Albany County adopts wide‑ranging planning and zoning updates, including new mobile‑home and campground rules

Albany County commissioners on Wednesday approved a package of planning and zoning changes that county staff said update language, tighten safety and mapping requirements, and bring local code into closer alignment with state law.

David, a planning department staff member, told the board the revisions—part of a multi‑year effort with the county attorney and county engineer—focus on chapters covering development standards, road standards, fire and geological hazard mapping, and financial‑assurance procedures. "Over the past several years, with the help of the county attorney's office, we have been updating the public county planning and subdivision resolution," David said.

Key changes approved include moving standards for mobile‑home parks and campgrounds out of the subdivision code and into the zoning resolution (with new definitions and conditional‑use sections), requiring that hazardous fire and geologic hazard areas be shown on preliminary plats so reviewers can consider them during design, clarifying lot and block standards, and revising rules and language around partial and full releases of financial assurance.

Commissioners also approved an amendment to terminology and process for permits: the code will use the term "zoning certificate" in place of "land‑use permit," and will explicitly divide certificates into types applying to structures, land uses and conditional uses. David said the revisions include a proposed clarification that temporary structures left in one place for more than six months should require a permit.

Board members pressed staff on enforcement and the treatment of existing nonconforming parks. David said existing mobile‑home parks that predate the rules will remain nonconforming, but that the planning office plans to conduct informal annual inspections for nuisances and wastewater concerns even though the inspection process is not written into the regulations. "It's going to be more informal because it's not specifically in the regulations that we have to do that," David said. "But that's our plan going forward at this point."

The board adopted the staff recommendations and voted to approve the set of amendments as presented. Staff said the mountain subdivision chapter was removed because its standards largely overlapped with the regular standards and were unnecessarily restrictive for most applicants.

The approval clears the way for the county to use the revised code to review future subdivisions, conditional uses and zoning certificates; the county will still process variances in cases where smaller lots or other special circumstances exist.