At Saturday’s Park County Commission candidate debate, candidate Duncan Bonine, also a planning and zoning commission member, said he had hoped to talk a bit more about the county’s land use planning and regulations process. After all, it’s certainly taken up a lot of his time in the last few years. 

On Monday an updated draft map and land use tables were released publicly at engageparkcounty.com. These will be available to peruse and comment on for most of the month, and act as a primer for those who will be attending next week’s public meetings across the county which are the latest opportunity for area residents to provide more input. 

Park County Planning Director Joy Hill said Tuesday that this release of a draft zoning map, use tables and some chapters of the full regulations document is an extra step, beyond what is legally required to approve new regulations. 

“We are trying to show people what we're doing, we are trying to get their input at every possible step,” she said Tuesday as she worked to ensure the rollout of the documents could be as smooth as possible. “So, this is extra. This is like a bonus round, you know. ‘Hey, we want to give you another chance.’ And the thing that we know is that the zoning maps and the use tables are top priority for the public.”

The second phase of regulations is the ultimate piece in a long line of work to update the county’s land use planning, which started more than four years ago with work on a new land use plan — which in itself was picking back up conversations that had taken place prior to Covid. 

Hill said it’s the biggest challenge she’s had in 14 years of land use planning for county governments, the last eight in Park County. 

A lot of that stems from the fact that while she said the groups that have worked on it have taken concerns into account and made substantial changes to the regulations — for instance, there is much less industrial zoned land around Powell than there was in the previous draft map, which had caused concerns  — in order to balance the groups who focus on private property rights and those who focus on conservation necessitates people not getting everything they want. 

“The board, everybody had a really tough time saying, 'well, where is it appropriate to put those [industrial and commercial zones],' and that's why we're calling those zones limited commercial and limited industrial,” Hill said. “We cannot promise that it's going to be appropriate for that.”

She said that ties into the fact that the county can talk to the cities and see where infrastructure may be extended to make for more appealing commercial and industrial businesses, but the county does not regulate land within city limits. The county then cannot guarantee that infrastructure for certain industrial and commercial uses, such as access to central water for fire prevention, will be available in some of these areas zoned industrial and commercial generally just outside city limits.

As Commissioner Lloyd Thiel noted in explaining his desire to run for a third term to stay on top of the planning and zoning process, while it'd be great if the new regulations are perfect from the get go, "it's a living document" and work to tweak regulations will likely continue long after it's approved.

As the draft regulations explain: “The purpose of these regulations is to protect, promote and enhance the public health, safety, morals, and general welfare in the unincorporated area of Park County; provide for planned and orderly development in the County in a manner consistent with constitutional rights of property owners; balance the needs of a changing population with legitimate environmental concerns; and help ensure that new developments pay a fair portion of the public costs associated with them. It is the intent of these standards and regulations to establish a balance between the legitimate rights of property owners and the protection of public welfare.”

That balance has been evident even amongst the groups who have spent the past months working to revise the initial draft and that has lead to the current map and tables. The Park County Planning and Zoning Commission and a group of professionals formed by the county commissioners called the Technical Advisory Group have led the charge on making tweaks and changes, and then more recently the county commissioners worked with P&Z members to finalize the new draft language. 

Bonine said at Saturday’s debate that the new regulations draft does more to preserve private property rights. Thiel on Tuesday said it’s certainly improved in some ways, but he’s still got some concerns about what is regulated. 

“It is free country, you should be able to live and make a living here without the cumbersome of overreach from the government, and I have not changed on that,” he said. “This still overreaches, in my opinion, in a lot of ways … but it's better in some ways.”

Hill said to find the balance means there’s no way to please everyone. Still, she said commissioners have listened, as large tracts of land currently zoned General Rural-Powell, which allows 1 acre lot size minimums, and had initially been put under a 20-acre lot size designation, have now largely been reverted to a General Rural 5 acre zone. 

And, as is currently the case, lot size averaging still allows smaller lot sizes as long as the overall subdivision size averages 5 acres. 

“That’s a tough pill to swallow if you go from a 1 acre minimum allowance to a 20 acre minimum allowance or 35 acre allowance,” Hill said. “The board is very sensitive to that, and they were very sensitive to that when they reviewed this current draft of the map. That that was one of the primary comments that was made when they were reviewing the map, is like, ‘OK, where are they now? Where are we taking them to?’ And they were definitely not ignoring those concerns.”

Hill said those concerned about what they are seeing in the new draft of regulations should comment in writing, whether in person or online, and if they have questions, she or her staff will walk them through the process.

Contact Park County Planning and Zoning at 307-754-8540 in Powell and 307-527-8540 in Cody.

Following the public comment meetings and the end of the online comment period June 21, Planning and Zoning members and commissioners will meet and prepare an adoption draft of the regulations after addressing any changes desired after the latest round of comments.

To comment, go to engageparkcounty.com. In person meeting times are as follows: 

1) Tuesday, June 9: 9 a.m.-1 p.m. at Cody Auditorium, 1240 Beck Ave, Cody

2) Tuesday, June 9: 5-8 p.m. at Homesteader Hall at the Park County Fairgrounds, 655 East Fifth St., Powell

3) Wednesday, June 10: 9 a.m.-noon at Clark Pioneer Recreation Center, 321 Rd. 1AB, Clark

4) Wednesday, June 10: 5-8 p.m. at Wapiti School Gym, 3167 North Fork Hwy, Cody

5) Thursday, June 11: 9 a.m.-noon at the Meeteetse Conservation District Office, 1906 State St., Meeteetse

6) Thursday, June 11: 5-8 p.m. at the South Fork Fire Hall, 3 Road 6NQ, Cody