Camp Bay negotiations break down

SAGLE — Following a heated exchange between Fred Arn of 50feet.net and Bill Brownlee of M3, negotiations to resolve a question of public beach access in the Camp Bay area have ended.

That puts the issue back into the legal arena. Both parties will be in court Aug. 10, after a month of gridlock.

During a recess for Thursday’s public Bonner County Zoning Commission meeting Bill Brownlee could be heard telling Fred Arn that he was “just trying to screw up my development” and that “there was never a public beach” at Camp Bay.

Arn did not believe that further negotiation would be fruitful after that interaction, as even M3’s negotiating position at that time recognized 50 feet of public beach front.

“It was indicated to me that the public never had a beach down there and will never have a beach down there,” Arn said in a Wednesday interview with KRFY’s Chris Bessler.

Arn shared the interaction with his attorney, who advised M3’s attorney they would not continue negotiating. Both M3’s proposal as well as the Arns’ proposal agreed on 50 feet of public beach.

Since Camp Bay is still a public road, if it touches the high water mark, public access to the lake – according to Idaho law – is protected, which is why M3 asked the county to vacate the road.

This hearing is the latest chapter in a saga to determine whether the final section of Camp Bay Road runs all the way to Lake Pend Oreille’s high-water mark, or ends at property now owned by the Arizona company M3 ID Camp Bay LLC.

A dispute over access versus private property rights prompted the Arms to file suit last May after Bonner County commissioners voted to vacate the final portion of road, saying it was in the public’s interest for the county to longer have to maintain the approximately half-mile portion of road.

In their lawsuit, the couple challenged the decision and said commissioners did not have the right to vacate the road for a variety of reasons.

The court agreed and remanded the matter back to the county. After the commissioners reversed their previous decision to give the road to M3, they asked for a legal review to determine where the public road ends and if it indeed reaches Lake Pend Oreille’s high water mark.

Julie Frank, a Camp Bay resident who opposes public lake access at the bay, in a July 19 letter to the editor claimed that the public does not have any legally protected access to Camp Bay. Allegedly, the county road ends 50 feet west of Pend Oreille’s ordinary high water mark.

Frank is concerned that the Arns’ legal maneuvering is not only costly folly, but actually threatens private property rights, including littoral rights which extend private property owners’ dominion out to the lake bed until the ordinary high water mark.

Both parties had filed a petition to delay court proceedings in an effort to negotiate a solution instead of having the matter decided in the courts. To give the sides time to talk, a hearing that was originally scheduled for July 6 was postponed until Aug. 10.