A Survey of the Summer Switch-up

The city of Moscow experimented with its office hours over the summer. How did that experiment turn out? We talk about this subject and more in this week’s report!

Read the full transcript of the video below:

How’s it going y’all? Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. It was a pretty straightforward week for both the city and the county. Let’s take a look.

The county primarily dealt with internal paperwork this week. With Commissioner Stooks out of town and Commissioner Lamar reporting in from online, it was all up to Commissioner Johnson to make sure everything was signed accordingly. Commissioner, we salute you, and we hope your writing hand recovers.

The city meeting began with the presentation of the check from the mayor’s 11th annual golf tournament. The proceeds are going to the Latah Recovery Community, and this year, $3,547 were raised as a result of the tournament.

Next up, three public comments. Moscow city council candidate, Evan Holmes, presented an idea to the council to improve development building times through the creation of a city archive of pre-approved home designs. Jonathan Adams, President of the New Saint Andrews Civics Club invited the council to join them for their upcoming candidate forum. Lastly, Paul Kimmel invited the council to the Palouse Basin Aquifer Committee annual water summit, featuring keynote speaker Daniel Rothberg.

Following that, Cat Harner, the chair of the Parks and Recreation Commission reported on the commission’s past year of activities, including cleanup and improvements at the MSD City playfields, various pollinator projects, and the consideration an MOU with the Palouse Pickleball Club, to say nothing of the huge variety of recreational sports and other activities going on throughout the city.

The meeting continued with a public hearing amending Moscow City Code title 7 chapter 3, regarding city electrical code. Justin Goodwin explained that since the State of Idaho adopted an amended version of the 2023 National Electrical Code, the city is required to follow suit and adopt the electrical code as adopted by the state. As it turns out, the new code was pretty close to what the city already has, and the new changes include the ability to automatically adopt any new amendments which are added. This public hearing was a quiet one, with virtually no testimony nor deliberation. The council adopted the amendments unanimously.

Sharon Games presented the next item, which was a personnel policy amendment regarding light duty work (work that a person can be assigned to perform when they are recovering from an injury). City policy allowed for 60 days maximum of light duty work, but that is substantially lower than what other local municipalities offer. The recommendation was to increase the maximum amount of light duty work to 6 months, to be approved in 30 day increments. This was also approved unanimously by the Moscow City Council.

Lastly, Bill Belknap presented a survey report on the city’s summer work schedule. The city changed its schedule over the summer, opting for a 4-day work week with 10-hour work days, with some variety depending on employee needs. This new schedule ran from June 30th through August 22nd.

As it was the first time the city had done something like this, they conducted a survey seeking feedback from their employees. Belknap went through the details of the survey, which included reports of a general increase in productivity and morale, better work-life balance, and an overall desire to repeat the schedule next summer. Belknap explained that the city hopes to explore further options where possible, in addition to considering the feedback from the survey.

That’s all I got for you this week. We’re in the home stretch when it comes to this year’s local candidate interviews, and I’m hoping to finish everything by the start of early voting. That said, not every candidate wants to do a press interview, nor does every candidate have the time. Regardless, we want to make sure that all the candidates in this year’s race get recognition, so that voters who enjoy our content can go into the election well-prepared and educated. To that end, we’ll be featuring any candidates we can’t reach for an interview by the start of early voting via some written candidate spotlights. These will highlight each candidate’s platform as portrayed on their campaign websites and social media, as well as any public forums they’ve participated in.

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!