Burns Holdings, LLC. v. Teton County Board of Commissioners

Burns Holdings, LLC (Burns) (plaintiff) sought to build a 75-foot concrete plant, well above a City of Driggs zoning ordinance's 45-foot height limit, which the ordinance said could be exceeded through a conditional-use permit (CUP). Idaho's Local Land Use Planning Act (LLUPA), however, required a variance — not a CUP — to waive a height restriction. The city initially approved a CUP and forwarded it to the Teton County Board of Commissioners (defendant), where confusion arose over CUP versus variance terminology; the county ultimately denied the CUP, and after multiple rounds of judicial review and remand for adequate findings, the county eventually asserted (over two years into the process) that state law required a variance rather than a CUP to waive the height limit. The trial court agreed the height waiver required a variance but upheld the denial on other grounds, and Burns appealed.