Take a look at the Park County Land Use Plan just certified by the county’s planning and zoning commission. I dare you to look through it and not find something that makes you mad. Or leaves you confused. Or has you muttering.

There are places in the county that currently allow owners to subdivide down to 1 acre average lot sizes in rural areas where the new plan recommends larger lot sizes. There are also places that are currently 35 acre minimums that may come down. 

There are places in the county that will now be designated as being in a high use big game area that weren’t before, while there are places that would’ve been listed as medium or low use big game areas that, with the latest draft, won’t be mentioned outside of the appendix. 

If something in all that makes you mad, maybe that’s not so bad. The way I see it, this plan is a compromise amongst people with a diverse range of ideals in the county. 

This is also only one step in an extensive land use planning process. As Park County Planning Director Joy Hill has reminded people many times, the next step — the regulations — are where the rubber meets the road in terms of real effects on people’s lives. So, while the plan probably includes some parts that everybody objects to, what it says isn’t quite as impactful as many people have made it out to be. 

Hopefully it’s more impactful than the current plan, finished in the late 1990s, that spells out many of the same hopes and concerns as this one does and yet was hardly followed by regulations that matched the ideals. 

Remember, the plan at this stage is just a broad overview, while regulations will be much more finely tuned. For instance, even with the 20-acre minimum average lot size language in the initial draft of the plan for ag overlay areas, that did not mean all lots within that vast swath of land would have been zoned for 20-acre minimums. Hill has said her hope is they can do more specific zoning (such as maybe making Ralston’s downtown strip commercial instead of transitional) as opposed to what we have now, while General Rural-Powell zoning allows 1 acre minimum lot sizes in areas far outside of town. 

As for big game use area protections, this plan as currently written includes roughly 11,000 acres of private land designated as high use areas. The current plan has none. Also, as P&Z board member Guy Eastman noted at the public hearing to certify the draft, Game and Fish already gets to weigh in on development projects. 

However, that is a lot less designated land than the first certified plan included, as that also noted low and medium use areas. So, while this plan has more language on big game use area protections than the current plan that lacks a big game overlay at all, it includes less than the initial certified plan. Sounds like something that could leave both sides of the issue unhappy — sounds like compromise. 

However, if you don’t like this compromise, you still have time to, in essence, appeal to the board making the final decision. Tuesday’s certification kicked off an at least 45-day period where the plan will be available to view at parkcounty-wy.gov/PlanParkCounty/. 

Then, probably in March, the Park County Commissioners will hold a public hearing, as they did last October, before deciding whether or not to certify this revised version of the land use plan. 

And don’t think your opinion doesn’t matter. That the plan includes a big game overlay at all is credit to the many people who filled out surveys and came to meetings to say wildlife was very important to them. And that the plan was revised when first up for commissioners to certify showed they were listening then. 

So far, these hearings have appeared very lopsided either for or against certain aspects of the plan, like an overwhelming majority of people at last fall’s certification hearings most concerned about private property rights and the fear of government overreach. And then Tuesday’s crowd being overwhelmingly concerned about protecting big game migration and use corridors and protecting open spaces.

There’s nothing that says the Park County Commissioners’ hearing in March can’t have a balance of both, as clearly this is a plan built not only on consensus (nobody I’ve heard has questioned our shared love of this Wyoming way of life), but on compromise.