We were a little taken aback this week, with the done-deal announcement that the Idaho Department of Lands and Kootenai County have entered an agreement that the County will now be responsible for the removal of hazardous pilings and booms in the Spokane River and Coeur d’Alene Lake. The agreement, signed without public input, and at an August 31 meeting of the County Commissioners without more »
Our long county nightmare is (almost) over. Last night, the County Commissioners finished their yearlong line-by-line editing of a new Kootenai County Comprehensive Plan. The long, slow failure of a process came to an anti-climactic end at precisely 7:10 pm when Chairman Currie ordered that the edited document be re-printed for a final public hearing. Now, the bazillion of mostly-pointless edits to the plan will more »
This week, the Kootenai County Planning Commission will consider two draft amendments to the county’s site disturbance ordinance. One draft, submitted by County staff, would add variance and appeal procedures to the ordinance. Another, submitted by a local planning and development firm, would create several potentially broad new exceptions to the ordinance. The site disturbance ordinance, of course, provides detailed regulation on how a property can more »
The Kootenai County Commissioners decided this morning that they would pull back on their draft “emergency” legislation to extend time to developers to complete projects. Instead, the Commissioners referred the legislation back to the Planning Commission for their evaluation without the “emergency” status. The poorly-drafted legislation would have granted developers up to two years of additional time to complete projects upon an application to the more »
Disappointingly bringing an end to a long process, lame-duck Commissioners Rick Currie and Rich Piazza outvoted Commissioner Todd Tondee today to approve a site-disturbance permit for a roadway through a frequently flooded, contaminated property along the Coeur d’Alene River near Medimont. The proposal, from developer / realtor John Beutler, would provide new access to an unbuilt subdivision along the River. Community members and environmental interests more »
We were alerted Tuesday to a stunning new draft “Emergency Ordinance” scheduled to be introduced by the Kootenai County Commissioners which would allow developers to escape their obligations under existing land use approvals and financial guarantees for up to two years by simply sending a written request. The draft bill (pdf) says that the Board of County Commissioners may consider such a request at any more »
One of the more frustrating things about the comp plan battle has been fending off the misinformation by the realtors, builders, and business interests. Parroting talking points we’ve been hearing all along, a commenter to our recent posting about the Commissioners’ misguided decision to remove density designations from the current draft plan writes: This is actually a wonderful and BRAVE decision for these two to more »
In their long slow failure of deliberating the draft Comprehensive Plan, the County Commissioners today voted 2-1 in favor of throwing out thousands of hours of hard work by hundreds of citizens in developing a new comp plan that actually meant something. Over Commissioner Tondee’s strong objection, Commissioners Currie and Piazza voted to remove specific development density ranges for all land use designations in the Plan. more »
Kootenai Environmental Alliance provided testimony last night at a hearing by the Idaho Department of Lands on whether to approve a proposal for up to 12 overnight mooring buoys in Cougar Bay and a string of buoys across the mouth of the Bay to demarcate a no wake zone. The proposal, sponsored by Kootenai County Parks and Waterways, purports to protect the sensitive Bay in more »
As uncomfortable as we are using the word “finish” in the same sentence as “comp plan,” we think the Kootenai County Commissioners are approaching the big decisions they have been putting off for almost a year now. At the conclusion of their most recent deliberations meeting last week, the Commissioners had only a page-and-a-half left to do in their line-by-line editing of the controversial land more »
