Seeley Lake Community Council
SEELEY LAKE - At their June 13 meeting, the Seeley Lake Community Council reviewed Missoula County Community and Planning Services (CAPS) plans to raise land use fees and listened to a presentation from Trust Montana about their ideas to bring affordable housing to Seeley Lake.
CAPS assesses fees to applicants to cover the review of new construction and development applications related to subdivision, floodplain, zoning and more. Without these fees, local taxpayers would cover the cost.
According to Karen Hughes, the Assistant Director of Missoula County CAPS, current land use fees were set in 2011. Adjustments need to be made to account for inflation as well as zoning compliance fees to address new provisions in the County zoning code.
The Missoula County Commissioners are holding a public hearing at 2 p.m. on June 23 where adjustments can be made and the resolution can be adopted. If approved, the schedule would be effective July 1.
When asked how they decided the new amounts, Hughes said CAPS took a general approach of continuing to recover 50% of the costs of land use.
“When you think about a 50% cost recovery and fees that are really out of date, that means that developers are paying less of their fair share and the community’s paying more of their fair share,” Hughes said during the meeting. “So that’s kind of the situation we’re in is that taxpayers are paying more and more of the cost of development review. Updating our fees means that we have a chance to sustain the development review process, hopefully make it more streamlined, and have more equitable cost sharing between the development community and the public.”
Some examples of new fees include an increase of rezoning from $4,000 to a proposed $5,320. There are also new proposed fees added to the schedule, including a $1900 phased subdivision review.
For more information or to comment on the proposed increase, visit https://missoulacountyvoice.com/increase-to-land-use-fees. To see the proposed fee increases visit, https://www.seeleylake.com/home/customer_files/article_documents/landusefees.pdf
The Seeley Lake Community Council also listened to Trust Montana’s ideas to bring affordable housing to Seeley Lake.
Trust Montana is one of six Community Land Trusts in Montana. The CLT is a nonprofit organization that holds land on behalf of a place-based community while serving as the long term stewards for affordable housing, civic buildings and other community assets.
Lori Freeman, the general counsel at Trust Montana, presented information about the CLT’s role as a steward at the meeting and answered questions about how affordable housing options could be applied to more rural places in Montana.
Freeman explained that buying land with Trust Montana allows homeowners, businesses or farms to hold the deed to a house while leasing the land to the CLT. Freeman said they’ve already sold small street homes in Missoula and condominiums at the Spire in Red Lodge and hope to continue expanding.
While Freeman said Trust Montana’s main concern is in areas with high demand for work-force housing, she said Trust Montana hopes to also lease out land for small family farms.
“That’s a big goal of Trust Montana,” Freeman said during the meeting. “We actually have a farm that we’re working on because we’d like to have people who are really priced out of that market to be able to have something like a small family farm.”
For more information about Trust Montana, visit https://trustmontana.org
In other items:
• Jamie Jonkel, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Region 2 Bear Management Specialist, discussed bear activity in Seeley Lake and preventative measures that need to be taken during the summer. He offered to draft a hazard report for Seeley Lake this winter, to which the council was interested.
To access the recording of the meeting visit the “Seeley Lake Community Council” Facebook page.
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