No Solicitors Please Kootenai County Drafting Law To Limit Commercial Activity At Public Docks

More boats and more people can mean chaos and conflict at county docks.

That’s why Kootenai County officials are drafting a law aimed at keeping public docks from becoming clogged with commercial activity.

“You have increased congestion and more activity every year,” said Sandy Emerson, chairman of the county waterways advisory committee, which has been working on the proposed law for years.

“It’s gotten to the point where it’s hard to ignore,” he said.

One of the targets of the law are Jet-Ski rental businesses, some of which unload and rent the personal watercraft from the Third Street boat dock.

“They chew up a bunch of dock space,” said sheriff’s Sgt. Dan Soumas. “A lot of time the money would exchange hands up in the parking lot.”

The proposed law will directly affect Nick Sand and his small rental business, Fun on the Run. Sand used to haul his six personal watercraft on a trailer and unload them for individual clients at the Third Street dock or wherever else was convenient.

“We did use public docks a lot,” Sand said. “I think every Jet-Ski business did. They weren’t so strict on it back when we started doing it. Now they get so strict on everything.”

Fearing accusations of discrimination, county officials are not planning to ban only personal watercraft rentals or any other specific business from the county docks.

The draft law would ban all commercial activity - with a difficult-to-enforce exception.

“We don’t want to necessarily prohibit or unreasonably restrict incidental uses, such as marine contractors picking up supplies,” Emerson said. “The rub is …: How do we determine what an incidental use is?”

It would be easier for law enforcement if those uses were allowed by permit only, but Emerson is concerned that creating a permit process would add a level of administration that could be costly for the county and inconvenient for businesses.

Incidental uses are hard to define and predict.

“A lot of it is emergency work,” Emerson said. “A sewer backs up and they want it fixed that weekend.”

Skip Murphy, who owns Murphy Tug and Barge Co., said he wants to make sure the new law won’t keep him from loading and unloading equipment and materials at the Third Street dock.

He doesn’t always know exactly when he’ll need to use the dock, and he has protested the proposed 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. restriction on commercial use.

“We use it quite a lot,” Murphy said. “It’s centrally located for everybody who wants to haul stuff out on the lake.”

Some businesses have urged the county to establish a commercial dock, like the one the city owns and leases to businesses at Independence Point.

But county officials say they don’t have enough facilities for the recreational boating public to devote a dock to commercial use.

Knowing his days are numbered at the public dock, Sand is negotiating with The Coeur d’Alene Resort to allow him to pick up and drop off customers at its boardwalk.

If that doesn’t work, “we’re just shut down,” Sand said.

Further complicating the county’s proposed law is the fact that the county’s Third Street dock lies within the city limits. In 1938, Coeur d’Alene annexed 1,000 feet out from the city shoreline.

County officials are expected to attend a City Council subcommittee meeting next month to discuss the proposed law and other laws that might conflict with city ordinances. For enforcement purposes, city and county ordinances need to be consistent, officials said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo