Never “Herd” of These Districts Before…

Earth Day awards, strategic planning, and… herd districts? This week, we dive into all of these and more, in our latest update on Moscow and Latah County!

Read the full transcript of the video below:

How’s it going y’all? Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. This past week the mayor of Moscow presented the city’s Earth Day awards to a number of people and organizations that have been heavily engaged in conservation and environmental projects in our community. Award recipients included Inland North Waste, Jocelyn Watson, and the Latah County Steelhead Creek Recovery Project.

Celebration of green good deeds aside, there’s plenty else to talk about from this week. First up, David Schott of city staff presented the results for a bid for city custodial services. These custodial bids went out from the city back in February this year and officially opened in March. While the contracts that emerge from these bids won’t go into effect until October, making a decision now will help make things easier for the city’s budget process for the coming fiscal year.

For the sake of convenience when it comes to their square footage, the city is divided into modules to help parse out what areas of the city’s buildings need what types of cleaning. In this case, the low bid was received from Creative Cleaning Connections:  $203,519.49 for modules 1,6, and 7, and $329,568 for modules 2, 3, 4 and 5. After some questions from council about janitorial horror stories that the city has previously dealt with, they approved the low bids unanimously.

The next item dealt with some interesting property requirements in city code. Bob Buvel presented a request to waive the requirement to improve the right of way on Thatuna Avenue and Ponderosa. The applicant, Alison Tompkins, is interested in building a house on the property in question which is adjacent to Thatuna Avenue. City code requires improvements to be made to the frontage of their property if a person wishes to build on that same property, with particular improvements being required depending on what the street is. All of this is a prerequisite to the applicant getting the proper permits to even begin building their house.

In this case, the requirements are quite substantial with the present expenses being up to $107,000 in order to complete the frontage improvements. The owner of the neighboring property previously applied for a similar waiver request and had their request approved. With some questions about the future of the road related to the work the city will need to do, the council unanimously approved this waiver request. To the owner of the property, best of luck on the house!

To wrap up the evening, the council heard a couple of different reports. First, Chief Anthony Dahlinger delivered a report on the Moscow police department’s past year of activities. He noted those who have retired from the force over the past year, including former Chief James Fry, Captain Tyson Berrett, Officer Jay Waters, and Dianna Erickson. Several notable events included the 22nd annual citizens police academy, the delivery of four separate lifesaving awards, participating in activity related to the upcoming trial in Ada County, and a slight downward trend in necessary drug enforcement.

Councilor Sandra Kelly asked a question on behalf of international students at the university who are concerned about getting deported. Chief Dahlinger responded that the MPD has ongoing efforts to strengthen engagement with the campus, including emphasizing the distinctions between local and federal law enforcement. The chief also fielded questions regarding parking tickets and disability education within the MPD.

Lastly, Bill Belknap delivered a report on the city’s strategic plan. This describes the city’s planning which is focused on long-term projects and community goals. It is paced and ongoing, with revisions to the plan taking place every four years, and annual reporting on the plan taking place prior to budget development for the coming fiscal year.

In particular, Bill presented on the city’s priorities when it comes to these projects and goals. These are reassessed and ranked each year using a matrix system before being presented to council. The ranking for this year is as follows: alternate water supply, fire and EMS staffing, sub-standard emergency communications, the aging city shop, critical staffing concerns, street funding, downtown streetscape development, and urban forest management. Some of these goals are already complete, while others are ongoing, but achievable, and some (like funding for street projects) are continuous priorities that the city must keep providing for.

Now, we can compare this list to previous years of strategic plan priorities based on what you’ll find in previous city budgets. You’ll notice that they all seem pretty similar to each other. In this year’s case however, a couple of the strategic priorities going into the next fiscal year are essentially complete, including the city shop and emergency communications. It could be then that we see some new priorities taking their place going into the future.

The county commissioners have something going on every week. One of the first items they dealt with this time around was an agreement with SMJ counseling. Now previously, the county held an agreement with an organization called Ameriben to develop and manage some county job descriptions as part of HR-related county staff affairs. Ameriben, however, was recently bought out, and their HR was disbanded. Former members of that same HR started their own company, called SMJ Counseling, and have obtained the same data which they were working with before to continue their work like they used to do under the name Ameriben.

This agreement essentially enabled the county to continue working with the same folks which they had been working with previously, but regardless this item was not without discussion. Commissioner Stooks in particular had concerns about the lack of clarity and public transparency when it came to how the service costs were divided and listed in the agreement. County Treasurer BJ Swanson expressed similar sentiments. Now, the agreement was still approved by all the commissioners, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the wording of the agreement comes up again as a talking point.

Another discussion took place regarding herd districts, and if you don’t know exactly what those are and how those work, you wouldn’t be alone in the room that day. Bruce Stuntebeck presented a complaint that he has been working on for some time. He owns land out in the county, and there is an issue with his neighbor’s animals getting out and onto the road and his property. He has been looking for legal deterrent and enforcement mechanisms with the county legal department and the State of Idaho.

Thus far, Stuntebeck is sure that because the land in question where the animals are a problem is in a herd district, then there should be mechanisms in place such that the offending neighbor could be fined or approached by the sheriff if his animals keep getting out.

The difficulty, as the commissioners discussed, is that the herd district is a separate governmental entity from the county, and thus they can’t directly be the ones to interact with the property owners. The present trick is determining who all is involved in the herd district, and from there the county can seek clarity on the exact legal language in order to enforce the legal deterrents which are in place.

All-in-all, this conversation was a lot of back and forth trying to figure out exactly where the present holdups in the process were, and it seems like there may be a good deal of work ahead before this issue is resolved. That said, it’s good to keep in mind the number of special districts that one might interact with as a citizen of Latah County, and also how those districts, however obscure, might interact with you.

That’s all I got for you this week. When the next set of meetings comes down the pipeline, we’ll be there to give you the details. 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!