Boise officials violated city code, a court ruled. So they just changed the code
A January Idaho Supreme Court ruling against Boise highlighted a flaw in the city’s zoning code — at least from the perspective of City Council members.
The court found the council had wrongly approved a conditional-use permit for the construction of a new homeless shelter for Interfaith Sanctuary. The justices said the city’s code doesn’t allow the council to overturn decisions by the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission unless it can prove that the commission made an error.
That was news to the City Council and to P&Z commissioners.
“It’s a very rare circumstance that you would find” a clear enough error to meet that standard, Council Member Colin Nash said at a January town hall.
“What the court said is, ‘You’ve got to show your work when you do overturn P&Z. And by the way, P&Z has a lot more power than what you think they have,’ ” Council Member Luci Willits said at the same meeting. “So there is going to have to be an ordinance change.”
That change, approved unanimously Tuesday at a City Council meeting, allows the council to hear appeals of P&Z decisions on conditional use permits — with an open record and the ability to consider new evidence — even if it hasn’t found that P&Z’s decision was a mistake.
The council would still consider P&Z’s findings when making its decisions, but would have more freedom to incorporate new information, said Deanna Dupuy, Boise’s city planning and design manager, during her presentation on behalf of the city.
“With this amendment, City Council as the elected body is in a position to be accountable for difficult land-use decisions that have far-reaching community impacts,” Dupuy said.
Willits called the changes “a better system and a better change for Boiseans.”
Discussion over the proposed change was fraught. During hours of testimony, some residents argued that the timing of the change was suspect, given the possible implications for the Interfaith Sanctuary’s ability to re-apply for the conditional-use permit P&Z previously denied.
Katy Decker, the head of the neighborhood association that fought Interfaith’s new construction on State Street, said the change “represents a fundamental and troubling shift” that would allow the council to “retry cases from scratch.”
“P&Z was originally created to insulate development decisions from campaign donations and political influences,” she said. “If council can simply override the reasonable decisions of P&Z for political reasons, we can expect to see more legal challenges, not fewer.”
Council members argued that the change would place the burden of decision-making on council members who can be voted out of office if residents are unhappy with the choices they make.
Unlike City Council members, P&Z commissioners aren’t elected — they’re appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council, which means they’re not accountable to residents, Nash argued at the January meeting.
“I think if you want the shelter and you think I should be voting for that, you can make your voice known with your vote. If you don’t like the shelter and you don’t like where it’s at, you should be able to hold me accountable for that,” he said. “The disconnect we have here is that right now that falls to P&Z, and my hands are tied.”
This story was originally published May 3, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
