New Year, New Council, New Mayor!

We’re here to report on the first week of local meetings in 2026! Come for the city swearing-in ceremony, stay for the updates from the county!

Read the full transcript of the video below:

How’s it going y’all? Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. This week featured the first city council and county commissioner meetings of 2026, so let’s get into it!

For the Moscow city council, Monday’s meeting was all about ceremony and celebration. Citizens and city staff gathered to give a warm sendoff to council members Julia Parker and Gina Taruscio, as well as Mayor Art Bettge. Kind words were exchanged, photos were taken, and applause from the audience was loud and clear.

Not long after the 2025 Moscow City Council adjourned, the 2026 Moscow City Council was sworn in. Councilors Scott Sumner, Sage McCetich, and Evan Holmes all took the oath of office alongside new mayor and former city council member, Hailey Lewis.

The new council only had one item on their agenda for the evening, which was to vote on council leadership and committee assignments for the year. This item was divided into three parts: electing a council president, electing a council vice president, and assigning membership to the Admin and Public Works & Finance Committees. These decisions are important, as the council president will take the place of the mayor in meetings and situations where the mayor is absent. Additionally, the two committees mentioned are important to determining what items might be on the council’s agenda in future meetings.

Any of the council members can be nominated for these positions. In the case of this meeting, Sandra Kelly nominated Drew Davis for council president, and Bryce Blankenship nominated himself for the same position. A quick vote within the council was called, and Drew won the position 4-2. After that, he nominated Bryce for vice president, and the council unanimously voted to elect Bryce to that position.

Shortly after that, Drew, Sandra, and Evan chose to take on the Public Works and Finance Committee, while Bryce, Scott, and Sage took on the Admin committee. The councilors then took a little time to make some comments, thanking the city and the community for the opportunity to serve on the council, and looking forward to the work ahead. Evan Holmes in particular called on the community to make their voices heard and hold the council accountable in their work.

The county commissioner’s meetings were a little more “business as usual”. After a series of meetings with the department heads for county-wide updates, they dealt with a number of items associated with property taxes, including an extension, some exemptions, and some adjustments.

Extensions have to do with allowing a person extra time to complete their property taxes. Exemptions, of course, have to do with tax exempt property. And adjustments have to do with any changes that need to be made to a person’s property taxes, whether it’s due to a miscalculation on the county’s part, or a change to the property itself, such as the loss of the property in a fire.

The commissioners also held a series of discussions regarding some upcoming decisions they will have to make. In the first, they met with some public defenders to discuss the approval of an institutional office for the state public defenders. Latah County is in state District 2 for the state’s public defense system, and currently there is no official office for public defenders set up in District 2

 The public defenders would like one, but they need the county to approve it, whether they end up using an existing state building or leasing a county building. For this discussion, the commissioners and the public defenders focused on the benefits of such an office, as well as what the logistics would entail. It seems that the commissioners intend to put together an agreement, to be voted on this coming week.

Additional discussions took place with RimRock Consulting and Highland Appraisal. For the former, the commissioners discussed potential changes to an ongoing consulting contract with the prosecutor’s office, in order to keep within budgetary requirements. For the latter, the Assessor is interested in hiring Highland Appraisal for their tax services in order to pick up some unexpected slack in his department’s work following the departure of one of his employees. In both cases, no decisions were made, but likely the commissioners will be taking action on both those items in future meetings.

That’s all I got for you this week. In my opinion, this was a good start to the year here in Moscow, and I’m excited to see what the new city councilors and mayor have in store for us. 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. We’ll see you next time!