Commission weighs proposed rezoning

COEUR d’ALENE — The Kootenai County Planning and Zoning Commission is considering a proposal to rezone approximately 25,000 acres located within the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s reservation boundaries.

Under the proposed rezone, some tribally owned, privately owned and leased properties within the Coeur d’Alene Reservation that are currently zoned rural would be designated agricultural.

David Callahan, the county’s community development director, said the proposal is a major event in land use planning, both because of the size of the rezoning and the relative rarity of a sovereign government’s involvement.

“This will assuredly be the largest rezoning the county’s ever done if it goes through and may be the largest rezoning we ever do,” Callahan said. “We’re trying to preserve a balance between property rights and protecting people’s ability to do things and also respecting the Tribe’s desires.”

The purpose of the rezone is to preserve agricultural land, timber lands, open spaces, natural resources and the existing rural character of the southwest portion of Kootenai County.

Affected parcels are all 20 acres in size or larger, currently zoned as rural, within the boundaries of the Coeur d’Alene Reservation and had a recorded agricultural or timber tax exemption within the past two years.

Subdivisons are currently permitted in rural zones, with a minimum lot size of 5 acres. If the parcels within the Tribe’s boundaries are rezoned, subdivisions will no longer be allowed.

“The Tribe has always wanted to be a good steward of the land,” said Margaret SiJohn, a member of the Coeur d’Alene Tribal Council. “I think the rezoning is a great opportunity to go down that path. We want to preserve natural resources, the beautiful area that we live in.”

The county has contacted more than 1,000 property owners who could be affected by rezoning. On Thursday night, during a hearing before the Planning and Zoning Commission, a handful spoke in opposition of the proposed rezone.

“To have only eight people show up in opposition is astonishingly small,” Callahan said.

Among them was Dave Lampert, who said his family has farmed 800 acres in the affected area since 1909, when his grandfather drew a homestead.

Farming the rocky soil will likely become economically unfeasible in the future, he said, but he believes the land has potential for development. That potential would disappear with rezoning.

“To me, it almost seems like we’re being penalized for slugging it out all these years, for over 100 years, to try to keep farming this land, to try to keep making a living,” Lampert said. “This change could cost my family hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Herb Millhorn is a lifelong Kootenai County resident who owns 800 acres within the proposed rezoning area. He believes the change from rural to agricultural would devalue his property and effectively take his property rights.

“In my lifetime, I’ve never seen any governmental agency in Kootenai County ever seriously consider taking away landowners’ property rights,” Millhorn said.

Hemene James, a member of the Coeur d’Alene Tribal Council, made an impassioned response.

He said he understands how the opposing property owners feel, pointing to how government actions whittled down the more than 3.5 million acres once occupied by the Coeur d’Alene people to the 345,000-acre reservation that exists today.

“They’re feeling it on their little 80 acres, 800 acres,” James said. “We felt like that for over a century on 345,000 acres. We want our children to be able to live on our reservation. We don’t want 1,000 homes being built on the north end of our rez and pricing out our children.”

James also noted the Allotment Act, which was implemented on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation in 1909.

In an essay about the Coeur d’Alene people, Rodney Frey, professor emeritus of ethnography at the University of Idaho, described how the act reduced the size of individual land holdings and opened up “unused” reservation lands to white ownership.

“You want to talk about emotions?” James said. “Talk about laws being changed to the detriment of individual landownership? Ask an Indian about allotment.”

He opposes carving out only land owned by the Tribe, about half the proposed area, for rezoning.

“We’re not interested in that,” James said. “We’re not interested in offering our land solely to get restricted at 20 acres while everyone else gets to do what they’re doing. We’re here with our hand out to shake it, not to get it slapped again.”

James said the Tribe wants to work together with Kootenai County to protect the land and emphasized that the Coeur d’Alene people are this area’s original inhabitants.

“We have no other place to go,” he said. “We can’t relocate anywhere else. This is our home and this is what our ancestors laid their lives on the line for, whether it was in battle or whether it was smallpox or whether it was the poisoning of our waters. This is what they fought to keep for us as Coeur d’Alene tribal members, Schitsu’umsh.”

The Planning and Zoning Commission will resume deliberations about the rezone April 6 and give a recommendation to county commissioners, who will make the final decision.