Driggs Approves 180-Unit Corona Valley

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.

Planning and Building Director Jade Krueger agreed on the record that the application lacked a preliminary plat for the phase the council was being asked to approve. "It does appear that a plat just for Phase 1 is missing detail," she said. She agreed the plat carried no owner's certificate: "That should be included." And she told the council that Sarah Johnston, the member who raised both points, "was correct that the application requirements in the LDC are different" from the state statute the city's approval criteria cite.

The owner's certificate "will happen on the final plat," Krueger said, "because that's what is going to be recorded." Compliance with the city's driveway and parking limits "would be at the time of building permit." The missing Phase 1 plat was something the council could "ask to see in another review." She advised the council not to rely on those two components "for a motion of approval or denial."

Johnston also told the council the traffic impact study in the packet was "riddled with irregularities," and that such a study "should be current. It should name and represent this development." Krueger said the city's code sets no standard at all. "There's no requirement for when it's expired, when it's still valid," she said. "We're relying on best practices and our third-party consultants to really do those reviews for us. So I can't comment on any irregularities."

The only traffic study in the packet built on field counts dates from September 2022. It analyzed five proposed developments, one of them Rivers West, the 166-lot subdivision the council denied on this same parcel in April 2022. Corona Valley did not exist yet. Keller Associates re-ran the figures for the city in April 2026, but that work was a proportionate-share cost allocation built on the city's 2025 transportation master plan model.

Earlier in the evening, while Johnston questioned staff about the subdivider and owner information missing from the plat, Mayor August Christensen cut in. "No, we're just doing questions right now," she said, and called a three-minute break. "Doug and Sam, can I speak with you, please?" she asked, naming City Administrator Doug Self and City Attorney Sam Angell. On resuming, Christensen thanked Johnston for her "detailed questions" and told her to "move on to any substantial questions focused on the application before us." The record does not say what the three discussed.

"This is not the phase for it," Christensen told Johnston during deliberation. When Johnston said she believed it was, Christensen answered: "You can think it is, but it's not part of the application and then what was required in this application."

Johnston moved to deny the plat on five of the six approval criteria. Most of what she had raised, she said, was "very easily fixed with a tabling and additional information, with the exception of criteria number 5." "I feel like the traffic situation is a fatal flaw of this development," she said. "The burden of proof is on the developer to prove otherwise. And repeatedly, they've been asked for an updated traffic impact study ... and that has not been provided."

Miles Knowles seconded her motion. Twenty-nine minutes later, he told the council the second had been a formality. "We just need to make a second in order to continue the council discussion per Robert's Rules," he said. "But as it stands now, I don't see myself supporting this motion."

The council debated Johnston's motion for 52 minutes. It did not come to a vote, and Johnston did not withdraw it.

Opponents had pressed all evening on the code's description of the RS-7 district as "primarily intended to accommodate single-family detached houses." Asked whether his reading of the word had changed, Angell told the council the same phrase opens two other residential districts. Each then lists the building types allowed, including duplexes. A court would "apply the more specific provisions in that code section and allow duplexes because you specifically call them out for use," he said, and added: "If we want to restrict greater density in RS-7, I think we need to be more specific in how we phrase it."

Angell also told the council that Idaho Code 67-6519 requires a denial to state "the actions, if any, the applicant could take to obtain approval." Asked what those actions would be, Johnston said: "I don't know if someone can write that traffic study or not."

The staff report had offered three motions. One approved the plat, one denied it, and one tabled it "for up to twelve (12) months from this meeting date to receive the following updated materials." The council had used that third form four weeks earlier. On Aug. 4 it tabled Corona Valley to Sept. 1 and asked the applicant for three things, among them "updated improvement plans that are stamped and fully accepted by Public Works" and "more information on satisfactory mitigation measures." On Sept. 1 the council did not use it.

Near the end of the debate, Jason Popilsky put the question to Public Works Director Jay Mazalewski: "Is the city capable of providing service with this development?" "Based on the traffic impact study, the mitigations, and our transportation master plan, yeah, the network is designed to handle the transportation of the traffic for development in this area," Mazalewski said. Forty seconds later, Knowles moved to approve.

He said he had "denied my fair share of applications here on council, all on very legally defensible grounds," and did not see "any legally defensible criteria in which to deny this approval." Popilsky asked him to add staff's recommended conditions, and Knowles amended his motion to carry them, among them a voluntary $158,852 contribution to Teton County School District 401 and $45,000 a year for five years to the Teton County Sheriff's Office.

Knowles and Popilsky voted for it. Johnston voted against.

"I do not feel that approval criteria number 5 is met with the information we have in front of us," Johnston said, "and the incorporation of those conditions of approval."

Driggs Approves 180-Unit Corona Valley After Staff Concedes the Application Is Incomplete

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