Say Farewell to Pathways!

What happens when the City of Moscow decides to get rid of one of their commissions? Our producer joins us to discuss that process, alongside some updates from the county and a review of the Moscow Citizen Survey!

Read the full transcript of the video below:

Producer: Alright, what’s going on? Is DOGE coming to Moscow? Is this what this is all about? What’s next, are we gonna start enforcing tariffs on Pullman or something?

Talent: How’s it going y’all? Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. My producer is a little confused. That’s not what’s happening here in our city, but there’s enough that did happen this week that he and I are tag-teaming on this report. Let’s get started.

The county commissioners had a couple highlights this week. First, they met with some folks working on the DIGB2 broadband fiber project both to receive an update on that project as well as for the new commissioners to learn a little bit more about the project’s history. If you look on the map here you’ll see that the upper area in green is the proposed project for the area of Latah County. Dave Taylor, a representative for the fiber project, explained a few of the latest developments on the project, including meeting with various local municipalities like Idaho County, Clearwater County, and the city of Nez Perce to secure Point of Presence locations for the project.

The commissioners also received the annual juvenile justice report from the head of the Probation department, looking at the past year of youth arrests and the efficacy of youth probation programs in comparison to previous years. As assessed by the head of probation, this was a pretty typical year for the county overall.

Now let’s take a look at the Moscow City Council. After a proclamation for Fair and Affordable Housing Month, the city heard the annual report from the Fair and Affordable Housing Commission. Commission Chair Casey Holcomb-Hawkes reviewed their past year of activities, including fair housing training, educational efforts at various city events, their tenant’s rights and responsibilities brochures, and their ongoing partnership with the U of I legal aid clinic and the Intermountain Fair Housing Council.

Fire Chief Brian Nickerson also took the stand to deliver the annual report from the Moscow Volunteer Fire Department. In total, they had 3,002 calls this past year, which is a 9% increase from last year, with a typical 30% of those being overlapping calls coming in at the same time. Activities this year included assisting the Idaho Department of Lands with several wildfire incidents, updating their records management system, expanding the firefighter stipend program, and hosting multiple training events.

Producer: Alright folks, Talent asked me to cover some of these items for him, so let’s get this over with. The City of Moscow is down one commission after the council voted on Monday to dissolve the pathways commission entirely. In case you don’t know, the pathways commission focuses on, well, pathways. Walking trails, bike paths, that sorta thing. They were established as a task force back in 1994 and became a city commission officially in 2015. They’ve since been involved in multiple pathways projects throughout the city.

That’s changed recently. Having had no major projects or meaningful agenda items for some time, the pathways commission itself voted to recommend its dissolution to the city council in February. Their responsibilities are largely redundant with the transportation and parks and recreation commissions, and it’ll help ease some pressure on the city budget. The city council generally agreed that dissolution was the right move to make, with the exception of Sandra Kelly, who was concerned about potential future projects and about voices not being heard by the city. They voted 5-1 to repeal the section of city code that establishes the pathways commission, and so now there’s one less meeting to keep track of.

The next item has a doozy of a name: the Public Avenue Corridor Safety Improvements, bid results and funding contributions.

Scott Bontrager presented on this one. In 2019, the city submitted a grant application to the Local Highway Safety Improvement Program for a 1,100 ft long corridor on Public Avenue with a number of safety improvements. The Idaho Transportation Department put out a bid request for the project and has since received five bids back, ranging from $1.81 million to $2.45 million.

Since the project went out to bid, the project costs have increased to $2,423,838, in part due to inflation and in part due to additions to the project amounting to a full road reconstruction, adding a storm drain system, bike lanes, curbs, gutters, and sidewalks. This resulted in a shortfall of $450,763.

The city will be responsible for making up the shortfall as part of their needed funding contributions to the project, and at this point it makes more financial sense for them to do so than to back out of the project altogether. Beyond that, the council is excited about the safety improvements the project will add to the area, and thus they unanimously approved sending out a letter of approval on the lowest bid for the project, as well as sending out the necessary funds to make up the shortfall.

Last item on the agenda… Why are we doing this? What’s with the dramatic entrance? Alright, nope. I’m done. 

Talent: No worries, Producer. I can take it from here. The last item on the agenda was a report on the 2024 Moscow Citizen Survey. This is the eleventh year that the city has sent out a survey to 1,200 randomly selected residential mailing addresses in order to get a sense for how Moscow citizens feel about different aspects of the city and its services. This year they received 315 responses from the 1,200 surveys sent out, and the report given to council goes over a statistical analysis of those responses compared to previous years.

The survey’s questions interact with a number of different subjects, such as the quality of life in Moscow, safety in the city, and the value or quality of city services. In highlighting a couple of these, Belknap pointed out that the citizen assessment for quality of life in Moscow has trended slightly down over the past couple years, while the assessment of the city’s appearance received its highest score ever this year. Concerns about the speed of population growth were also noted. Evaluations of city services has stayed pretty consistent, with the greatest overall increase in quality being attributed to garbage collection and the greatest overall decrease being in street lighting (EDITOR’S NOTE: This should be Planning & Zoning). One question dealt with how citizens obtain information related to the city. As the graph shows, use of the local newspaper has been steadily declining over the years, while use of the city website and social media have both been increasing.

After a series of questions related to the demographics of those filling out the survey, the council interacted briefly with two open-ended questions: the most important issue facing the city, and something that the city should consider. These answers are pretty typical for what the survey has seen throughout the years. I will note that while the city does take all these into consideration, some of them are well within their present priorities, such as increased street maintenance and resurfacing, while others such as property taxes are less within their power to change directly.

Councilor Bryce Blankenship asked about the survey’s sample size. As 1,200 people is just under 5% of the population of Moscow, and 315 is only a quarter of that 5%, it’s reasonable to ask why the sample shouldn’t be larger. Bill Belknap explained that the current sample size is partly because of costs related to getting the surveys out, and partly because it has proven to be a statistically helpful sample size when it comes to the data the city is looking for across the years. He also mentioned that the city is considering making an electronic version of the survey available in the future, which I think would prove helpful to getting more detailed and more reliable responses going forward.

Well, that was a bit of a ride. Between myself and my producer I’m hopeful we were able to share some interesting information on our local government activities. If you pay attention and stay engaged, there’s always something going on. 

As always, we’ll have the relevant links posted with this video, and if you have any questions, please reach out. I’m Aiden Anderson with the Moscow Minutes. See you next time!