Hints of Big Plans for the County

Happy Easter everyone! In this brief update, we cover the county’s activities this week, including a new polling location and hints of some big projects on the horizon. Please enjoy!

Read the full transcript of the video below:

How’s it going y’all? Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. The Moscow city council doesn’t meet until next week, so until then, here’s an update from the county.

If you vote in Latah County elections, and your typical polling place is the U of I student rec center, you’ll be seeing some changes. This week, County Clerk Julie Fry presented the polling places for upcoming 2025 elections to be approved by the commissioners. One change which has been made, and now approved, is that the new polling location for those voters who would go to the U of I rec center will now be the Kibbie Dome. If you live in one of those precincts, keep that in mind.

Later in the day, the commissioners held their regular monthly meeting with the department heads and elected officials. While there’s not a ton to report from the departments at large, a number of county departments including planning and building, and the museum are currently looking through the most recent changes to state legislation to determine how their operations might be affected going into the coming fiscal year. Also, the clerk reminded everyone about the upcoming library board elections, with early voting starting on May 5th.

Commission Chair Tom Lamar was absent for the last meeting of the day, which was an explanatory meeting with Clearwater Financial. Clearwater Financial is Idaho’s only headquartered municipality advisory firm. Representatives for the firm met with the two other commissioners to discuss their process regarding implementation and communication of a facility financial plan. This sort of thing is a multi-step, multi-project plan for large-scale county facility projects going forward.

The emphasis of this meeting however was not the specific facilities the county wants to start working on. Rather, it was heavy on the communications side of things. The representatives spoke primarily about how to communicate the county’s infrastructure needs to the public including proposals for an engagement plan lasting well over a year. One point suggested making the proposed project into a community endeavor, at least as far as talking about the project is concerned.

As for the projects themselves? It seems we’re still waiting to hear about them. But, if the county is seriously considering such a large-scale community engagement plan for something like this, I’m sure we’ll be getting more information about it soon.

That’s all I got for you this week, but we’ll be sure to keep you posted on any developments regarding those infrastructure projects. Until then, to everyone celebrating this weekend, Happy Easter! 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!