News
Progress on the Land Development Code - February 10, 2022
Updating the Teton County Land Development Code (LDC) is key to ensuring maintaining the character of Teton Valley. Our current LDC is 40 years old, conflicted and heavily amended. Revising it takes patience, and a lot of it. The planning consultant hired by Teton County in 2019 to write the new draft code originally planned on the project taking 18 months. We are now entering the fourth year of the project!
Planning & Zoning Commissioners (P&Z) past and present, planning staff and professional consultants have worked hard to produce a fair, clean, new draft code. They have incorporated about 85% of the original code, adding indexing, chapters and definitions to make the code easier to understand and to find any specific land use issue. But, to comply with our adopted Comprehensive Plan, all land use zones and subdivision requirements have been revised. This includes developing a new zoning map, creating new zoning definitions to match the Comp Plan’s character zones, determining appropriate densities for future land divisions within each zone, and settling on suitable land uses throughout the county that support the Comp Plan.
The P&Z has recently passed the LDC draft document on to the Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) along with 19 pages of notes and specific recommendations for the draft. Now it is time for your elected officials to roll up their sleeves and get to work to complete the changes needed to match the broad needs of the valley and its citizens more closely, while also considering the concerns voiced in past public hearings and letters. The BoCC will then bring the code back before the public for final review and a final public hearing. This is all good news! The county has never made it to this stage before and earlier attempts that failed date back many years.
The Commissioners hope to have this process finalized by early summer. When we reach the point in the spring where the BoCC requests public participation, PLEASE GET INVOLVED! Your ideas and opinions matter and your voices absolutely will be heard. In many ways this draft represents a broad coalition of efforts by individuals from both sides. We as a community need to continue to work together to forge a safe, prosperous, and thoughtful future for all our citizens.
We need to replace our 40-year-old LDC with a code that will help us successfully navigate the challenges of the present and the decades ahead. We need to finish what we started. For more information, please contact the Board of County Commissioners at 208-354-8775. The draft LDC can be reviewed at the following location:
TETON COUNTY LAND DEVELOPMENT CODE (tetoncountyidaho.gov)
Updating the Teton County Land Development Code (LDC) is key to ensuring maintaining the character of Teton Valley. Our current LDC is 40 years old, conflicted and heavily amended. Revising it takes patience, and a lot of it. The planning consultant hired by Teton County in 2019 to write the new draft code originally planned on the project taking 18 months. We are now entering the fourth year of the project!
Planning & Zoning Commissioners (P&Z) past and present, planning staff and professional consultants have worked hard to produce a fair, clean, new draft code. They have incorporated about 85% of the original code, adding indexing, chapters and definitions to make the code easier to understand and to find any specific land use issue. But, to comply with our adopted Comprehensive Plan, all land use zones and subdivision requirements have been revised. This includes developing a new zoning map, creating new zoning definitions to match the Comp Plan’s character zones, determining appropriate densities for future land divisions within each zone, and settling on suitable land uses throughout the county that support the Comp Plan.
The P&Z has recently passed the LDC draft document on to the Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) along with 19 pages of notes and specific recommendations for the draft. Now it is time for your elected officials to roll up their sleeves and get to work to complete the changes needed to match the broad needs of the valley and its citizens more closely, while also considering the concerns voiced in past public hearings and letters. The BoCC will then bring the code back before the public for final review and a final public hearing. This is all good news! The county has never made it to this stage before and earlier attempts that failed date back many years.
The Commissioners hope to have this process finalized by early summer. When we reach the point in the spring where the BoCC requests public participation, PLEASE GET INVOLVED! Your ideas and opinions matter and your voices absolutely will be heard. In many ways this draft represents a broad coalition of efforts by individuals from both sides. We as a community need to continue to work together to forge a safe, prosperous, and thoughtful future for all our citizens.
We need to replace our 40-year-old LDC with a code that will help us successfully navigate the challenges of the present and the decades ahead. We need to finish what we started. For more information, please contact the Board of County Commissioners at 208-354-8775. The draft LDC can be reviewed at the following location:
TETON COUNTY LAND DEVELOPMENT CODE (tetoncountyidaho.gov)