County looks to have new land use plan by June
By Amy Robinson
Farmer Staff Writer
To continue on in their strategy of executing a new comprehensive plan
for McKenzie County’s future development, the county is taking the next
step forward by hosting a set of public meetings on Feb. 23 and 24.
“The comprehensive plan is the vision of the future of the county,” said
Jim Talbert, McKenzie County Planning and Zoning director. “The plan
includes goals and objectives for the future that relate to land usage,
transportation, infrastructure, housing, and economic development. Once
our comprehensive plan is approved, all zoning decisions are to be based
upon our comprehensive plan.”
The public meetings will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 23, at 6 p.m., in
Alexander at the City Hall, which is located at 112 Manning Avenue. And
the second meeting will be held on Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 6 p.m., in the
County Courthouse in Watford City, which is located at 201 5th Street
NW.
Talbert says that the county has been going through the existing
comprehensive plan for the past several months because what is currently
established in the plan is inadequate. He says they have been looking
at the existing conditions in the county as they are, and they went as
far as hiring a consulting firm out of Bismarck, SRF Consulting, who has
been helping the county in their mission to update and refine the
county’s comprehensive plan. Talbert says they are looking at areas that
aren’t up to par or ‘up to speed’ as the county would like to see them.
“SRF consultants have been helping us out in this process,” stated
Talbert. “They went throug h the entire county - parcel by parcel. They
located transmission pipelines, residential housing developments,
commercial developments, agriculture property, and existing
infrastructure. We needed to know what is all out there in our county.
And from their work, we were able to create an opportunities and
constraints map.”
Talbert says that after the rapid pace of 2014 and with the slowdown,
they’ve had a chance to go back and see what did and didn’t work, and
come up with a better plan to make it what it should be. Talbert states
that their comprehensive plan is a 10-year plan that will look at six to
seven different elements, which will help them to choose areas that
allow for growth, which has the proper infrastructure such as roads,
water, and sewer.
“The problem with the existing comprehensive plan is that planners come
in, look at the big scale map, and highlight the area they want,”
stated Talbert. “It’s backwards here and we’re trying to correct the
problem. We’ve come up with opportunities and strengths and are looking
at where the development needs to be. With the opportunities and
constraints map, we also had the public come and mark where they feel we
should have future development or places they felt we needed to stay
away from.”
Out of the first public workshops held at the end of January, Talbert
says patterns have developed. The citizens of McKenzie County have their
ideas, and combined with the opportunities and constraints map, the
county is hoping to come up with potential growth areas out of those
results.
“From the first two public workshops,” Talbert stated, “we learned of
the areas the public said we should definitely look at in consideration
of future development including the southwest part of Watford City, the
Alexander area along U.S. Highway 85 up to Highway 200, the Cartwright
area, the Keene area, the Johnson Corners area, the Grassy Butte area,
and along U.S. Highway 85 - in the Tri-Township area.”
Not only did the county learn what areas of the county citizens felt
would be ideal areas for future development, they also learned that
about 80 to 90 percent of the attendees surveyed said that new
development should be happening around existing cities and development.
And the county agreed.
“In the new plan, we are trying to concentrate on the growth in
identified areas where we are using the criteria of existing
infrastructure and surrounding established services,” stated Talbert.
“We want to stay in areas where we can maintain the roads better. If we
have to build roads everywhere, the financial bill just gets to be too
much. And with the limited resources we do have, we want to spread those
as far as we can.”
So for example, if a planner or developer comes into McKenzie County and
wants to build, they’ll have to first go to the comprehensive plan.
Talbert says the plan can be revised, but he wants to caution that
revising it can be difficult because there are always unknown
circumstances, such as pipelines that the county may not know are in the
ground in that specific area. Then, the planner or developer will have
to meet the zoning standards that will be in place, including the
standards for the specific type of development area, whether it be
agricultural area land, housing development land, or industrial area
land.
From the the comprehensive plan, the county knows that 99 percent of the
county is agricultural land, and the last one percent makes up
everything else. Talbert says approximately one-third of that one
percent is mining operation area, which includes scoria and gravel pits.
Another quarter to one-half of that one percent is industrial-use land.
And less that one-third of that one percent is residential development
area. Talbert adds that a fairly small portion is commercial area land.
“From the surveys we sent out and the feedback we received from the
first set of public workshops, the county has made a plan for all these
different areas, as a starting point,” says Talbert. “It’s a good
starting point to allow for discussion from the county’s citizens about
our future land use. We will have these various concepts up on display
at the next set of meetings and the public will be able to write their
thoughts up on the maps, both positive and negative. This plan is not
meant to be the final say. It’s a process - a good starting point. It’s
to present potential concepts for input.”
Following the next set of meetings toward the end of February, the
county will develop preferred alternatives and make revisions to the
comprehensive plan in March to take before the Planning and Zoning
Commission as well as the McKenzie County Commissioners to get approved.
Talbert hopes that by June, a full plan will be adopted for the county.