Valley County Commissioners unanimously approved a massive reduction Thursday to the area of impact around the city of McCall. Impact areas are not part of a city, but are subject to the city zoning code. These areas are being reviewed across the state in response to a law passed by the Idaho Legislature in 2024, which tightened guidelines for impact area designations.
Valley County’s decision for McCall is its most drastic; Donnelly’s area of impact was recently reduced by about 20%.
County Commission Chair Sherry Maupin said it largely came down to the new guideline of what property was likely to be annexed into a city within five years.
“If you have an agency saying, ‘we're not going to annex this, we can't provide sewer and water.’ And so it can't be annexed in the next five years,” she said Thursday during the public meeting before the vote. “Five years from now, we will look back and say, ‘these are the areas that the city actually grew into. These are the areas that have been incorporated.’ From there, we will make another five-year plan.”
Property owners outside city limits don’t need to be in an area of impact to request annexation, but a property does need to connect to existing city limits to be considered. Most of the time McCall receives a request for annexation, it’s because a resident wants or needs public water and/or sewer services.
Another factor weighed heavily on county commissioners: the apparent lack of representation.
Impact area residents don’t pay city taxes or vote for the city council, even though its zoning code decisions can impact your property. In McCall, the seven-person planning and zoning commission includes three representatives from the area of impact, nominated by the city and confirmed by the county.
That’s not good enough, according to Maupin.
“We have no voice at that level when planning and zoning meetings are happening. We don't have legal representation there,” adding that the county would need to hire another attorney to be properly represented.
But the county does have veto power over code decisions in the area, said McCall community and economic development director Michelle Groenevelt.
“Any land use decision is appealable to the county commissioners if it's within the impact area,” she said.
Instead, Valley County will take full control of those areas starting January 1, 2026.
“That's a dramatic policy shift from what has occurred in the last 47-plus years,” Groenevelt said. McCall’s zoning code has requirements guided by public input to the city’s local area comprehensive plan, last updated in 2018 and currently under review.
Valley County is one of just a few counties in Idaho without specific zoning rules; county areas are considered mixed-use and property owners can request a conditional use permit for development.
The city and county had widely differing opinions on how the boundary map should be drawn.
Groenevelt said McCall submitted its proposed boundary map to the county, which complied with the new state law without significantly shrinking the impact area.
The county, however, took only its boundary proposal through the public hearing process. Thursday, it also denied the city’s request to reconsider its map.
“It kind of ignores all of the long-range planning that's occurred, all the public input and a lot of data analysis,” Groenevelt said.
Maupin pushed back on that notion, saying the county had received the appropriate data provided by McCall. “We didn't necessarily agree with the analysis of that technical data. It doesn't mean that we don't have it, and [that] we didn't look at it,” she said.
Concerns over water quality potentially being at higher risk in areas that are changing to county control will be addressed through updated code in the coming months, the county said. It plans to address concerns about architectural controls by updating the county’s comprehensive plan starting this winter.
McCall said its city council and legal team will consider public feedback and work together on what comes next once the county issues its formal letter of decision in the matter.
