Thomas E. LeVieux's patience is wearing thin.

And he's not alone.

On behalf of roughly 700 property owners in the View/Caps area near Dyess Air Force Base, LeVieux sent a letter this week to Mayor Norm Archibald and Abilene City Council members expressing concern about a city ordinance passed in May that imposes what he says are stiff regulations near airports.

Even though LeVieux's area isn't in the city limits, it is affected because of "extraterritorial jurisdiction," which allows governments to exercise authority beyond their normal boundaries.

"There are more than just families who have lost tremendous property values in their homesteads because of this overburdening ordinance, there are several businesses and property owners out here that have already lost money, are losing money, or will lose a great deal if this is not resolved ASAP," LeVieux said in the letter.

On Friday, LeVieux said he and others in his group have been extremely patient, trading pleasant e-mails over the last four months with City Manager Larry Gilley regarding concerns about the ordinance. However, LeVieux said the group deemed the letter necessary, after much discussion and thought, because it has seen little movement to address its concerns.

LeVieux said representatives of his group would like to meet with the mayor and council before Friday.

Speaking for the city, Archibald said city officials are "handling the ongoing airport zoning ordinance."

"Ongoing means that we adopted an ordinance and then people came forward to express their concerns," Archibald said. "We are handling this in an ongoing manner to keep trying to work to bring about a needed ordinance and work with the landowners as well."

Archibald said he believes the council is willing to re-examine the ordinance to determine what needs to be addressed.

"We are moving forward to bring this discussion back up," Archibald said. "I feel like we're going to be meeting with the landowners in and around this area."

LeVieux, meanwhile, said View/Caps residents weren't adequately notified the council was considering the changes, noting the city took out a legal notice of the meeting in the newspaper and led people to believe it was limited to regulating building heights, ensuring compatible land use and putting noise standards in place around airports.

However, LeVieux said, the ordinance clearly goes beyond that and does such things as require new structures to be built to city standards.

"We had absolutely no representation there," said Randahl Lohse, also a member of the community action group. "When you affect people in this type of manner, you need notification."

LeVieux said his group isn't anti-Dyess or anti-Abilene.

"We believe the ordinance should only address height restrictions, communication interference and navigation interference as these relate to impacting operations at Dyess," LeVieux said.

In his letter to council members, LeVieux called the ordinance a "very sneaky but effective method to push through an unsuspecting City Council vote without letting those pesky dissenters have an opportunity to mess things up by spewing their nonsense."

In response, Archibald said some people "obviously ... did not know about the ordinance, and that is why we are working to continue discussions about this."