How many of you live near a donut?
Are you familiar with them? It's where the city planning boards exert control over areas outside the city limits, and the residents of those areas cannot vote for the council that appoints the planning board and are not eligiable to serve on the planning board or council because they don't live in the city limits.
The one we have here is around Whitefish.
What a fiasco it's been/is. The lawyers love it though.....
Whenever somebody builds anything on along the city limits, on either side of the road, they must obtain both city & county approvals. I think that's pretty standard everywhere.
That donut concept sounds illegal, and certainly reeks of a good ole' boy networking scheme.
One thing that is bad around here is the city controls the water service for approximately 50K people. But the city population is around 30K, everybody else is in the county. They (city) just raised the rates by about 10% for everybody (goes up another 10% next year), based on city council approval, but the county residents/supervisors had no say in the matter.
Same thing for sewer, only not as many county residents on sewer. That is even worse, as the EPA mandated major improvements to both wastewater treatment facilities.
This is 3 miles..posting from my droid so i'm keeping this brief. More later.
Sounds very odd. I don't know what MT laws are for incorporation of cities & municipal structure, and how far their arm of influence reaches, aka planning & zoning, utilities, drainage, etc, but I'm sure there is a statute somewhere to authorize it. It just seems 3 miles is a long way.
Are they trying to annex these areas into the city, or perhaps that the city wants to annex it? Extension of utilities & infrastructure is another possibility.
That could almost make sense, thus the developers want to assure accordance with city standards and are seeking their approvals. Sounds like a stretch IMO, but who knows. One thing for sure - its all about money and local power struggles. '
good luck
California Cities have a sphere of influence outside their limits but I don't know exactly what that means as a practical matter. I don't think it means 100% control; just a say in what happens.
RF-
Here's a link to today's Guelph Mercury on a similar topic:
It's a wonder that North America and the World was so successful without "Planners" until post WW II !
Yes, I'm a Professional Surveyor/Planner/Drainage Engineer.
I get out there to examine the Planning X/Y/Z/4THE Dimension, that being; "Will it fit for the future?"
Few "Pure" Planners ever do get off their donuts to see the real World sufficiently to think beyond the bow wave !
Cheers,
Derek
Planning Donuts. City of Guelph Operational Review
Izzit like this in your berg ?
http://www.ward4news.ca/uploads/Draft_Operational_Review_.pdf
Cheers
Derek
> It's a wonder that North America and the World was so successful without "Planners" until post WW II !
Close, but no cigar.
Harvard started their Masters program in Urban Planning in 1923. The Royal Town Planning Institute in the UK was founded in 1914
I think the most famous of the Masters of Urban Planning would be Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
In my rural county they call them buffer zones. The county is in control but tries to zone it as the cities want. Then there is a form that a developer in the buffer takes to the city for input when development occurs in the buffer (utilities, annexation?, etc). It's been sort of a problem as some of the cities don't want to cooperate with the county. We've got a ways to go to smooth things out but we are working on it. I know all about it. I'm on the county P&Z Comm. Its a good idea but hard to implement. I can see the county cooperating with the cities wishes but don't understand how the cities could be put in control of area outside of their political boundaries.
I wanted to gets some things fixed so I needed to get a seat at the table. Took me two years of going to meetings as a citizen, when a position came open it was there for me.
Very familiar with the 3-mile zone. Many of those living within that area are there to be as close to town as possible without paying the higher taxes. They want the services. They just don't want to pay for them. Here, most of our counties are not zoned in the rural area. So long as you don't try to build in a flood zone you can do pretty much do what you want. Have a hundred people do this is a small area then have them apply to be annexed into the city for some reason. The city then gets stuck with this hodgepodge of existing structures and support systems that in no way conform to the policies that apply to those already inside the city limits.
