City and Council update – week of December 18th, 2022

How’s it going y’all? It’s been a frigid couple of days, and I’m sure that most folks are right in the middle of holiday preparations, and so I’m here with another set of Moscow Minutes from the week of December 18th, 2022. I’ll be covering the highlights from both the Moscow City Council meeting on December 19th and the Latah County Commissioner Meetings from December 19th and December 21st. Let’s get into it!

The main focus of the Moscow City Council meeting was the appointment and oath of office of a new city council member to replace Anne Zabala, who had recently resigned from her seat at the council following her decision to move to Japan. The mayor presented his chosen appointee, Andrew Davis, as per Idaho code regarding mayoral appointments. Davis has done work in architecture, urban planning, and urban renewal, and was a designer on the NRS building project. After delivering a short presentation on his experience, he was then asked a number of questions by the council regarding his potential role as a member.

However, when it came to actually voting on the matter, some conflict arose. A number of city council members, including Hailey Lewis and Julia Parker, expressed concern and frustration regarding the appointing process, noting that there had been no input from the council itself or the community at large when it came to the mayor’s choice in appointee. While this process is laid out in Idaho code, it is markedly different from other appointing processes for similar roles, such as county commissioner. This process disagreement resulted in a brief standoff between the mayor and council, as no one seemed willing to make a motion. If no motion had been taken, as the mayor stated, the appointment decision would return to him, and he would be forced to find another appointee and repeat the process another week.

This standoff was broken by council member Gina Taruscio, who stated that, while there was significant disagreement with the process within the council, ultimately none of this was the fault of Andrew Davis, who was very qualified for the position, and thus should not be treated unfairly in the context of the meeting. She made a motion to approve Davis’ appointment, and the city council ultimately approved Davis to the council unanimously. Davis was then sworn in as a city council member and took his seat alongside the others.

Highlights from Latah County included another swathe of liquor license renewals for county businesses, most of which were located in Moscow itself. The commissioners also toured the Latah County Blaine building to get an update on construction progress, and they took a further trip out to the East Boundary Line of the county to settle some jurisdictional questions. 

That about does it for the highlights! As always, we’ll have relevant links alongside this summary, and if you have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. Here’s to a very merry Christmas and happy holiday season to you all!

– Aiden Andeson