure if there's kind of a rule about that. The the basic rule on a plan is that every 5 to 10 years and under Montana law, you should be reviewing every five years. You should kind of take a look and assess whether whether things have really changed and whether you need to adjust them. So presumably if there's any major changes, your zoning should also change, right? Like if you have zoning to carry out that plan, then you should always and we do this with the 2022 zoning about every year we try and just clean things up, make sure that things that are problematic, whether it's for us or for.

Juanita Vero: [00:18:54] Like just recently property, you have a good example with the cleanup that we just went through.

Karen Hughes: [00:18:58] With the cleanup that we just did, there was a need in industrial areas to have some kind of flex space, something that didn't technically we didn't really have in there, but space that could be used for a variety of different industrial uses. We didn't have that kind of space. And so we created a use type and added it to the list of permitted uses that allowed for more permitted different kinds of industrial uses in heavy industrial areas.

Juanita Vero: [00:19:25] And okay, so a more concrete example, are we going to talk about the volleyball? I mean, because it was like, oh, I mean, it made sense. Or we just thought like, okay, you could put this volleyball training center in this industrial space, but oh, so the volleyball training center that's out at the mill site.

Karen Hughes: [00:19:41] It was allowed that use would have been allowed in light industrial zones, but for some reason it was excluded from the heavy industrial zones.

Juanita Vero: [00:19:49] Yeah. Right.

Karen Hughes: [00:19:51] So we took all those light industrial uses and said under certain conditions, you can do them in heavy industrial areas to give the give places like the mill site a little more flexibility. Still, all uses that would be considered some form of industrial use, but a little more flexibility for that heavy industrial zone.

Juanita Vero: [00:20:08] I think we're kind of bumping up against this, but the, the, the, the balance of the need to create a desirable place to live with the demands of modern life. And I think you have a bit that you like to try.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:17] That's kind of what I was hitting on before these things that we need, but no one would like. Yeah.

Karen Hughes: [00:20:21] And we have to plan for where there.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:23] We got to plan for where they're gonna go.

Juanita Vero: [00:20:25] And those things are what? Come on. You gotta do the. I'm trying to put the quarter and Josh and he's not.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:32] Saying things like everything we buy, use, borrow, etc. seems to come on a truck and trucks need truck stops or we all drive, ride, walk, bike on roads. Roads need gravel. We all say we need more housing. Housing needs more gravel. Gravel requires gravel pits. We all carry these supercomputers in our pockets or our bags. They need data centers if we want to live in this way. And I'm not arguing for this way or any other way, but reality is reality. This is the way we are living. That triumvirate needs to exist somewhere. We can't completely outsource the unpleasant and just insource the stuff we like.

Karen Hughes: [00:21:13] How do we do that?

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:14] It seems like zoning is the mechanism by which we do it, and I'm really proud of our process of that land use element of leaning into public engagement, and let's have this public conversation and then figure out zoning that matches people's visions and concerns because it's way too big for just a couple people to make this decision. It needs all of us. Which leads us to the comprehensive plan. Could you describe that? Because it's coming soon.

Karen Hughes: [00:21:39] Yeah. So the comprehensive planning process is our update to the growth policy. The last one we did was for the land use element area, the urban area. And the goal for this one is to do it county wide. So and especially for areas that haven't had updated planning since the 1970s, which is most of the areas to the west and most of the areas to the east.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:59] So even if an area is unzoned, it still could have had some.

Karen Hughes: [00:22:03] It has a land use designation. It's had planning done for it, but we haven't really updated that land use map since in some places since the 1970s. Lolo was done in 2002. Seeley Lake was done in 2010. The Swan was just done in 2026 and the urban area was done in 2019. And we'll do the whole area. We'll check on everything, check in on our vision and goals. Get some confirmation and make some adjustments. Those were last done in 2016. And then really to take what comes out of that and to have conversations in each of the communities about what is the future land use, what is future growth and development look like in each of these areas? And for some areas, that means we really want to grow and develop. And in some areas, that does not mean that it means they want to protect their rural character and keep things kind of the same as they are. But there may they may have some things that they don't really think of as being part of land use planning. We want to be able to have those conversations. Someone was commenting, we have a Missoula County Voice page right now for this project that kind of generally lays out the project and the timeline. And someone was saying things like housing, we don't need that here. Well, sometimes the planning for some areas is not about planning for lots of new housing. It's about planning for keeping your community a sleepy, quiet community.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:25] Yeah, I remember just because we all recently went through the swan planning process, their neighborhood plan, and they didn't focus much on housing at all. Their concern was really born out of the Holland Lake Lodge kerfuffle, and not wanting to see any large scale, high end resorts come to their valley, that's what. And they're also concerned about cell towers, but they're not concerned about housing.

Karen Hughes: [00:23:47] Right. But part of that conversation, they weren't really concerned about cell towers to start. But as they went through the process and started having conversations, there was something else that they came together around. Right. And that's what these conversations are about. It may be about housing in one community. It may not be, but it's whatever is important to that community.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:06] So would this process necessarily lead to zoning?

Karen Hughes: [00:24:10] It doesn't have to, but we will be talking about zoning as one of the ways to implement plans, because it is really the only way that if there's something that a community is wrestling with in terms of use that they can use.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:23] And don't you think that this conversation around zoning. People are more curious or interested in having that conversation than they were, oh, ten, 15 years ago.

Karen Hughes: [00:24:33] Oh yeah. For sure. When we did the 2016 plan, we explored in our final outreach whether people wanted to work on the land use maps part, and they were like. Lukewarm, right? So it didn't get incorporated at that time. Every, every community in every neighborhood. It seems like there's something brewing where people in Lolo, people in Seeley Lake talking about a sewer system doesn't matter where you are, people are talking about it. And, and these are the tools that we have. And, you know, we need to figure out if they are going to work and if so, how for communities.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:11] That county triumvirate has inspired people to get excited about zoning? Yeah, I never would have.

Karen Hughes: [00:25:17] Never would have guessed.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:18] I never would have imagined. So, so Karen, you described a really fantastic process with that land use element. And now we're we're looking at a comprehensive plan. In both cases, we spend a ton of time doing public engagement, hearing what people's visions are and their concerns. And then we attempt to mirror those things in zoning. And then we go back and forth with people on the specifics of zoning. And after a couple of years of this, we end up with some zoning we really like. We just saw a version of zoning begin to happen in Frenchtown, and none of that process was involved. Do you want to describe what happened?

Karen Hughes: [00:25:55] Well, at a very high level, since I wasn't down in the details, you know, a group of folks in the neighborhood came together around concerns, around the truck stop. And when they talked with our office, they decided to pursue what's called part one zoning. It's a citizen initiated form of zoning where citizens petition the county commission to put zoning in place. And they did kind of a short circuited version of what we do in a bigger planning process. They talked to their neighbors. They talked about what, What they liked, what they didn't like, and they talked to our office about what some of the options were. They used existing zoning districts that we have in our zoning. They use our existing zoning resolution, and they put together a package that said, for this area, we'd like these districts and these locations and follow all the other rules of the zoning code. And they took that around and had people sign a petition, and they brought it to the county, and we verified it and went and it went through the Planning and Zoning Commission, and then the county commissioners, you know, their goal was the same. It was kind of a neighborhood oriented group of folks who wanted to do the same thing we do in our bigger, wider processes. But it was really done, you know, with more limited staff involvement. We were there consulting with them, helping answer questions, making suggestions for things for them to think about all the way along. But they were the ones engaging their, you know, their own neighbors.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:21] This seems like it hadn't happened for quite a while.

Karen Hughes: [00:27:24] Yeah, I can't remember when the last one was before that. Yeah. So this was it was been a while.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:30] Inspired by one of the county triumvirate and people saying, I don't want this. Yeah. We don't want this in our neighborhood. Yeah. Or we want our neighborhood to look like something else. Yeah. It's hard to I don't want to put words in people's mouths, but that's, that's what the effect was.

Karen Hughes: [00:27:42] Yeah. I mean, I think we're hoping to do that on a county wide scale through this planning process where we engaged community by community and have some of those good conversations.

Juanita Vero: [00:27:53] Yeah. So how can folks stay up to date with that comprehensive plan update?

Karen Hughes: [00:27:57] Well, we do have Missoula County voice page that's got the basic information and people can sign up to track that project. There we are in the process of hiring a consulting team to help us do outreach, and we're planning on doing community meetings starting early this fall. Oh, fantastic. Yeah. So we'll be out talking to communities.

Juanita Vero: [00:28:15] And we'll do that for about eight months. Is that right?

Karen Hughes: [00:28:18] Well, we'll have a better idea once we get the consulting firm, what the timetable looks like and what the process looks like. And so hopefully at that point we'll get a better plan in place, more detailed plan in place, usually to get a new plan done. It takes at least a year to 18 months, but we'll be actively working on it through that time period. And we'll have a better idea of late summer. What that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:42] And it'll it'll really be up to those communities. But I personally really hope that all of the small communities involved want to see those visions and concerns and plans enshrined in zoning. So then there's some teeth to all that good thinking.

Karen Hughes: [00:28:56] That's right. Yeah. Yep. [00:28:58] We hope to have good conversations. And, you know, the I think when people get a little nervous, when they see the county zoning regulations, they're kind of a thick book. They were designed for the urban area. They weren't designed for more rural communities. I think that was maybe one of the harder things about the Frenchtown effort is that they were using our existing zoning, and it's pretty detailed that, you know, in more rural areas, we may come up with some very different ways of putting zoning together. It can be much simpler for sure. [00:29:27]

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:27]  [00:29:27]The swan, it does not at all look like Bonner. [00:29:30]

Karen Hughes: [00:29:30]  [00:29:30]It's really different. [00:29:31]

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:31]  [00:29:31]Places, wonderful places, all. And people choose to live there for different sets of reasons. And they should have zoning that reflect those places. Not exactly size fits all. [00:29:39] So, Karen, often people hear about a proposal that they have really strong passions about what's the most effective way for folks to actually see some change based on their comment. What should they speak to?

Karen Hughes: [00:29:52] That is a great question. For those projects that go to the Consolidated Land Use Board or the Board of County Commissioners, and those usually have a voice page set up there. We try and have those review criteria. Those review criteria are what we have to make and what you have to make findings based on.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:09] So this is what Dave likes to refer to as a decision space. These are the things you can decide on. We can't say, oh, I'm going to go back to shoe stores. I just hate the smell of feet. So no shoe stores, right?

Juanita Vero: [00:30:20] But if I got 5000 people from all over who also hate shoes and feet and they're really loud, it doesn't matter how loud they are.

Karen Hughes: [00:30:30] They hate of shoes and feet is not going to fly.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:32] We they need to speak to something within that decision space. I'm going to make stuff up. Does this affect wildlife or does this affect riparian areas or whatever the criteria actually are? So it would behoove people to learn what the criteria are about that defines the decision space for any specific decision, and then speak to those criteria.

Karen Hughes: [00:30:52] Absolutely. And the more detailed information evidence, if they have a study that they want to share, that is even better. We can't just go based on impressions or opinion. Like it has to be fact based information that we rely on in making those decisions.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:10] Good. Thank you for that.

Juanita Vero: [00:31:12] Okay. Well, before we close, can you share a good book or a nugget of wisdom you've come across recently, or that you carry with you.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:20] And I also have after this, I have a customized Karen Hughes question. Ooh.

Juanita Vero: [00:31:25] Maybe we should start with that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:27] So Karen and I have talked about cooking quite often.

Juanita Vero: [00:31:30] Also about.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:30] Being in other parts of the world, because these are two things we share. And Karen has this incredible tradition. And I have to say, when I get these menus from you, I'm in awe. And then I share them with my spouse and we're like, oh my God, over this. So on her birthday, she likes basically creates a feast, not a meal, I would say a feast, a multi-course event inspired by the cuisine of some faraway place, and then invites friends and family and they like it looks like it would take two hours just to eat the food. It must take a couple days and no exaggeration, a couple of days of preparation to make such.

Juanita Vero: [00:32:01] Or a.

Josh Slotnick: [00:32:01] Week. Or a week.

Juanita Vero: [00:32:03] There you go.

Josh Slotnick: [00:32:04] So how do you decide which cuisine is going to be it for this birthday year?

Karen Hughes: [00:32:09] Uh oh gosh. It usually starts after Christmas and I usually wait.

Juanita Vero: [00:32:15] When's your birthday? When's your birthday?

Karen Hughes: [00:32:16] I have a spring birthday, so.

Juanita Vero: [00:32:18] I.

Josh Slotnick: [00:32:18] Do I, so I know.

Karen Hughes: [00:32:19] In March. And so usually I'm scrolling through the latest and greatest reviews on cookbooks and, uh, reading about different places. And sometimes I have an idea and sometimes I don't. Sometimes it's inspired a little bit by current events. I often will choose places that are, you know, conflict laden zones, in part thinking about like, what's this place really like? And knowing that food is something that binds us all together. Sometimes those are fun places to explore.

Juanita Vero: [00:32:47] Would you do this year?

Karen Hughes: [00:32:48] Parsi.

Juanita Vero: [00:32:49] Where's Parsi?

Karen Hughes: [00:32:50] So the Parsis are a group from Iraq that as the Arabs moved in, in like the seventh century, they moved into that area. They migrated through the area of the Straits of Hormuz and into India, mostly near Bombay, although they've moved around in India as well.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:11] There's one of the just so stories that features a Parsi.

Juanita Vero: [00:33:14] Features a Parsi. Oh, okay.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:16] Yeah. Wonderful. I think it's like how the cheetah got his spots or something. Oh, the Jaguar got its spots or stripes, but the Parsi man features prominently.

Karen Hughes: [00:33:23] Yeah. So the the Parsi or Persian have Persian heritage. But they didn't want to stick around for the Arab invasion. And so they moved out. Um, so they've adopted, they have kind of this Middle Eastern influence, but they also have strong influence from Indian cuisines in the different regions, you know, in India's big so lots of different regional cuisines that's influenced them. Plus all the East Asian and European influences that have that they've kind of gathered along the way.

Juanita Vero: [00:33:50] So the best of everything.

Karen Hughes: [00:33:52] Super cool. And their traditional New Year celebration is at the spring equinox, which is right around my birthday. And so I did kind of a New Year's celebration for my birthday, essentially trying to put together.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:04] Some of the dishes.

Karen Hughes: [00:34:05] Sure. We had oh gosh.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:09] Just what they are rather than the name.

Karen Hughes: [00:34:11] The we had some pomegranate drinks like a pomegranate, Kir Royale and Spritzers. We had roast cashews with ajowan. I don't know if I'm saying that it's a spice. It tastes a little bit like caraway and dill seed kind of together. We had like masala shrimp, twice cooked grilled meat dolls. Right. The caramelized fried rice.

Juanita Vero: [00:34:37] Mhm.

Karen Hughes: [00:34:38] Um, cheval... Cucumber ginger and cabbage salads. Lots of ginger. Lots of onion. Lots of mint.

Juanita Vero: [00:34:48] Oh so good, so good.

Karen Hughes: [00:34:50] Yeah. Chutneys raitas all the sauces to make it. You know.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:56] The sauces are so fun.

Karen Hughes: [00:34:57] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:58] Yeah. Well done, well done.

Karen Hughes: [00:35:00] Thanks.

Juanita Vero: [00:35:01] Well, okay, let's go back to a nugget of wisdom when the chips are down. When when you have had it at 430 on a Friday. What? What gets you through?

Karen Hughes: [00:35:14] Going for a bike ride?

Juanita Vero: [00:35:16] Okay.

Josh Slotnick: [00:35:16] Counting the days till retirement.

Juanita Vero: [00:35:19] Counting the days. What do you tell yourself when you know someone's going on and on and on? You feel your compassion and humanity slipping a bit. What brings you back?

Karen Hughes: [00:35:30] That we're all together in this. And we're all part of this crazy community.

Josh Slotnick: [00:35:35] That's a good.

Juanita Vero: [00:35:36] That's a good reminder. That's good. Yeah.

Karen Hughes: [00:35:38] You'd asked about a book, and this maybe is a little different way of saying that. So the book that I have been reading most recently, um, Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. She looks at historical events from a woman's perspective. Four winds is about the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. And so part of what was kind of interesting to me to think about is it's about this family, this woman and her family in Texas. She gets uprooted because of the Dust Bowl and moves to the LA area to Southern California.

Juanita Vero: [00:36:08] Sounds like East of Eden.

Karen Hughes: [00:36:09] Right? And and suddenly she is being treated like the worst outcast, right. And so.

Josh Slotnick: [00:36:17] Just.

Karen Hughes: [00:36:17] Kind of thinking about in this day and age as we're dealing with, it kind of feels like a multitude of disruptions. We had the pandemic, we've had homelessness, housing crises, we've had mental health crises, we've had kind of all these things that just kind of keep seeming to happen. And I kind of was thinking about, I'm like, oh, when will we will look back on this era? Like, and just a reminder that we're all in this together and that we do need to be kind of thinking about the humanity of it and, and the people. Um, and if someone's yelling at me, they're probably mad about something and it may not have anything to do with me or it might, but sometimes you just have to listen, right? And find that one thing that you can talk about.

Josh Slotnick: [00:36:58] That's super good. Karen.

Juanita Vero: [00:36:59] So good. Thank you so much.

Josh Slotnick: [00:37:00] For your expertise and heart that you bring to the county.

Karen Hughes: [00:37:03] Thank you.

Juanita Vero: [00:37:03] Missoula County is so very, very fortunate. Thanks for listening. Thanks all.

Josh Slotnick: [00:37:09] Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot if you would rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:37:17] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:37:23] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television, better known as MCAT, and our staff in the Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:37:35] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to Communications@missoulacounty.us.

Juanita Vero: [00:37:43] To find out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to missoula.com/updates.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:37:50] Thanks for listening.