Renovations, Budgets, and More

Renovations at the 1912 Center, the city budget hearing date, candidates filing for office… exciting things are on their way in Moscow!

Read the full transcript of the video below:

How’s it going y’all? Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. This first week of March saw the city and the county fall back into a more regular schedule, and also a more regular agenda. Let’s check it out!

The city meeting started with a proclamation about the Moscow Public Library’s 120th anniversary. Representatives of the library explained that there is a commemorative library card you can get to celebrate, as well as an open house coming on May 8th. As a reminder, the Library district functions as something of its own entity, with its own library board and public meeting times. If you’re interested in what goes on with our libraries here in the county, go check those out.

The ever-exuberant Jenny Kostroff took the podium to present the annual report from the 1912 Center. For those that don’t know, the 1912 Center is a historic school building which has been transformed into an event center run by the non-profit Heart of the Arts Inc. Jenny, the director, boasted that, in 2025, the 1912 center played host to 1,785 different events throughout the year. She also gave an overview of their various ongoing programs, such as the Pen and Primer Historic Schoolhouse program, the Welcome Table Dinner, and the Winter Market.

The big accomplishment for the 1912 Center this past year was the completion of the renovation plans for the 3rd floor. Jenny explained that fundraising efforts are ongoing, and that $1 million in funding is needed to begin construction. The plans include a ballroom, some culinary spaces, and a beautiful view of the city looking west.

Next, Amanda Argona of city staff went through the changes the Moscow Farmers Market Commission had made to their market handbook. Every year, the commission reviews the handbook in order to revise and update policies so that their policies stay aligned with the mission of the farmer’s market, and so there are no redundancies. They work on these changes in the off-season, present them to vendors in January, and then bring them before council for approval.

The changes this year are not drastic, but seem to be mostly clarifying in nature. Language was added to include “hides, soup bones, and skulls” to products listed under livestock and poultry, and there were clarifications made about vendors using industry-standard measurements, and what communications are expected during vendor orientation. There was also a post-jury process added for if a vendor wants to add a new item to their inventory part of the way through the market season. Amanda indicated that policies surrounding price gouging might be considered in the future, before the handbook changes were approved unanimously by the Moscow city council. 

Mark your calendars for this next one, folks. The last item on the agenda was the city budget hearing date, set this year for August 17th. As Bill Belknap explained, state code requires the city to let the county know ahead of April 30th when they plan to hold a public hearing for the coming fiscal year’s budget.

Typically, Moscow holds their budget hearing the first week of August, but Belknap explained that some final construction project totals for the city won’t be in until the end of July, which prompted them to hold the budget hearing a little later this year. This meeting is one of the most important meetings the council holds every year, so if you care about the city, you should put it on your schedule.

The Latah County commissioners began their meeting by visiting with one David Sitler to discuss the terms of a water right which he had applied for. The commissioners typically hold water rights applications “in protest” in order to do an in-person review when the requested amount of water is over a certain threshold. In those talks, the commissioners and the applicant can usually come to an understanding wherein the applicant reduces their requested amount to meet the county’s standards.

That did not happen in this case. Sitler stood his ground and insisted that the amount of water he applied for was necessary for the pasture irrigation he intends to do on his property. Commissioner Lamar’s argument was that the amount of water requested (in this case, over 140,000 gallons a day) wasn’t even available in the ground for him to use, and wanted to see that number reduced. As this discussion ended without a resolution, a more formal hearing on the subject will likely take place in the future. 

While most of the meeting was spent going through property tax exemptions and reviewing meetings with the state legislature, the commissioners also held a public hearing in order to open the county budgets for FY2025 and FY2026. As the county finance officer explained, the reason for opening the budget had to do with some rounding discrepancies which had been discovered and needed to be corrected for accurate record keeping. With no public testimony given on the subject, the commissioners voted to approve opening the budgets and making those adjustments.

That’s all I got for you this week. One thing to keep in mind is that the filing period for anyone interested in running for office is closing next week. If you’re interested in running, or interested to see who’s running, voteidaho.gov is the best place to go. By the end of next week, we’ll know the final list of candidates, and we’ll 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. We’ll see you next time.