Hi Tom.
I assume you will block this reply as you did my comment about your dissemination on SB146 last week. Which is sad, since you proclaimed that this platform would not block anyone on this website in the spirit of free speech. You have mischaracterized this bill SB214 entirely and conflated it with the other bill you also mislead our community about.
I urge everyone to read the bill. All it does is add the word “interpretation” as a defined way to “change” regulations, like an amendment, that would trigger a right to a non-conforming use.
This has become necessary because local government has used “interpretation” as a way to get around due process and public scrutiny rather than actually amending regulations which would require public notification and a public hearing.
This skirting of the principles of due process and the law, has the detrimental effect of severely hurting people who are suddenly told they are violating zoning, but are denied recourse of qualifying as a non-conforming use. It is extremely hard for an individual to fight government on their own (without significant independent wealth) and this form of regulation change without officially changing regulation text is a brilliant way to unscrupulously get something accomplished without any of the logistics or minutia that traditional due process requires.
Re-interpretation of zoning regulations IS a change in zoning that this law validates as such and will help balance the power of government with the rights of an individual to alleviate the hardship any change creates. The “moving of goal posts” that changes the meaning and application of rules is unfair and extremely difficult to fight as individuals, which generally means they can get away with it. Which is likely the calculation here.
It is even more corrupt when outside organizations back up this kind of government “gaslighting” for what? A feeling of power, settling a score or maybe just because hurting people satisfies a sliver of meanness in their meaningless lives.
Last Monday at the end of the Local Government Committee meeting, Chairman Mandeville asked, “Is there a Gallatin County Problem?” and charged the 2 lobbyists representing Gallatin County to go back to Gallatin County and make sure the government here is following state law. We will see.
I truly hope you post this and my previous comment about your response to SB146.
Throwing out wild unsubstantiated accusations about “burning down Bridger Canyon” is part of the reason this community is so divided. Please stop. Consider what it is like to be on the receiving end of this kind of unwarranted assault. It is not fun.
The zone text amendment proposed in 2024 was to restore everyone else’s property rights in Bridger Canyon and Gallatin County that were unscrupulously stripped by a re-interpretation of zoning regulations. It was never about personal gain. It has always been about establishing the status quo that had served this community so well.
Note that 214 has been amended slightly, improved to some extent, but the elevation of permissive use above other considerations already instantiated in zoning remains a problem.
I think this comment actually rides the edge of civility, with its baseless ad hominem attacks.
What you call “unsubstantiated” is an event I saw with my own eyeballs. Is it possible that a landowner would be so spectacularly naive as to set off aerial fireworks over a forest? Maybe. But at least they have some skin in the game.
In my view, there was no “reinterpretation”. It was already evident to many of us at the 2017 zoning advisory committee public meeting on STRs that they were not listed, and that they were most similar to Recreational Housing, which is not available in the AE subdistrict. That no one sought a finding of “similar use” at the time, and that the county didn’t of its own accord seek to enforce, might be grounds for a laches case, but doesn’t constitute a change.
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Hi Tom.
I assume you will block this reply as you did my comment about your dissemination on SB146 last week. Which is sad, since you proclaimed that this platform would not block anyone on this website in the spirit of free speech. You have mischaracterized this bill SB214 entirely and conflated it with the other bill you also mislead our community about.
I urge everyone to read the bill. All it does is add the word “interpretation” as a defined way to “change” regulations, like an amendment, that would trigger a right to a non-conforming use.
This has become necessary because local government has used “interpretation” as a way to get around due process and public scrutiny rather than actually amending regulations which would require public notification and a public hearing.
This skirting of the principles of due process and the law, has the detrimental effect of severely hurting people who are suddenly told they are violating zoning, but are denied recourse of qualifying as a non-conforming use. It is extremely hard for an individual to fight government on their own (without significant independent wealth) and this form of regulation change without officially changing regulation text is a brilliant way to unscrupulously get something accomplished without any of the logistics or minutia that traditional due process requires.
Re-interpretation of zoning regulations IS a change in zoning that this law validates as such and will help balance the power of government with the rights of an individual to alleviate the hardship any change creates. The “moving of goal posts” that changes the meaning and application of rules is unfair and extremely difficult to fight as individuals, which generally means they can get away with it. Which is likely the calculation here.
It is even more corrupt when outside organizations back up this kind of government “gaslighting” for what? A feeling of power, settling a score or maybe just because hurting people satisfies a sliver of meanness in their meaningless lives.
Last Monday at the end of the Local Government Committee meeting, Chairman Mandeville asked, “Is there a Gallatin County Problem?” and charged the 2 lobbyists representing Gallatin County to go back to Gallatin County and make sure the government here is following state law. We will see.
I truly hope you post this and my previous comment about your response to SB146.
Throwing out wild unsubstantiated accusations about “burning down Bridger Canyon” is part of the reason this community is so divided. Please stop. Consider what it is like to be on the receiving end of this kind of unwarranted assault. It is not fun.
The zone text amendment proposed in 2024 was to restore everyone else’s property rights in Bridger Canyon and Gallatin County that were unscrupulously stripped by a re-interpretation of zoning regulations. It was never about personal gain. It has always been about establishing the status quo that had served this community so well.
Your comment has not been blocked. No civil reply is ever blocked here, though there may be delays in approval if no one visits the site.
Note that 214 has been amended slightly, improved to some extent, but the elevation of permissive use above other considerations already instantiated in zoning remains a problem.
I think this comment actually rides the edge of civility, with its baseless ad hominem attacks.
What you call “unsubstantiated” is an event I saw with my own eyeballs. Is it possible that a landowner would be so spectacularly naive as to set off aerial fireworks over a forest? Maybe. But at least they have some skin in the game.
In my view, there was no “reinterpretation”. It was already evident to many of us at the 2017 zoning advisory committee public meeting on STRs that they were not listed, and that they were most similar to Recreational Housing, which is not available in the AE subdistrict. That no one sought a finding of “similar use” at the time, and that the county didn’t of its own accord seek to enforce, might be grounds for a laches case, but doesn’t constitute a change.