A new ordinance in Kootenai County is intended to save property owners thousands of dollars and months of time when they divide their land to sell or gift to family members.

After being approved by the county commissioners last month, the Family Division ordinance went into effect Aug. 1, providing property owners with an alternative to the traditional minor subdivision process.

A Family Division exemption allows a living property owner to divide unplatted land—meaning it hasn’t previously been through the county’s formal subdivision process—and gift or sell it to a spouse, parent, child, sibling, grandparent, or grandchild.

David Callahan, director of Kootenai County Community Development, says land divided through the process must result in minimum lot sizes of 5 acres, or 10 acres if the land falls within the Coeur d’Alene Tribe Reservation boundaries.

Callahan also notes the ordinance includes a lifetime limit of four parcels that can be created by a property owner through the Family Division process. He says the limit is in place to prevent developers from coming in to buy up large pieces of land and then divide it all using the Family Division exemption.

The most notable step the Family Division ordinance eliminates, at least from a cost standpoint, is the requirement to hire a professional surveyor.

“Just to hire a surveyor and put together a proposed survey to divide 20 acres into four (5-acre lots) is typically running roughly $15,000, depending on which surveyor you hire,” Callahan says.

In addition to the roughly $15,000 saved by not having to hire a surveyor, property owners also can save thousands in attorney costs and filing fees. Filing fees for a Family Division exemption are about $2,000 less than filing fees for minor subdivisions.

A minor subdivision can be used to create four or fewer lots, while a major subdivision process is used to create five or more lots.

The new ordinance also eliminates requirements that exist with traditional minor and major subdivision processes, but property owners still must comply with requirements of other federal, state, and local agencies.

“The main difference is for both the major and the minor subdivision process, we send out what we call referrals to our sister agencies, like fire departments, highway districts, Panhandle Health District, any water and sewer districts,” Callahan says.

Those agencies would then have the opportunity to respond, give input, and make suggestions, he explains.

“With the family exemption, the most we get to check on is to make sure that there’s going to still be legal and physical access to the property,” Callahan says.

The streamlined process can potentially save property owners months of time.

The Family Division process is expected to take about two months to complete, compared with a minor subdivision process that on average takes about a year, Callahan says.

That lack of a referral period does carry some risk, however, he adds.

“When we do the referrals, neighbors will often chime in and send us copies of the (Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions), and the CC&Rs sometimes prohibit land divisions,” says Callahan. “When we find that out, we tell people, ‘Sorry, we’re not going to approve this while your CC&Rs say you can’t, because we don’t want to set you up for a lawsuit.’”

Under the Family Division ordinance, without the referrals and feedback, a property owner who disregards CC&Rs that prohibit divisions could end up in legal trouble, he says.

Family Demand

In mid-August, no property owners had filed for a Family Division. Callahan expects that to change as more people learn about the new ordinance, and notes that a couple dozen people in favor of the exemption attended public hearings.

“It’s an indicator that there’s enough out there that will take advantage of it,” Callahan says. “I think it’s a useful tool to have in your toolbox.”

Spokane County doesn't have a Family Division ordinance, says Martha Lou Wheatley-Billeter, communications manager for Spokane County. She says there would have to be a code change for a similar ordinance to be implemented in Spokane County, but nothing has been brought forward to the county commissioners and this isn't something currently on the county's radar.

The Family Division ordinance is essentially the same as an idea that was brought forth by Callahan years ago in response to a 2016 code change.

“We needed and still need to change our county regulations governing minor subdivisions, because in 2016, we changed the code in a way that made it possible to do minor subdivisions in a serial fashion,” he says.

That means that if a person had 40 acres of land, for example, they could divide it into two 20-acre parcels, and then do a minor subdivision of each of those 20-acre parcels, effectively creating eight lots, which ordinarily would require a major subdivision, Callahan explains.

Callahan says a major subdivision requires better planning practice and "gets better roads, better review, more input by the fire districts and highway districts, and so on.”

At the time, Callahan thought the county would change the minor subdivision regulations to prohibit the serial aspect of it, and so he brought forth the family exemption as a way to "ease the pain" of taking back this ability to create all these minor subdivisions.

His idea for the family exemption, however, didn't come to fruition at the time.

“The county commissioners at the time and the county planning commission just didn’t like the idea of the family exemption,” he says. “A whole bunch of people came out against changing the minor subdivision regulations.”

The serial aspect of the minor subdivision regulations is still in place, for now.

“We’re still trying to find a solution to the minor subdivision serial problem,” Callahan says.

The Family Division ordinance was approved last month after a property owner in Kootenai County hired private planning consultant Rand Wichman, who brought forward essentially the same family division exemption Callahan had proposed years ago. Wichman previously served as the county’s planning director.

“This time, because it was consultant-driven, and we had one different county commissioner, it got approved notwithstanding the recommendation of denial from the planning commission,” Callahan says.