Fremont County Planning and Building Department Puts the Cart Before the Horse

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By Alison Brown

Across every municipality and county in Idaho, planning departments are quietly and constantly shaping the environments in which we live. Given the 44 counties and roughly 200 municipalities contained within the state, that’s a lot of power and influence distributed over a large area. Here in Fremont County, where much of the land is not within the jurisdiction of a municipality, the Fremont County Planning and Building Department (FCPBD) is responsible for addressing a large number of questions relating to what, where, when and how much development can occur. It is a gatekeeper, allowing or denying the advancement of projects that will impact transportation, economic development, housing, recreation, public facilities, natural resources, and all Fremont County residents.

In their decision making, the FCPBD is bound to Idaho’s Local Land Use Planning Act (LLUPA). One of the most important purposes of LLUPA is to implement a comprehensive plan to promote the health, safety, and general welfare of the community and to guide present and future growth and land use development. Comprehensive plans aren’t just handed down to us residents by the powers that be, but must be created with extensive input from the public. Indeed, the current Fremont County Comprehensive Plan, adopted in 2008, is the culmination of extensive community meetings, outreach, and studies, thus representing a cohesive vision for the community at the time of adoption. As a guiding document, the Comprehensive Plan does not contain the intricate details of how to obtain the vision contained within. That’s where legal ordinances and codes come in. Under the guidance of the Comprehensive Plan, FCPBD developed legal tools to implement the plan, including the Fremont County Development Code. We’ll talk more about the Development Code in a moment.

Remember that the Comprehensive Plan is a snapshot of community values at present but also a forward look at where the community wants to go. As such, updates need to be conducted periodically to ensure that the plan remains representative of community values and stays responsive to new issues that arise over time. The first Comprehensive Plan for Fremont County was adopted in 1995 and updated in 1997, 2003, and 2008, with amendments approved in 2019. It has been 17 years since the last update was adopted and 6 years since the last amendments were approved. The current plan is woefully overdue for updates. Fremont County residents were told last fall that an update to the Comprehensive Plan was upcoming. In fact, the County has allocated funding for that update in the budget for this current Fiscal Year.

With all of that said, this is where we talk about the cart being put before the horse. The horse in this case is the Fremont County Comprehensive Plan and the cart is the Fremont County Development Code. Recall that the Development Code is one of the legal tools that the County uses to implement the Comprehensive Plan but that the Comprehensive Plan is woefully out of date. In this sad state of affairs, the County has proposed drastic changes to the Development Code while ignoring demands from the public that the Comprehensive Plan update be initiated immediately. Among other effects, the proposed changes to the Development Code would remove the policies and purposes of the Comprehensive Plan as standards in considering permit applications, essentially taking community input out of the equation. The proposed changes may be an attempt by the County to make it easier to approve applications for hotels, airparks and other major developments like we saw last year in Island Park.

So, let’s get the horse and cart aligned. First, we need to deal with the Comprehensive Plan update. The Development Code can only be accurately updated once it can be aligned to a Comprehensive Plan that is current and representative of the community’s values and vision as they stand now.

It’s up to us as Fremont County residents to stand up and demand that our voices are heard. Here are some steps that you can take:

  • Sign the Petition to ask the County halt changes to the Fremont County Development Code until the Comprehensive Plan is updated.
  • Mark your calendars to attend the public hearing on May 19, 2025 to discuss the proposed changes. The hearing will be held at the Fremont County Annex Building at 101 N. Bridge St. in St. Anthony.
  • Submit a public comment telling the County about your thoughts on the proposed changes to the Development Code. Email your comments to: P&B@co.fremont.id.us by NOON on May 12, 2025.
  • Stay connected:
  • Encourage others to get involved!