Growth & Land Use

VICTOR — Victor's city council accepted the two AJ Trail easements that provide legal access to public land above town Wednesday night and approved a maintenance agreement with Mountain Bike the Tetons and Teton Valley Trails and Pathways, each by a 2-1 vote. The easements grant hikers and mountain bikers a route from Cemetery Road onto Bureau of Land Management ground, resolving a corner-crossing problem that has existed since volunteers built the AJ Linnell Trail in 2015.

DRIGGS — Teton County's planning and zoning commission deadlocked 3-3 on Smash Recreation Center's appeal Tuesday, then voted 6-0 to send the decision to the county commissioners without ruling on it.

VICTOR — Victor's city council is now expected to vote Wednesday on the AJ Trail easements, which would open a legal route from Cemetery Road onto the public land above town. According to the city, plans have changed since last week and it will now have enough council members to decide the item.

DRIGGS — Teton County commissioners approved a special use permit for the Spud Drive-In on September 14, and the Driggs City Council voted the next night to extend the sewer will-serve letter. Together, the two votes were the last the project needed.

VICTOR — The AJ Trail easements are on Victor's city council agenda Sept. 23, with the Bureau of Land Management and Idaho Fish and Game there to discuss them. The two easements would give hikers and mountain bikers a legal route from Cemetery Road, via the AJ Linnell Trail, onto the public land above town. Today, stepping from the trail onto that land is trespassing.

DRIGGS — The Teton County Planning and Zoning Commission voted unanimously Tuesday night to recommend a family land division exemption that would let longtime landowners split off as many as four parcels for close family without going through subdivision review.

DRIGGS — The Driggs City Council approved the 180-unit Corona Valley subdivision on Sept. 1, voting 2-1 with one seat vacant. The council did not resolve three defects in the application that its planning director had conceded during the hearing.

DRIGGS — Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative has filed a second application for the Midway Substation, returning to the parcel Teton County commissioners denied in March, with the wildlife study it concluded its first application had lacked. The county's Planning and Zoning Commission is set to hear it September 8.

VICTOR — When the city council approved annexation for Birch Crossing in May, it attached 14 conditions for a proposed 158-unit development, but the developer abandoned the project over zoning. The property's three owners are left asking the council to strike the conditions. The council voted 3-0 on Aug. 26 to reopen the approval and send it to the Planning and Zoning Commission and a new public hearing.

DRIGGS — Teton County commissioners voted 3-0 August 24 to deny the Corner Fox industrial redesignation, reversing the approval they granted the same application six weeks earlier.

DRIGGS — No county or city body has voted against rebuilding the Spud Drive-In. Four years after a windstorm took down its screen, the theater still can't reopen. The rebuild is stalled by a sewer commitment that expired before its owners could use it.

DRIGGS — Teton County commissioners voted 2-1 on July 27 to reopen their approval of a Highway 33 industrial redesignation, sending the Corner Fox comprehensive plan amendment back for a new public hearing two weeks after they granted it.

DRIGGS — Four cross-state service models came before the two Teton counties at their July 23 joint workshop: a regional planning agency at Lake Tahoe, a voluntary visitor fee in Whitefish, Montana, a bi-state commission at Bear Lake formed in 1973, and a cross-valley forum the counties built themselves and let go quiet. Commissioners took none of the four as a template. The one cross-line arrangement that already works, the fire and EMS deal between the two counties, was not among them.

DRIGGS — A commissioner wants the two Teton counties to stop pressing their Grand Targhee expansion objections through the federal review process and start working them out directly with the resort. Len Carlman, a Teton County, Wyoming commissioner, floated the idea at the two counties' July 23 joint workshop, and the two board chairs signaled agreement to bring the valley's cities into the effort. No vote was taken.

DRIGGS — Teton County, Idaho can no longer require a license, permit, or inspection to run a short-term rental, after its own legislature stripped those housing tools this year. The one housing lever officials found workable originates across the state line in Wyoming. At the two Teton counties' July 23 joint workshop, Idaho Commissioner Ron James estimated 685 to 700 short-term rentals in the county, with second homes converting into VRBOs that "take away housing from our citizens."

DRIGGS — Seven Teton County, Idaho departments and agencies priced Grand Targhee's growth costs for the July 23 joint workshop. In all but two of them, the county absorbs the growth costs with no way to bill for them. The resort and the visitors who generate the demand both sit outside the Idaho fee base that pays for the services they use.

DRIGGS — The nearest-term way to make Grand Targhee's Wyoming-side growth pay for the costs it pushes onto Idaho is a single Wyoming penny of sales tax, and Idaho controls none of it. Commissioners from both Teton counties kept returning to that penny at a July 23 joint workshop. A three-member Wyoming board could switch it on by a vote of its own, with no public election and no act of either legislature.

Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative is backing a new natural gas plant in northern Idaho, joining a wholesale-power project it says is meant to keep electricity reliable and affordable as the Northwest's hydropower runs short.

DRIGGS — When commissioners from the two Teton counties sat down for their first full-day joint workshop on July 23, they spent seven hours sorting ideas for how Teton County, Idaho, might pay for the growth arriving on its side of the mountains. By the time the day's facilitators had ranked those ideas by effort and impact, the fixes that rose to the top were the ones neither county could build alone.

DRIGGS — Teton County's housing authority broke ground last week on 175 Front Street, a 26-home workforce project. Executive Director Jerod Pfeffer floated a real estate transfer tax to fund the next one, telling county commissioners on July 13 that a voter-approved levy could give workforce housing the recurring local funding source the valley lacks. Pfeffer had raised the idea with state Senator Mark Harris, he told commissioners.

DRIGGS — Teton County commissioners voted unanimously Monday to file the county's Grand Targhee objection with the U.S. Forest Service, meeting the federal deadline on the day it fell.

DRIGGS — Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative wants to build its Midway Substation on residential land it already owns, the same site Teton County denied three months ago, and told county commissioners on June 23 that it passed on an industrial parcel nearby over a price it called too high.

DRIGGS — Teton County commissioners voted 2-1 on July 13 to redesignate the 14.25-acre Corner Fox parcels along Highway 33 for industrial use, overriding a denial recommendation from the county's own Planning and Zoning Commission and objections from the City of Driggs.

Teton County is preparing a formal objection to the U.S. Forest Service's approval of the Grand Targhee Resort expansion. The resort sits on the Wyoming side of the state line, while the workers who staff it live in Idaho and strain its housing and services. Roughly 65% of the tax revenue the resort generates accrues to Wyoming, the county's draft objection states, and Idaho sales tax is pooled in Boise and returned to counties by formula, so a busier Targhee does little to change what Teton County collects. The Forest Service, the county contends, counted the project's benefits and dismissed the local costs as "outside the scope" of its decision.

ZOOM — More than 20 officials on a June 10 planning call converged on how to scope the interstate workshop the two Teton Counties are co-funding. They treat the U.S. Forest Service's May 28 draft Record of Decision on Grand Targhee Resort's expansion as the workshop's catalyst, not its subject, and sort regional responsibility across four axes: federal, state, county and municipal, and the resort itself.

VICTOR — The Victor City Council will decide Wednesday whether to reconsider its April 8 denial of the Market Street rezone, after the property owner's attorney filed a May 6 letter arguing that the council's written Order denies an application its Conclusions of Law say meets every applicable Victor Municipal Code standard.

VICTOR — The Victor City Council voted 2-1 on May 27 to annex the Birch Crossing parcel, a 13.38-acre county island east of downtown, and zone it for single-family houses, closing off the 158-unit workforce-apartment project D&B Partners, LLC had spent three months trying to build there.

ALTA — The Caribou-Targhee National Forest signed a draft Record of Decision (ROD) on May 28 approving a 694-acre Grand Targhee expansion, extending the resort's special-use permit boundary. The agency opened parallel 45- and 60-day objection windows on May 29, when the Idaho Falls Post Register published the legal notice.

DRIGGS — Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative withdrew its reconsideration of the denied Midway Substation special use permit on May 27, citing a wildlife study that was missing from its original application. The county added the wildlife requirement to its Land Development Code in 2024, but the requirement is not explicit on the permit application form.

DRIGGS — Teton County commissioners tabled their vote Tuesday on the Centennial Estates settlement, a proposed agreement that would approve a 14-lot subdivision near South 2000 East, which the county denied in 2023. Chairman Brad Wolfe said he had "a lot more questions now than I did before the public hearing," and the board sent the matter to executive session with its attorneys rather than vote.

DRIGGS — Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative has asked Teton County to reconsider its denial of the Midway Substation, setting a June 8 hearing on a project the county commissioners rejected 2-1 in March. Update, May 29: Fall River has withdrawn its request for reconsideration.

DRIGGS — Teton County commissioners voted 3-0 on Monday to deny the Sweetwater reconsideration petition on standing grounds, affirming the March 9 approval of the Sweetwater Subdivision Phase 1 preliminary plat amendment.

DRIGGS — Advocates for a Teton Valley YMCA presented an exploratory discussion to the Teton 401 school board on April 13, asking trustees to consider whether about 18 acres of district-owned land along Ski Hill Road, near Teton High School, Teton Middle School, and Driggs Elementary, might host a future YMCA campus. The item carried no motion or vote.

DRIGGS — Teton County commissioners on Monday tabled the Sweetwater reconsideration petition to May 11, holding off on a ruling until they receive further legal counsel on whether the 12 people who filed it qualify to be heard. The petition challenges the board's March 9 approval of an expansion of the Sweetwater Subdivision from 18 to 44 lots on the parcel adjacent to the Driggs-Reed Memorial Airport.

DRIGGS — Teton County commissioners voted 3-0 Monday to adopt Ordinance No. 2026-04-27, creating a "Drive-In Theater" land use category in the county's Land Development Code (LDC) and giving the long-stalled rebuild of the Spud Drive-In Theatre a clear regulatory path forward.

The Birch Crossing zoning decision landed on April 16 when the Victor Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval of the annexation but assigned RS-7 single-family to all 13.38 acres, closing off the 172-unit rental project D&B Partners LLC had scaled down and resubmitted over the previous month. The recommendation now goes to City Council, which has final authority on both the annexation and the initial zoning.

VICTOR - The Victor City Council voted 3-0 on April 8 to deny the Market Street rezone, a proposed mixed-use rental development on 7.4 acres between Highway 33 and Grand Teton Brewing, overriding a staff recommendation and Planning and Zoning Commission approval. Councilmembers cited unresolved questions about wastewater infrastructure and a comprehensive plan they say needs updating before the city approves more density.

DRIGGS — Idaho spends $51 per resident on state and federal housing programs, compared with $107 in Montana, $217 in Wyoming, and $1,150 in Colorado, Teton Valley Housing executive director Jarod Pfeffer told the Driggs City Council on Tuesday.

VICTOR — The Planning and Zoning Commission rejected the proposed density for Birch Crossing, a 172-unit rental housing development on 10 acres near Birch Street and Baseline Road, at the March 19 hearing. Commissioners voted unanimously to continue the application and directed the developer to return with lower-density zoning, a requirement that would force a redesign from apartments to duplexes.

HB 583 rewrites Idaho Code § 67-6539 to limit the authority of cities and counties to regulate short-term rentals. The bill prohibits local governments from requiring licenses, permits, fees, inspections, or registrations to operate an STR, while preserving basic fire-safety provisions and existing tax collection authority. It passed the Idaho Senate 23-12 on March 10. Gov. Little signed it March 16, and it takes effect July 1, 2026. The legislature tried twice before, with failed measures in 2024 and 2025, to settle the tension between local regulation and property-owner rights in Idaho's growing STR market.

DRIGGS, Idaho — The Teton Creek Resort settlement approved Monday will cost Teton County $3 million. The county faced a $19 million judgment. The current Board of County Commissioners negotiated it down.

DRIGGS — The Teton County Board of County Commissioners voted 2-1 on Monday to deny Fall River Electric Cooperative's application for a special use permit to build the Midway Substation, a new electrical substation between Driggs and Victor. The cooperative argued the valley's growth rate, roughly 2.3 percent per year, requires new infrastructure to prevent outages. The commission disagreed.

DRIGGS — The Corona Valley subdivision, a proposed 180-unit residential development, is moving through the Driggs planning process, with the development site located directly east of Teton High School.

ALTA — The U.S. Forest Service has delayed the release of the Final Environmental Impact Statement for Grand Targhee Resort's proposed expansion, pushing the timeline back by four months.