Item #1: 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 Planning staff recommends approval of the amendments to separate the City and County zoning codes.

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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 Planning Division and apply to all land within the City and the surrounding zoning jurisdiction in the County.
 

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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 volume-wise at least 1/3 of the entire current 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, 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.

Planning staff recommends approval of the amendments to separate the City and County zoning codes.