The story of zoning is lengthy and complicated to explain and I am not a lawyer.
Please forgive errors. I will edit as time allows.
As many of you know, what prompted the enforcement situation on Feb 8, was a complaint against a resident of Tepee Ridge who was renting both their caretaker residence, which is prohibited in zoning text and their primary residence at the same time. However, punishment for the zoning violation was accomplished when the conditional use permit (CUP) was revoked for the caretaker house last November. Unfortunately, the Planning Department then chose to go beyond the clear zoning text and also ban them from renting their primary residence, a dictate that sets a precedent with enormous collateral damage and obliterates an inherent property right for every home owner in the AE subdistrict of Bridger Canyon Zoning.
To justify this unprecedented action the county invoked an un-vetted, catch-all rule in the Part 1 Administrative regulations to determine this one type of land use, short-term-renting, is “not allowed” because “renting” a primary residence, for any duration, is not mentioned in the zoning text. Without explanation, or notification to people most affected, the county changed their website last July 2023 to say that anywhere in Gallatin County where zoning does not specifically allow STRs they are “not allowed”, bypassing the due process normally granted such a monumental change in property rights. Feb 8, was the first enforcement of this new interpretation of "regulation by omission."
The stunning lack of respect for the history of renting one’s home as an inherent property right and the hardships this decision will bring was completely ignored by the Planning Department and Commissioners who voted to go along with the compliance office determination, despite convincing lawyer arguments about being contrary to State law. Testimony also emphasized that STRS are not a new land use in Bridger Canyon, including evidence proving decades of STR acceptance within the district and zoning, as well as, public statements of the hardship this ruling will cause STR owners who have done nothing wrong. Most of us are not wealthy people or renting for “profit.” We are just striving to pay the mortgage and taxes to keep our cherished home and hopefully pass it on to our children one day.
Without cause, the county instantly made well-established, fully compliant short-term-rentals suddenly illegal. No grandfather clause. No path to compliance.
Whether Short Term Rentals are good or bad, should be regulated or banned is a debate I look forward to, but that is not the problem to be solved right now. The point now is that the county has taken the debate away from us and decided for every home owner that short term renting is simply banned outright. The crazy thing is that this is not only a precedent for Bridger Canyon, Part 1 Administrative regulations govern the whole county and according to the website only 4 of the 22 “Part 1” zoning districts mention short term rentals. So by extension, the compliance officer can shut down all STRs in those 18 districts. And since the standard in the regulation is that ANY land use not listed in the text is not allowed, then anyone doing something not listed in zoning text can have a complaint filed against them and a compliance officer must investigate not only the subject of the complaint but go over all permits and potentially find other violations the owners never knew about. Several situations like this have already occurred where the compliance officer visited for one potential violation that the owner may not even be guilty of, but in the course of the investigation, other discrepancies were found in old paperwork or on-site to hassle or fine the land owner.
It appears that without most owners realizing it, The Part 1 Administrative Regulation, imposed on BC zoning in 2021, rewrote regulation for “Non-Conforming Uses” to delete a clause for ‘similar use’ and edited the ‘grandfather clause’ that had previously protected owners from detrimental changes in zoning by allowing "ongoing" land use previously allowed by zoning before it was changed. I am not a lawyer so someone more knowledgeable than I am can explain this change better than I can or correct my error in interpretation.
What I do know, is that "grandfather clause" protection was integral to the original text of Bridger Canyon Zoning and set a precedent for all zoning regulations in the county and state.
Montanans have always been skeptical of government and weary of outsiders moving in to change things and unfairly “mess with their lives.” In fact, without a “grandfather clause” for protection from amendments and changes in regulation, Bridger Canyon Residents like my grandparents, would NEVER have accepted zoning in the first place. It appears without anyone noticing, Gallatin County has removed these protections as a "property right" and substituted their authority alone to decide if uses made "non-conforming" by amendments to zoning will be allowed as an on-going use, but only by begging to the county, paying a $400 fee for an Administrative Determination with the burden of proof there their previously lawful land use will not harm the community, despite doing nothing wrong.
This is the government power grab that BC zoning originators foresaw
and sought to prevent
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