Following months of controversy, the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission on Tuesday night unanimously granted a conditional use permit for the Colby Bed and Breakfast Inn.
Chairman Thomas Cooke said that a court ruling in April required the council to approve the inn.
The owner of the property, Hoffvest, proposed a bed and breakfast with eight guest rooms, a caretaker unit and a kitchen.
Last summer, the Snyderville Commission denied the CUP on the grounds that the project didn’t meet the requirement of being an “owner-occupied residence”. Hearing an appeal, the Summit County Council upheld the conclusion.
But Third District Judge Teresa Welch ruled last month that the council’s action was arbitrary, capricious and illegal, and interpreted the code too narrowly. She remanded the project back to the planning commission.
On Tuesday night, Staff Planner Ray Milliner noted that the item was not noticed for any further public comment.
“The public hearings for the project have already occurred, and there have been no changes, since the time of the public hearings, to the application,” he said. “And so I was directed not to post this application as a public hearing.”
Language added to the approval, modeled on Welch’s ruling, said the inn would be owner-occupied if the caretaker had an interest in either the property or the Hoffvest company.
The task for Planning Commission was to determine what conditions to set to mitigate the impacts of the Inn.
Their motion for approval said the inn would operate under the county’s chapter three noise ordinance as well as chapter four, which sets the rules for special events.
Cooke said they came to the decision in a relatively brief meeting since they knew which conditions to put on the operation.
“We knew sort of what the impacts were to the neighbors and the surrounding residents,” he said. “There wasn’t really a ton of discussion about that. Really, it was about noise and lighting. And I think the staff report had done a good job of recommending conditions of approval based on what we’ve known for a long time.”
The attorney for Hoffvest, Rob McConnell, said the conditions weren’t a problem for them.
“We understand the requirement as stated in your code to comply with requirements pertaining to special events and noise ordinances,” he said. “It’s a background to our operation in any event.”
Cooke told KPCW that when the bed and breakfast originally came to them, some of the Snyderville Planners thought it was a good use for the property. But they felt their denial last June was based on the requirements of the code.
“We made a decision based on our interpretation of the definition of bed and bBreakfast in the code that a threshold needed to be met,” he said. “And we decided it wasn’t and the council upheld our decision. And then a judge decided that it was. So, I mean you can look back and say, is it a lot of time wasted and legal fees. And our job is to interpret the code as best we can and a judge decided we didn’t do that correctly. So that’s why we’re back.”
