After putting a pause on a recommendation last week, Park County Planning and Zoning Commission members met for roughly four hours Monday to go over concerns and fine tune a draft of development standards and regulations they were then happy to recommend to county commissioners.

“We went over some concerns, cleaned it up some,” P&Z Chairman Brian Peters said Tuesday soon after presenting the DSR to the commissioners. As he told commissioners, the members were pleased to have had the extra time. 

“I would like to say thank you to everybody that's in the room,” he said. “I think we had everything that we wanted to look at, and so we're just glad to have it.”

Tuesday afternoon commissioners accepted the red-lined (showing changes from the previous version and answers to public comments) Oct. 5 adoption draft. 

“Thanks for the work,” Commissioner Dossie Overfield said. “It's been a long haul, it's been a year and a half, almost two years.”

This starts the clock on what is close to the final phase of the lengthy process. The DSR draft will be published Oct. 13 and the planning and zoning department will accept written comments until Dec. 1 (commissioners strongly encourage comments in writing to be sent by Nov. 25 to assist staff in compiling). 

Then, at 6 p.m. Dec. 1 at the Cody Library Grizzly Room, the commissioners will hold a public hearing on the DSR draft, after which they could make the decision whether then or at a following meeting to approve the draft or, as has been done previously on the first round of regulations, kick it back in the process for changes before bringing it back for another public hearing and chance to vote. 

Accepting the DSR Tuesday, as Planning Director Joy Hill noted, is not the same as approving the changes. Commissioners will deliberate over the public comments received and the P&Z changes before deciding on a final draft.