The Teton County Board of County Commissioners heard a briefing Nov. 18 from long-range planning staff on four connected projects that could change how development is reviewed across the county: an update to the Natural Resources Overlay, a privately submitted Smith–Collins text amendment, a project to convert a longstanding fire-protection resolution into Land Development Regulations (LDRs), and a multi-year effort on water-quality LDR amendments.

The update to the Natural Resources Overlay — described by Ryan Hostetter of Joint Long Range Planning as a three-tier rewrite of the existing overlay — has completed the Planning Commission process and is scheduled for the commissioners' initial review the next day. "We expect to present a lot of information to you tomorrow on that topic," Hostetter said, and staff did not expect a final decision at that first hearing because they were still receiving public comments.

The Smith–Collins text amendment, submitted in May 2023 by Jared Smith and Bill Collins, remains in the middle of the public-review process after Planning Commission hearings. Hostetter said the county will treat that application as a workshop before the board on Jan. 27. He said major edits proposed by the applicants concern access roadways, retaining walls, grading, floor-area calculations (proposal to move from a gross-site-area to a base-site-area metric), concurrent review of grading and building permits, and additional procedural reviews such as alternatives analysis and a codified PRC review.

Chandler Windham, Teton County senior planner, said some provisions in the current fire-protection resolution are unclear about whether they apply to family-exempt land divisions and that moving the requirements into the LDRs is an opportunity to clarify scope. "Family exempt land divisions are still a type of subdivision, so it is kind of confusing right now the way it exists in a resolution," Windham said.

Several commissioners urged caution. Commissioner Epstein asked staff to avoid adding rules that make a family exemption functionally impossible. "If you tack on a bunch of more regulation on top of that, they essentially won't be able to exercise any of that because it'll be completely cost prohibitive," Epstein said. Hostetter and Windham said staff will work with the fire department and stakeholders to craft middle-ground standards.

Commissioner Newcomb pressed for a broader review of the incentives and tools that enable concentrated development — the county's floor-area-option and rural planned-residential-development tools — saying the board may be "missing the forest for the trees" if it proceeds only on piecemeal edits. Hostetter said the county could add those programmatic questions to a future work plan item or the next comprehensive-plan scoping process.

On water-quality LDR amendments, Hostetter said the county will rely on technical partners and the newly formed Water Advisory Board, which convenes in January. He noted Appendix D of the county's Water Quality Management Plan includes a long list of possible LDR changes, some of them technically and politically difficult — including recommendations related to agriculture and a proposal that would create 200-foot setbacks from waterways. "There is a difference of opinion in the science itself," Hostetter said, and staff recommended taking smaller, incremental edits first while developing a broader outreach and technical program for more complex items.

Hostetter flagged a land-use consequence of large setbacks: earlier analysis shows there are roughly 1,700 private parcels under 5 acres in the county; adopting a wide setback could substantially increase the number of variance requests on small parcels. "If you say you want a 200-foot setback, we need to tell people what that means from a land-use perspective," he said.

In public comment, Tom Frydeman, chair of the Hoback Junction Water and Sewer District, urged the commissioners to prioritize planning for the Hoback area as water and sewer infrastructure work accelerates there. Frydeman said state and local funding approvals are moving the Hoback project into design and that early, coordinated planning is needed to shape the kind of development that follows.

What happens next: staff will present the Natural Resources Overlay to the board beginning the Nov. 19 hearing; the Smith–Collins application will be scheduled as a Jan. 27 workshop; work to fold fire-protection standards into the LDRs will continue with stakeholder engagement; and water-quality amendments will proceed in stages with the Water Advisory Board and technical partners.

The briefing was discussion only; the board did not adopt ordinance changes or take final votes on any of the projects during the Nov. 18 meeting.