New Maps for Christmas! (And Other Matters)

On the first day of Christmas, my county gave to me… new Areas of Impact boundaries! Want to learn what those are? Join us and find out!

Read the full transcript of the video below:

How’s it going y’all? Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. This week in Moscow we had our first winter snow, our Light Up the Night Parade, and the city and county have both continued to keep their meetings on the short side of things.

The Moscow City Council was reduced in numbers this week, with Mayor Bettge and Councilors Hailey Lewis and Gina Taruscio being absent on Monday, leaving Councilor Julia Parker to lead the proceedings. The lack of numbers this week was enough to provoke a last minute agenda change, and two items which were on the docket for this week were moved to the second city council meeting later this month. Those items were the regular annual report from the historic preservation commission, and an Access Agreement between the city and New Saint Andrews College.

The council moved on to the remaining items on the agenda, first of which was the acknowledgement of the November election results. Idaho code requires that the city must publicly accept the results of the election, and then enter the results in the minutes of their meeting, and that is what they did. For those of you who weren’t aware, this election resulted in city councilor Hailey Lewis being elected mayor, and Evan Holmes, Sage McCetich, and Scott Sumner being elected to the council, and we’ll be seeing them in action this coming January.

Alisa Anderson of city staff then presented a grant request for the America 250 celebration. There’s grant funding available for a limited time in the amount of $2,500 per applicant to help aid municipalities in their efforts to celebrate our county’s 250th birthday. As Alisa explained, the city is looking at applying for the grant in order to purchase a number of street pole banners and an overhanging street banner in order to decorate and direct citizens to various celebrations taking place in the city. Such an application requires a letter from the mayor and approval from the city council, which they provided unanimously.

Alisa remained to talk about the final item of the evening, which was the final results of the city’s low to moderate income (LMI) survey. This survey was conducted to re-evaluate the city’s low to moderate income levels, which was necessary because there are Idaho Community Development Block Grants the city can apply for if they can show that their LMI level is above 51%.

The city has previously utilized such grants to help pay for various infrastructure projects, but some months ago, census results indicated that Moscow fell just short of the required LMI level, and thus was ineligible to receive such funding. The survey was thus conducted to confirm or refute the census’ findings.

371 survey forms were sent out, and 301 were received back. The final results show a current LMI level of 56.6%, which means, once the paperwork is submitted, that the city will once again be eligible to apply for those grants. The council concluded by thanking Alisa for her work on this project.

The county commissioners had a pretty normal week of business, but one item stood out among the rest. The head of the Planning and Building department presented on a number of significant changes taking place to the County’s Areas of Impact. An Area of Impact is land near a municipality like a city where growth is expected to take place, or where a city might choose to annex property in the near future.

Changes were made by the Idaho State Legislature in 2024 which kept powers related to Areas of Impact in the county’s hands relative to processes and decision making, enabling Latah County to make a number of changes to the boundaries of the Areas of Impact for all the cities within their borders. The Head of Planning and Building remarked that this does not mean that the county is changing the boundaries of the cities themselves; rather, these changes allow the county to do better incremental planning when it comes to future growth across the board.

The commissioners then walked through the various changes taking place with each city’s Area of Impact. In almost all cases, the Planning and Building department reduced the Area of Impact for each city. The commissioners then had to decide whether or not to accept the recommended changes from the Planning and Building Department, and then whether or not to hold a public hearing on the subject.

Through a series of motions and votes, the commissioners voted to forgo any public hearings and accept the recommended changes, which means removing and amending old ordinances and regulations, and putting in new ones in accordance with the new Area of Impact boundaries. So if you have any maps of Latah County that show the Areas of Impact, it might be time to go get a new one.

That’s all I got for you this week, and who knows? A new map of Latah County might make for a good Christmas gift. 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!