Staff proposes the Planning Board recommend to the City Council and Board of County Commissioners' adoption of the amended City and County subdivision regulations.

The Planning staff, after consultation with other departments and divisions of the city and county, is bringing forward the proposed updated subdivision regulations for both the City of Billings and Yellowstone County.

The Planning Division has diligently worked on updating the subdivision regulations to incorporate recent state legislative amendments and to align them with new documents and policies within the city and county. In addition, staff is proposing general document updates, including electronic submission requirements.

During the past several months, staff has consulted with other divisions within the city and county. Those divisions include City Engineering, Public Works, City Fire Department, City Parks, Transportation, the Alternate Modes Coordinator and Zoning.

For county-related updates, we consulted with County Public Works, County Parks, fire departments providing fire service in the county, the Alternate Modes Coordinator and Zoning.

On February 13, 2024, staff made a presentation to developers and engineers for their input on the proposed subdivision update. That meeting was held in the Billings Library Community Room. Later in this report, their input is shown, highlighted in yellow.

The new subdivision regulations have three main drivers for the subdivision regulations update:
1. Changes required by State Statutes because of legislative changes/updates
2. Moving regulations from zoning to subdivision regulations for consistency and a single point of reference
3. Changes to the subdivision regulations requested by other City and County Departments.

See Attachments for a run-down of each section / chapter of the proposed modifications to the subdivision regulations.

As is noted, the development community is the most directly affected by the changes proposed to the regulations. There are benefits to the community overall as well to increase consistency of requirements, clarity and some long term development improvements for future subdivisions. However, the main focus by staff is to ensure the developers and firms that assist in development applications are aware of the changes and will operate under the new requirements in an informed and consistent manner.

The Planning Board may recommend

• Approval of the draft regulations, or
• Approval of the draft regulations with specific board approved amendments; or
• Recommend denial of the draft regulations. Given that some of the changes are State required legislative changes, it is important to make sure that those are recognized as different than local proposed amendments if proposed change are made. The legislative changes need to be included in the amendments to align with state law.

There will be no fiscal benefits on the Planning Division because of the Subdivision Regulations updates.