The following is an excerpt from the 2017 Zoning Advisory Committee public meeting on Short Term Rentals. It’s an AI transcript, so a few words may be off, but the essence is correct I think.

I haven’t cross-checked who’s speaking here, but presumably some combination of Richard Lyon and Tom Fiddaman (Zoning Advisory Committee members and BCPOA directors) and Chris Scott and Randy Johnson (Planning Department staff supporting the zoning update).

But at the same time, since we do have a conditional use permit for Bed&Breakfasts, which you trouble to obtain at one time, there’s some value, I think, having a level playing field for various kinds of accommodations. So you don’t have to serve it. The bootleg layer and a license later competing with one. You’re suggesting that any short-term rentals should fall under conditional use requirement? Well, that’s one proposal. The majority of the draft, for example, is to make a conditional use permit. So that takes us to the options. So maybe I should have covered that for a quick moment at this time.

So at the moment, short-term rentals are in a legal gray area because they’re not a listed use in the canyon. And the way the zoning works is that each district designates uses that are allowed within it. You know, so you can have single family residents and agricultural operations and whatever else. And then there are maybe additional conditional uses for which you need a permit required hearing. So the matter of right uses, you can just go get a land use permit or any other permit at all. You just do it and there’s no remaining standards, but there’s certain knowing components of that. Next there is a conditional use permit. To get that, you need to meet whatever standards are set and then get a permit through a hearing. And the nice thing about that is it creates some visibility of what’s happening and gives neighbors an opportunity to comment on the permit. And the commission can impose additional conditions, you know, restrictions on hours of operation or whatever they think it takes for them to negate impacts on neighbors.

And then anything else is that’s not listed is implicitly forbidden except that maybe similar enough to an existing to a list of use that you get what’s called finding similar use and get permitted that way. So cell towers could come in by finding similar use to a microwave tower. No one has actually done that for a short term rental. So they’re not mentioned, no one to obtain a similar use finding, but it’s not good. They wouldn’t get one if they asked for it.

And to our knowledge, no one has complained about one. That’s right. I was going to follow up with that. I made sure to ask our code enforcers as well. Whether or not we’ve even received a complaint of a short term rent. Yeah, Nicole Olmsted of code enforcement, we haven’t. Other than one that was it was a tourist license that was through environmental health. And I think it was a matter of getting them to get that, but nothing related to zoning. Right. Yeah. So there’s in if you read through the comments that I compiled, there’s a little bit grumbling about things that have happened. But no one has actually filed a zoning complaint over short term rent. And there are typically a dozen or so on VRBO and Airbnb and other places.

So options. We could just be silent on this and continue to ignore it until it’s an easier issue. We felt like that was kind of an abrogation of our responsibilities as the advisory board. We have a session for everyone around the other. So the legal limbo doesn’t continue. We could allow short term rentals without any additional standards or regulation. We could allow it and require a permit, which would at least create some visibility on what’s going on. And I could be either a land use permit, which you can think of going out and filling out a form or could be a additional use permit that they could hear. And consent some standards. And finally, simply, they are [banned] outright, which is what Hebgen Lake have done, except in a commercial district.

Subsequent to this meeting, the Zoning Advisory Committee drafted a fairly permissive STR standard, which became Section 15.16 of the draft General Standards by 2018. BCPOA supported the draft through the 2021 zoning update (and objected when it was not included). If you read the letter in the Chronicle claiming that “the Bridger Canyon Property Owners Association and commissioners decreed that STR rental were BANNED immediately on February 8, 2024”, rest assured that it is pure fabrication. BCPOA didn’t ban STRs, and has no legal power to “decree” anything. From the meeting notes above, and various other proceedings, STR operators were on notice of the dubious legal status long before 2024.

The Lewis appeal was moved from the Jan. 11th P&Z Commission hearing to the upcoming Feb. 8th session (Thursday). We described the issues in the

Appeal and Interpretation of Use

section of a previous post.

There is an addendum to the Staff Report from Jan. 11th, which you can find with the agenda and other supporting documents here.

Public Comment

If you want to comment, you can always submit written testimony to Planning@gallatin.mt.gov – details and some advice under the Submitting Testimony heading here.

You can also comment at the hearing, in person or via Zoom.