COEUR d'ALENE - The Coeur d'Alene Lakeshore Property Owners Association held its summer meeting Wednesday night to discuss many issue affecting their property.

The main issue, however, was Kootenai County's proposed Unified Land Use Code.

CLPOA Vice President Bruce Cyr explained the association's position on the code and urged about 150 lakeshore owners in attendance to make sure to educate themselves on the issue.

Cyr has been trying to influence the issue since 2010.

He said that is when the county started to rewrite its land use code. He said the association is primarily concerned with setback regulations that could wind up preventing any dock, deck or landscaping activity within 25 feet of the waterfront.

"Instead of infringing on the regulations, we wanted them to give us some flexibility in the rules," Cyr said. "Stopping all activity in the area didn't make sense."

Cyr said the association advocated for a "lakeside management area" that would allow lakeshore owners to do projects that would do no harm to water quality or in some cases even improve water quality in the lake.

Erosion control he said was a good example of that.

"For those of us that live in high traffic areas, we need some way to protect property from erosion," Cyr said. "You can actually enhance water quality with landscaping. We want the flexibility in law that would allow us to do that."

At one point Cyr said it seemed the association was making progress on the issue but the consultant that was writing the new code left his job for another one.

When the county finally released the draft proposal, he said none of the progress they had hoped for was in the document.

"The complexity of the code increased along with the subjectivity," he said. "And it left a lot of discretion up to the planning director."

As a result, Cyr said the association submitted 18 pages of comments to the planning commission in hopes of regaining some of the original progress they made earlier in the process.

But now, he said, the process has been stopped as more and more people are becoming frustrated and concerned about how the new land use code could impact them.

County Commissioner Todd Tondee attended the meeting and explained that while it may not look like it to some, the commissioners are listening.

"We put it back on hold, and took it in house for revisions," Tondee said. "We will also have the planning commission and the consultant go over it."

Once that is done, he said the commission will release another draft with another 60 day comment period before they go through another formal hearing process to adopt the code.

"We have heard that there are a lot changes that didn't make it into the document," the commissioner said. "I'm hoping we have something a little better within three months, but we don't have a deadline because we want to bring back a good document."

Cyr said the association has hope that their concerns will be addressed this time.

"We have the respect of the commissioners because we are trying to do something fair," he said, adding they aren't anti-environment. "I will support good efforts like watching for zebra muscles in the lake, but I don't want someone telling me that I am polluting the lake just because I live there."

Cyr told the group that the association will continue to advocate on the lakeshore owners' behalf, but urged those who could to make their voices known as well.