A Short Report on Short Meetings 

This week was marked by short meetings at both the city and county. Plus we had an election! 

Read the full transcript of the video below:

How’s it going y’all? Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. In one sense, this has been a busier week, what with the election having taken place on Tuesday, and in another sense, it’s been pretty quiet, with shorter meetings this week at both the city and the county. We’ll get to the details in a second, but first, some words about the election.

We posted about this on election night, but I want to say, once again, congratulations to our mayor and our city councilors-to-be! We had very impressive voter turnout compared to previous years of local elections, and this year the City of Moscow elected Hailey Lewis for Mayor, and Sage McCetich, Evan Holmes, and Scott Summer for city council. We here at Moscow Report look forward to seeing you in action in the coming year! And of course a big shout out to everyone who ran for office, everyone who volunteered, everyone who worked the polls, and everyone who voted this year. Your engagement, involvement, and passion for this city is what makes this all possible. 

Now back to the meetings. There was plenty of cause for fanfare at the Moscow city council meeting. Following a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and photo-op with the local Girl Scout troop, Amanda Argona of city staff presented the winners of the Moscow Farmer’s market Halloween Costume contest, many of whom were present and enthusiastic as they posed with the mayor for a photo of their own.

This was followed by the annual report from the tree commission. Ellis Eifert, the commission chair, delivered a report on the commission’s past year of activity, including their seedling giveaways, Arbor Day celebrations, and notices inside the city’s utility billing newsletters.

There was only one action item on the agenda at this meeting, which was a request for the city to make an exception to a piece of city code which forbids the discharge of firearms in city limits. Let’s go through a little history for this one.

The original ordinance which forbade the discharge of firearms in city limits was made in 1888, which is one year after the town of Moscow was originally incorporated. The code was later updated in 1984 to clarify that the term “firearms” included pellet guns, air rifles, slingshots, and other similar projectile weapons. Contained within the code are allowances for the city to make exceptions to this prohibition under permits in specific locations.

Fast forward to present day, and a request was made to grant this exception in order to open an indoor airsoft facility. City staff thought that the request was reasonable enough to grant, and turned the request over to council for approval. After a few questions clarifying the nature of the exception, and some brief discussion about the process as a whole, the city council voted 4-2 to approve the exception, with Sandra Kelly and Bryce Blankenship being the dissenting votes.

The county commissioners met briefly this week as well. After hearing some regular updates from their department heads, they approved the Juvenile Justice Annual Financial report. As they met on Election Day, they also heard a reminder from county treasurer BJ Swanson about an election outside Latah County. That particular election was in Payette County, where the decision whether or not to pass a bond for a new county jail was on the ballot. 

If that bond were to pass in Payette County, it would signal to Latah County what options remain viable for them as they try to obtain funding for their own jail project. As it turned out, that bond did not pass, so it seems to me that Latah County might seek other options to fund the jail going forward.

That’s all I got for you this week. With the election over, it’s likely that things will calm down around here. Still the work at the city and county continues, and we’ll do our best to keep you posted on all of it! 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!