Centennial Estates Settlement Tabled

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.

The board's choice entails litigation costs on both sides. Approving the settlement triggers a contested motion to dismiss from intervenor Carl P. Jordan, whose counsel has threatened a separate injunction action against the county if the agreement is executed. Denying it leaves the underlying judicial review petition active, and a new fact now strengthens it: the county's attorney told commissioners that the Sorensen Creek Homeowners Association has granted developer Aaron Powers permission to build the road that the 2023 denial found he lacked.

The HOA's approval answers whether Powers may cross the 60-foot strip. It does not answer a question Commissioner Dan Powers, no relation to the applicant, raised from the dais: whether South 2000 East itself, the county road the strip connects to, meets Title 9's road-standards requirement. That question appeared in none of the written materials, and the board did not resolve it on Tuesday.

How the case got here

Powers bought two adjoining parcels near South 2000 East in 2020: Lot 1 of the Sorensen Creek Subdivision and a landlocked 68-acre parcel to the west, which he planned to subdivide into the fourteen lots of Centennial Estates. The western parcel had no public road access. It had been reached only by a two-track dirt path across Lot 1, so developing it meant building a road there to the public road. When Powers asked the Sorensen Creek HOA board for permission to build that road, he was told no.

Powers turned to the county. He applied for a plat amendment and boundary-line adjustment that would shift a 60-foot strip along the southern edge of Lot 1 into the western parcel, giving the future subdivision its own frontage on South 2000 East. Jordan opposed the application; after the county granted it in 2021, the HOA asked the county to reconsider, arguing the subdivision's covenants prohibited the road; the county declined. Powers signed the amended plat in March 2022, recorded it that April, sold the diminished Lot 1, and filed his final-plat application for Centennial Estates in November 2022.

In late 2022, Jordan, a Sorensen Creek homeowner and, at the time, a member of the HOA board, sued Powers in district court (Jordan v. Powers, CV41-22-0167), arguing the subdivision's covenants, conditions, and restrictions continued to encumber the 60-foot strip notwithstanding the boundary-line adjustment. The district court agreed in a June 5, 2023, summary judgment for Jordan: the strip remained subject to Sorensen Creek CC&Rs; Powers needed HOA approval to construct a road across it; a temporary restraining order was issued.

Three weeks later, on June 26, 2023, the Board of County Commissioners denied Powers' final-plat application. The denial, signed by then-chair Cindy Riegel and joined by Bob Heneage and Michael Whitfield (none of whom are on the current board), cited a single ground: lack of legal access under Teton County Code Title 9, § 9-4-1(J). The findings rested on the district court's ruling in CV41-22-0167. Powers did not attend the June 26 hearing; he filed a petition for judicial review (CV26-23-0079) shortly after. Jordan intervened in November 2023, and the court modified the caption to CV26-23-0079 / CV41-23-0199.

The Idaho Supreme Court partially reversed the district court in August 2025. It vacated the trial court's "prohibited lot split" theory and its categorical holding that CC&Rs barred roads in the subdivision, and dissolved the permanent injunction and attorney-fee award. The justices preserved the central holding: the CC&Rs continued to apply to the 60-foot strip, and Powers needed approval from the Sorensen Creek HOA to construct the road.

In February 2026, the HOA granted Powers that approval, county counsel told commissioners. That is the factual change on which the settlement now turns. The HOA board that once told Powers he could not build the road has now allowed it. Jordan, who was a member of that board when he first sued in 2022 but no longer sits on it, continues the challenge as an individual intervenor.

What the settlement does

Under the Release and Settlement Agreement, before the commissioners on Tuesday, the chair signs the Centennial Estates final plat upon execution of the agreement. Powers releases all claims against the county, including any Idaho Code § 67-8003 regulatory-takings demand and any damages from the delay. He receives a one-year extension on the standard three-year vesting clock. That matters because expiration would require refiling under the post-2024 Teton County Land Development Code and the December 2024 Big Game Migration Corridor overlay, both of which postdate his original application.

The plat cannot be recorded until certain conditions are met. Powers and the board discussed an amendment to the original § 3.5, which had tied recording to a court Judgment of Dismissal in the judicial review case; the amended text would condition recording on the installation and county acceptance of the required improvements, and on payment of property taxes in full. The county did not include the amended language in the meeting packet, but it was read aloud at the hearing.

Sam Angell, an attorney representing the county, told commissioners that Title 9, the subdivision code in force when Powers applied in November 2022, governs the application, and that the petition for judicial review tolled the procedural timeline at the moment of denial. The post-2024 Land Development Code, Angell said, "does not apply" because the application is vested under Title 9.

What the objectors said

Jordan's counsel, Abigail Germaine of Elam & Burke in Boise, opposed the Centennial Estates settlement in a seven-page written objection filed May 20 and in a Zoom call-in to Tuesday's hearing. Germaine argued that the 2023 BOCC "contemplated this exact scenario" because its written decision stated that Powers could submit a new application once "access issues have been resolved." The proper remedy, on Germaine's view, is a fresh application under the current code, not a settlement that reaches back to 2023 and treats the denial as a county error.

The settlement's recital that Powers "had fee simple title and legal access" in 2023 is "patently false," Germaine told commissioners. He had fee simple title to the 60-foot strip, she said, but the operative legal access, the right to use the strip as a road, did not exist until the HOA granted permission in February. The Idaho Supreme Court itself had affirmed, she said, that access to the property remained subject to the HOA.

Germaine also argued that the settlement cannot dispose of the underlying judicial-review case without Jordan's signature. Under Idaho Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(A)(ii), a voluntary stipulation of dismissal requires the signature of "all parties who have appeared." Jordan, a court-recognized intervenor since November 2023, is such a party. Should the board execute the settlement, Germaine wrote, Jordan would "be forced to seek immediate injunctive relief from the court, as well as all other remedies, damages, and fees."

Jordan also called in and confirmed Germaine's position on the record. The commissioners who denied the plat in 2023, he said, "did not make an error." He objected to the one-year vesting extension on a three-year-old application, and he told the board he does not agree to the mediation that produced the settlement.

Powers' counsel asks for a decision

Kathy Spitzer, representing Aaron Powers, told commissioners the application had received unanimous approval at the concept and preliminary-plat stages and at the Planning and Zoning Commission level before the 2023 final-plat denial. Jordan, she said, had used the district-court suit to block legal access; the judicial-review case has stayed the application's timelines ever since. The settlement, in her framing, was "a very fair resolution" that "saves the county a lot of time and money." She asked the board to consult counsel in executive session and reach a decision rather than keep Powers waiting.

Powers approached the podium briefly after Spitzer concluded. "We've worked hard to meet all your code," he said. "I spent a lot of money with attorneys, with your attorneys. Certainly, I've lost a lot of money in this process."

The board took no public action. Commissioners sent the settlement to executive session with their attorneys and tabled the vote, saying they would try to reconvene later in the week. The board's next regular meeting falls on June 8. Public comment is closed; reopening it on a revised settlement would require a newly noticed hearing.

Two paths, both with cost

If commissioners approve the settlement when the matter returns to the board, Powers' counsel will file a Stipulation for Dismissal, which Jordan has now publicly committed to refuse. Powers' path becomes a contested motion to dismiss the judicial-review case under Idaho Appellate Rule 33, briefed by Spitzer and the county, opposed by Germaine on Jordan's behalf, and decided on the district court's timeline rather than the parties'. Germaine has separately threatened to file for "immediate injunctive relief" against the county if the agreement is executed.

If commissioners deny the settlement, the petition for judicial review returns to its existing posture, but with a record that has materially shifted in Powers' favor since 2023. The Idaho Supreme Court has vacated the trial-court holdings that the 2023 denial cited. The commissioners' 2023 decision had treated HOA approval as the path back: Powers, it said, could reapply "once access issues have been resolved." That approval has now been granted. The application's vesting clock has been paused throughout the litigation, locking Title 9 to the case in the county's view. And Powers can argue what the settlement's recital already says: he had legal access in 2023 in the form of fee simple title to the 60-foot strip, and what was missing was not legal access but HOA permission to construct a road on it. That distinction is one the courts have spent three years working through. The Idaho Supreme Court resolved the doctrinal piece in August 2025 by holding that the CC&Rs continue to encumber the strip notwithstanding the boundary-line adjustment. The HOA resolved the practical piece in February by granting permission. On Powers' view, the 2023 commissioners may have denied on the wrong grounds, and three years of court and HOA proceedings have brought the legal framework into alignment with what was always true on the title record.

Neither path makes the dispute disappear. Approve, and Jordan carries his objection into a contested dismissal and a threatened injunction. Reject, and Powers carries a strengthened case back to the judge. The Centennial Estates settlement the commissioners tabled Tuesday was the county's attempt to step out of a fight it has not found a way to leave.

Centennial Estates Settlement Tabled as Teton County Weighs Litigation on Both Sides

How the case got here

What the settlement does

What the objectors said

Powers' counsel asks for a decision

Two paths, both with cost

Sources