City Money and County Votes

In this video, we cover the current conversations surrounding Moscow’s finances as well as the list of candidates for the 2024 Latah County Election.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Since the recording of this video, Glen Barnett, a candidate for Latah County Commissioner District 1, has withdrawn from the race, and thus is no longer a candidate in the 2024 election as the video states.

Read the full transcript of the video below:

Once election season picks up, I’m gonna need to get an Uncle Sam hat or something.

How’s it going y’all. Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. We’ve got city finances and county elections in our sights for today’s video, so without further ado, let’s get into it.

First up, the City meeting. Monday evening, March 18th saw the council deal firstly with a public hearing for a rezone of an about five acre property located at 1326 orchard avenue, switching the zone from FR (farm-ranch) to R1 (single family residential). Interestingly, the applicant for this rezone was not the current property owner, but was in fact a group of 6 neighbors who own the properties directly adjacent to this one.

As was explained at the public hearing, the long term plan for this property is for the landowner to gift it to these neighbors, who will then divide it amongst themselves as a way of preserving the green space and avoiding development directly behind their houses. The rezone is simply the first step in making that happen. Needless to say, stories like these are exactly the sort that tug on the heartstrings of the Moscow city council, and they swiftly approved the rezone.

Next up, we got financial stuff to cover. The city’s auditors, Presnell Gabe PLLC, represented by Renate Tack and Nick Nicholson, presented their comprehensive financial report for FY2023 to the city. This report looked at the city’s use of finances throughout the past fiscal year to help determine the overall financial health of the city, as well as any weaknesses the city might face going forward.

One interesting metric that Nicholson used for determining the city’s financial health was the length of time the city could continue running their current operations if they had no new revenue coming in. In his words, being able to keep going for 6 months or so without new revenue is considered healthy, while Nicholson cautioned against situations in which that length of time was shorter (say, two months), or substantially longer (say, two years). In this case, their analysis showed that Moscow can run city operations for about 9 months without new revenue, which in their estimation, is pretty healthy for a city like ours. 

After the auditors, came the staff. Bill Belknap, the city supervisor presented what he called “the FY2025 budget priority review”. That’s a very professional way to say “some things have gotta change around here”.

Belknap addressed some of the financial setbacks that Moscow is currently facing. The court case in Lewiston which forced the removal of the city’s streetlight utility fee, and reductions in state sales tax revenue have forced the city to get financially creative. To account for those losses, Belknap said that the city has removed 6 staff positions, suspended pay increases, and reduced all city department commodity expenditures by 20%. 

It also means that, going into FY2025, the city is going to have to reconsider some of its strategic priorities — those projects or objectives that they want to put a special focus on each year. Let me run through a few of them for you.

At the top of the list is the alternative water source issue. It’s difficult to make that one less expensive, but the burden could be partially shifted to the state, based on some grants that the city is hoping to apply for. A similar approach is being examined for Fire and EMS issues, redoing the City shop, and housing and community mobility projects; so, looking at state grants and ARPA funds for one time projects rather than incorporating them as larger budget items. Some priorities are being wholly re-examined, like the downtown streetscape project, which may be put aside in favor of some more small-scale improvements to match the budget. Still others, like roadway maintenance  and employee retention, are more of an ongoing issue, and may require rebalancing from other city funds as well a more gradual rollout as inflation subsides.

Obviously, the city has a lot to balance out when it comes to money and how to spend it. This is one of the most important things a citizen of Moscow can be looking to pay attention to, but it’s also one of the hardest things to pay attention to. The city budget is both massive and complex, and it’s hard to know if you’re missing any information when you’re looking at it.

For example, back in December, the city approved an increase in their sanitation franchise fee to help combat their shortfall from the loss of the streetlight utility fee. That change was not mentioned by Belknap at the meeting this past week. So we still don’t know if and how such a fee change has impacted the city’s finances as regards this shortfall problem. We still don’t know exactly how these pieces fit together.

Regardless, the city has yet to set the budget for the coming fiscal year, and that means more videos on city finances in due time. The draft for this year’s budget should be available in mid-june, while the city’s budget workshop, a public meeting, is scheduled for July 10th, with the budget hearing set for August 5th. All of those are among the most important meetings each year, so if you live in Moscow, and you wanna know how your money’s being spent, you should check those out.

Ok. We got the money talk outta the way for now. Next up, we got elections!

I know it’s a Presidential year, but that’s not what’s on the docket today. The filing period for running for office in Latah County ended on March 15th, Friday of last week, and so we now have a final list of candidates for the county offices this year.

Two County Commissioner seats are up this year: county district 1 for a two year term, and county district 3 for a four year term. District 1 has three candidates in the running: Mark Thorne, Tony Johnson, and Glen Barnett. Interestingly, incumbent commissioner Kathie Lafortune is not among those in the running, and I’ve not heard her say anything publicly about whether or not she is planning on running again, so we could very well be looking at a brand new face for district 1, no matter what. District 3 is a race between incumbent commissioner John Bohman and newcomer Jason Stooks.

The other two races at the county level are the race for Prosecutor and for County Sheriff, both of which will serve four year terms. The Prosecutor’s race is pretty much already over, as only one individual, incumbent prosecutor Bill Thompson, applied for candidacy. I’m not sure if this is the time to say congratulations or not, but it does appear that we’ll be getting another four years with Thompson.

The Sheriff race is an interesting one. Incumbent Richie Skiles will be going up against former Moscow City Police Chief James Fry as well as newcomer Christopher Middleton. All in all, an interesting set of races, and if you tire of the drama of the state and national scene, be sure to pay attention to your county elections. 

And that’s what I got for you this week. We’re sure to have more videos coming soon regarding local elections and local financial goings on. Our candidate interview series, Candidate Candids, will hopefully be coming back as well, so if you have any questions you’d like us to ask the candidates, please reach out. I’m Aiden Anderson, and this is the Moscow Minutes. See ya next time!