County land-use code discussion to continue

COEUR d’ALENE — More deliberations are ahead on Kootenai County's proposed Land Use and Development Code.

No decision was made on the document after a four-hour meeting on Thursday night.

Commissioner deliberations will continue at 9 a.m. on May 12 in the county's Administration Building. Another public hearing — which will be required because changes will be made to the proposed document — will be held at 6 p.m. on June 6.

Commissioner Dan Green said most of the testimony on Thursday focused on wedding uses.

He said he supports amending the document so that holding weddings in the county should be allowed through the conditional-use permit process.

"I'd like it so commissioners can condition any application," Green said, using limiting the number of weddings on a property in a specified time or requiring them to be over at a certain time as examples. I also support having them on the property only when the owner lives there. Things are much different with the owners on site. They have a skin in the game."

Green said the deliberations are about trying to find a balance between allowing uses, but respecting neighbors as well.

Rand Wichman, who has represented lakeshore property owners and real estate groups during the two year process, said most of the concerns by those groups have been worked out during the process.

"Solutions were hammered out to nearly all of them," he said.

He praised county staff for working with the groups to find compromising solutions.

Wichman said a reasonable compromise was made with shoreline management areas.

"It will greatly increase the flexibility to property owners," he said.

Under the current code, all of the following are prohibited along the 25-foot no disturbance zone, but are allowed under the proposed code:

• The use of mechanical and other equipment for removal of dead or dying trees, shoreline debris and other similar activities related to routine maintenance

• The repair, replacement, alteration and relocation of existing site improvements, including, without limitation, landscaping, retaining walls and shoreline protection revetments

• The addition of seating, picnic and barbecue areas and recreational equipment which do not cause a major disturbance of the shoreline management area

• Some shoreline erosion control measures

• Some trimming of shrubs and removal of branches from trees for the purpose of creating a view corridor; and

• The addition of pervious pavers, wood or composite decking, and similar types of construction which do not concentrate runoff.

The proposal consolidates all the land-use and development codes into one document with one table of contents, eliminating overlap and superfluous and conflicting language. The intent is to make it more user-friendly for residents to find out how the code works.

Commissioner David Stewart said he'd like to see the document to become even thinner and more condensed if possible.

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