The Yellowstone County Board of Planning initiated this separation of the City and County Unified Zoning Regulations on June 13, 2017. This separation of the Unified Zoning Regulations will facilitate the future update, revisions and alignment of the regulations to goals and policies set by the City Council and the Board of County Commissioners. There are no additions, deletions, or modifications to the existing Unified Zoning Regulations except to the extent to remove combined references and modify sections that apply either only in the City or only in the County. The City and County Zoning Commissions held a special joint public hearing on July 17, 2016. The City Zoning Commission is forwarding a recommendation to approve the separation of the zoning regulations on a 3-0 vote.

City Council may:

• Approve the text amendment as recommended by the Zoning Commission;
• Deny the text amendment; or
• Withdraw the text amendment; or
• Delay action on the text amendment for up to 30 days.

There are no substantive changes to the zoning regulations adopted for implementation within the City Limits. There will be a financial cost to have the City's municipal codification service provider - Municode - update the the City's adopted code. The cost for this update will be paid in coordination with the City Clerk's Office and the Planning Division budget. Staff has contacted Municode for an estimate, but had not received detailed information on the cost at the time this memo was drafted.

The City and County agreed to unify the zoning code in 1993. The Yellowstone County Board of Planning initiated the project to unify the codes and over the course of several months, Planning staff worked with a small committee to create a unified code. It was completed at the end of 1997. Some significant amendments were included in this unification effort including revisions to landscaping requirements, requirements for special review approval of multi-family developments, elimination of some zoning districts and creation of new districts.

The City and County have initiated through the Yellowstone County Board of Planning a multi-year project to update and modernize the zoning codes to address the goals and guidelines adopted through Growth Policies, Neighborhood Plans and other land use policies. In order to facilitate this update, the City and County have also agreed to separate the zoning regulations. The separation - as opposed to the unification effort in 1993-1997, will not make any substantive changes to the regulations. Stylistic and grammatical changes are proposed to make the new documents readable and sensible when separated.

At the completion of the zoning code update project, the City and County will consider re-unification of all, or portions, of the zoning regulations. The codes will still be administered through the City-County Planning Division and apply to all land within the City and the surrounding zoning jurisdiction in the County.

The current zoning regulations adopted for the City date from May of 1972 – 45 years ago. The County adopted its zoning in November 1973. Over the past several decades, the codes have been amended, added to, and merged to create a unified zoning regulation. The
document now spans more than 450 pages and represents at least 1/3 of volume of the entire City Code. Over the decades, the policies and goals of the City and County have changed considerably but the essential tools the Council, the County Commission, and community use to implement new goals and policies have remained essentially un-changed. It is time to address revising the zoning code to reflect where Billings and Yellowstone County are now and where the community is going. Staff believes this entire code update process will take between 1.5 years and 2.5 years to be completed.

There are many challenges that residents, developers, boards and commissions, and staff encounter applying the current zoning code to Billings and the surrounding urbanizing area in 2017. These range from lot size, lot coverage, and setback requirements that have resulted in many variances for existing development in some of the most stable neighborhoods in Billings, to almost no way to address aesthetical and architectural elements of residential and commercial construction to support infill and new development that fits into existing neighborhoods. There is also a lack of consistency with signage regulations across County and City areas that may both be commercially developed. The code also has inconsistent landscaping requirements across commercial districts that leads to uneven landscaping in commercial areas, along major transportation corridors, and claims of unequal treatment of development in these various areas. The code has numerous residential districts that are very similar in unit and lot size allowances that could be consolidated, and also be made able to address areas like Lockwood that have water and sewer services available.

The 2016 Lockwood Growth Policy has goals, and guidelines on how the Lockwood area of the County wants and needs to grow over the next 20 years. Further, the County will be updating its 2008 Growth Policy for the remaining areas of the County starting this year and the City of Billings 2016 Growth Policy has goals and guidelines on how the City wants and needs to grow in the next few decades. The main tools communities use to implement growth and development goals and objectives are zoning, subdivision rules, and other land use development regulations. A revised zoning code would be a significant step for the County and City in these efforts. Changes to the code over the last 20 years have fractured this “unified” code so now it is difficult to determine what code does or does not apply inside or outside the City limits.

The County and City also have some areas where they have diverged in their approach to land use regulations and it may be time to separate portions of these codes again. This is not intended to create a disparity in the quality of new development but to recognize the
real differences in development challenges between the City and County. It is also not to say that there may be areas of code overlap that the City and County may establish as the revised codes are developed. The City Council has already expressed an interest in working more closely with the County in this effort, and others, going forward to ensure the overall urban area of Yellowstone County enjoys coordinated development and land use planning in the future.
 

The City and County Zoning Commissions held a special joint public hearing on July 17, 2017, to receive the staff report, public testimony and to make recommendations to the City Council and County Commissioners on the proposed code separation. The public hearing was held and the commissions received the staff report. There was no public testimony. The City and County Zoning Commission both voted to recommend approval of the code separation. The Board of County Commissioners will conduct its public hearing on Tuesday, August 15, and the City Council public hearing is scheduled for August 14. If both governing bodies approve the code separation, the separation will go into effect on September 27.

The code separation does not include any substantive amendments to the zoning regulations adopted for the City or the County. The code separation will facilitate the 2-year zoning code update project so amendments or changes to the adopted codes can be clear, concise and ensure alignment of these revision with adopted plans and policies of the City and County.

The attachment makes minor wording changes to the unified code and grammatical and stylistic changes to ensure the ordinance only refers to property within the City Limits. For example, many locations throughout the code refer to "resolution/ordinance" because the County adopts all changes by resolution and the City must adopt all changes by ordinance. There are over 300 places within the code where the word "resolution" must be deleted. The ordinance itself is over 300 pages long to ensure the exact changes are delineated for the company that provides codification services to the City. The ordinance also has sections where no changes to the code are needed. For example, the sign code at BMCC Section 27-700 has no reference or application to property outside the City Limits, so no changes are necessary to this section of the code, but the ordinance must identify this section as re-adopted in its entirety without changes. Similarly, there are no changes to the North or South Shiloh Corridor sections at 27-1400 or to the East Billings Urban Renewal District section at 27-1800.